"Golden Gate Bridge on a Stormy Day" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16") sold

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From the Marin Headlands, one can see a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline.  It is even more spectacular on a windy, stormy day when there is a break in the sky.  I did another Golden Gate Bridge painting recently, as you can see below.  The earlier painting shows the famous red suspension bridge from Baker Beach, which stretches a mile below the rugged cliffs on the Presidio's western shoreline.  You can see the Marin Headlands in the distance.

I casually mentioned to my husband how I wished I had had more references of the bridge.  He said, "Really?  I have some."  He went to his computer right away and showed me the pictures he took while visiting San Francisco on a business trip last year. That's how the second painting above came about.  I don't know what I would do without him!

"Golden Gate Bridge" (oil on linen; 9" x 12")
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So which painting of the Golden Gate Bridge do you like better?  By the way, I am counting today's painting as one of my June Challenge series because it has a ship in it!

"Red Sails" (oil on stretched canvas; 18" x 18")

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Also titled "Red Sails" (watercolor on Yupo, 20" x 26")
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Hello, June!  With one foot into the summer, I thought it would be a terrific idea to do a series of boat/ship paintings this month.  The June Challenge is "Sail Away"!  To kick off the series, I revisited an old painting of Newport, OR.  The fishing boat with red sails had become a floating museum of seafaring in this picturesque working harbor, where my family spent a lovely day during a vacation in 2001.

I painted the first "Red Sails" in watercolor on an unpredictable support, Yupo.  It turned out well to my relief; it went on to be juried into the Art League Landscape Show in 2002 and was sold in my first solo show in 2006.

It was my husband who suggested that I should do a painting of "Red Sails" in oil.  Why not?  I cropped the scene into a square format and came up with a new color scheme of red and green with blue gray and grayed yellow orange as the neutral backdrop.  It was a perfect project to test out Gregory Packard's method of a neutral, mid-tone beginning.  The busiest, brightest, lightest, and darkest elements of the painting are all packed into the central area.  

I loved the watercolor version and was a little sad when it got sold.  Now I have a new "Red Sails" to look at.  So please tell me which version you like better?

"Historic Portsmouth Harbor" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

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Time was running out.  We had only one day left in the country before leaving for the town (i.e. London) for the final leg of our English trip.  After a lengthy discussion, we decided to visit Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  It was close from Sidlesham, where we were staying.  Besides, my husband LOVES ships (and airplanes).  Yes, I am one of those wives who have suffered over the years to keep company of their husbands wowing over old ships and airplanes at museums.

Actually, I was glad of our decision because I got to go inside the HMS Victory.  This is the famous ship on which Lord Horatio Nelson died at the age of 47 at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  As an Anglophile and British historian, it was touching to see the very spot of his death.  You see, the British and the French under Napoleon had been fighting like cats and dogs during the Napoleonic Wars.  After the heavy losses suffered in this historic naval battle, Napoleon had to give up his design to invade the British Isles. Hurray!

We heard an amusing (or macabre, depending on your taste) anecdote about the disposal of Lord Nelson's body.  He asked that his remains should be brought back to Britain for a land burial.  The crew came up with a clever idea of  "preserving" the body in a large barrel of rum for the several weeks' journey.  After landing, they toasted with "Nelson's Blood".  It was full-bodied!

The beautiful ship featured in the painting is the HMS Warrior--the world's first iron-clad ship from 1860.  Soon after I took the reference photo with puffy clouds, the sun disappeared for the rest of the day.  I was lucky!

HMS Victory; it is an impressive ship, don't you think?

"Golden Gate Bridge on Sunny Day" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

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The famous Golden Gate Bridge on a sunny day.  Fluffy clouds float by in the sky.  A red ship in the distance is about to glide under the bridge.  The red bridge casts colorful reflections in the choppy water.  I thought of Claude Monet's "The Bridge at Argenteuil" when I was working on the above painting.  I wrote about how much I admire Monet's painting three months ago.  Something about a bridge, boat, clouds in a blue sky, and reflections in the water makes a happy painting.  Don't you agree?

"Cherry Blossom" (watercolor on paper; 18" x 14") sold

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Cherry Blossom is the name of a tour boat that goes up and down the Potomac River.  On the day when I took the reference photo, it was glowing with the sunlight.  A perfect subject to try out the  watercolor technique that I learned in Jean Grastorf 's workshop!  She uses only three colors--a red, blue, and yellow--in large tubes, which she dilutes to a creamy consistency in small separate cups.  On a stretched paper, the whites on the drawing have to be protected with masking fluid. 

Then the messy and fun part begins--you pour the colors, letting them mix and mingle.  As the paper dries, you have to do this in several stages for darker values, at each stage protecting the areas of lighter tones with more masking fluid.  Tedious, yes.  But you just cannot get the same glowing effect with brushes.  The painting was juried into the Art League show in Alexandria, VA in 2005.