Friday, August 24, 2012

A Little Plein Air

Some entries from my watercolor Moleskin sketchbooks. Watercolors are some of the most portable art supplies, so I take my sketchbook on most hikes and outdoor trips. Here's a few from some of my recent trips.

This one is from a Joshua Tree camping trip last year in August. The moon was too full to really see the Perseides meteor shower. Painting the sunrise from on top of a rock at the Sheep's Pass camp site.

This one is from the Joshua Tree camping trip this year. With a sickle moon, the Perseides viewing was amazing! We camped out at the same campsite as last year. This sketch was also done at sunrise, but at a higher elevation. That mass near the foreground is the rock that I did the sunrise sketch from last year.


Another camping trip that I repeated from last year was to visit the Channel Islands off the state of California. Last year, we went to Anacapa Island and I sat down to do a longer sketch from a rocky outcropping about 1/2 mile from our campground.


This year, we went to Santa Cruz Island where I went on an 8 mile hike up to the radio tower. We wanted to get back before it got dark, so this is a much quicker sketch up on the MontaƱon Ridge of the cloud cover.