"Cypress Cove", 11x14, oil on linen panel, paintings of Point Lobos, California seascapes, Carmel California. Pacific Ocean, nature preserves, beautiful nature preserves, cypress trees

"Cypress Cove", 11x14, oil on linen panel

Cypress Cove is located along the Cypress Trail in Point Lobos, a nature preserve in beautiful Carmel , California. The trail is one of the most popular in the park and contains the Old Veteran, a 200+ year old cypress tree with a wide girth.

Point Lobos is eye candy for artists, and I have painted numerous scenes here, including Pinnacle Point and China Cove.

Painting en plein air here is a treat, and the sounds of the sea lions are a lovely accompaniment to the crashing surf.

This painting is the only painting of Point Lobos that I currently have that is available. If you are interested in purchasing the painting, please contact me at maryannejacobsen@aol.com

"Senorita", 8x10, oil study, small portrait, portraits of beautiful ladies, affordable art, señorita, Spanish woman, Spanish dancer, little gems

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 "Senorita", 8x10, oil study

I really enjoy doing these small portraits. The trick is to not spend a lot of time on them, because they are only studies, otherwise they start looking overworked.

I don't think I overworked this one. I did have to rework one of her eyes a bit, but overall I think it still looks fresh. The best art video I have ever owned and watched is Jeff Watts, Gesture Portraits. In that video he demonstrates about 6 or7 quick 30 minute gesture portraits that result in a fresh, dynamic end result.

I have tried to do these in half an hour, and I never succeed. But I do manage to keep them under 2 hours.

I hadn't done one of these in a while, though Jeff advises that we do them everyday for a warm up. This little portrait is of a lovely señorita with a wistful look in her eye.

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"View from the Lake House", 16x20, oil, colorist art, Lake Glenville North Carolina, Cashiers, lake scene, view form the porch, mountains, lake, Blue Ridge Mountains

 "View from the Lake House", 16x20, oil (Click on image in order to see a close up)

So if you have been reading my blog, we recently took a trip into the Blue Ridge mountains in southwestern North Carolina. It was a very short trip, but nice nonetheless because it inspired me to do a plein air painting (3 actually) for the first time in close to three years.

The weather didn't cooperate, so I had to be content with rainy/ cloudy/foggy views of beautiful Lake Glenville, as seen from the deck of our airbnb.

The wonderful thing was that I was under a roof and both myself and my painting were totally protected from the elements.

Lake Glenville has an elevation of about 3400 feet, and is just a few miles from Cashiers. I just found out that there is a plein air invitational in Cashiers every other year, and this year I know quite a few of the invited artists, so maybe we'll go back up in mid-July for that event.

Evidently this area is actually a rain forest environment with weather like what we experienced pretty common. But being an artist that prefers sunny day scenes, when I got home I decided to try my hand at turning the scene into a brighter and more colorful one.

So I played around a little with the editing tools on my Mac, and used that and my plein air sketch to have a go of it. Here you can see the painting in progress.

As you can see, my first notes were basically saturated color. I eventually covered much of the saturated color with local color, but kept enough of the first notes showing through to give the painting a colorist impression.

This painting was a lot of fun to do. I think it helps tremendously to do a smaller plein air sketch first to get the feeling of the scene.

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