California Dreaming

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art, Big Sur, California, Morro Bay Rock, Paintings, photography, scenic views, watercolor

McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns Sate Park, Big Sur, California

Two of my paintings are being shown at a local gallery this month. They are part of an exhibition titled “For Love of Central & Coastal California.”

One is a view of iconic Morro Bay Rock as seen from the top of Highway 46, not far from where we live. It is one of my favorite views, especially in the spring with the green hills folding down to the sea. In the actual view from the highway, Morro Rock can barely be seen, even on a clear day. But one of the wonderful things about painting is that you can move things around and make them smaller or larger to fit your vision and what you want to capture.

View of Morro Rock from Highway 46, watercolor by Deborah J. Brakset

This painting was a composite of the following two photographs that I took not long ago. I tried to capture the intense green hills and their shadows from the first photo, and more detail of the ravines that spider up the far hills in the second. I made the hills steeper than they actually are and emphasized the road dipping into the folds.

The second painting on display is a view of a hidden sea cave as seen from Highway 1 near Big Sur.

Sea Cave, Big Sur, from Highway 1 – watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket

It is a composite of the following two photos, the first featuring the yellow wild flowers that grow near the highway overlooking the sea, and the second shows the cave itself in its private cove. You can barely make out the fence and pathway leading down the cliff toward the ocean in the photo.

This last painting is not part of the show but shares the theme. It is a painting of a pathway lined with oaks leading to the river near our home. A “California dreamer” leans against a tree trunk.

“A Splash of Sunlight” watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket

This is the reference photo, sans the mountain and the “dreamer” I added.

I was trying to use the colors and the looser style found in the following painting, one of my favorites by Henri Manguin.

“The Parkway”, 1905, by Henri Manguin

Mine isn’t as successful as I had hoped, but it still captures enough of that “dreamy” feeling of late afternoon, with the sun filtering down through the leaves, to want to keep it.

I hope you enjoyed this brief stroll with me through California’s  sunlit and sea-splashed hills. May you savor the natural beauty that lies in your own backyard, wherever that may be.

Trying to Capture the Light

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art, artists, Big Sur, Franz Bischoff, inspiration, Joaquin Sorolla, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, light, painting, watercolor

Capturing light in painting is one of the artist’s greatest challenges and deepest joys.

I fell in love with the dazzling white lights in the paintings of Sorolla. And later the warm, buttery light that infuses Franz Bischoff’s California seascapes. I couldn’t help but be tempted to try my own hand at capturing even a fraction of the light they capture in their paintings.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to come close, but you can learn so much from your failures. You learn what is possible, what doesn’t work, what your limits are, what you still need to learn.

I decided to start by trying to capture some of that warm buttery feel in Bischoff’s paintings, before moving toward Sorolla’s dazzling white light.

These first two attempts are from photographs I took on a trip to Big Sur at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park along Highway 1. Before donating the land to the state, the original owners had a house on a bluff overlooking the ocean. These are the views from her home. On one side the coastline and Highway 1 snaking northward. to the south a private cove with an 80 foot waterfall. In their backyard are the redwoods. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have lived in that magical place, to have woke each morning to these views from their windows.

I’m not unhappy with the results. When I compare my paintings to photographs of his (below), I think I captured some of that warm, buttery glow.

That encouraged me to try a study of one of my favorite Sorolla paintings, changing it slightly–a different boat and adding a swimmer snorkeling. I could not capture his dazzling white rocks, so I settled for a something more colorful, abstract.

I’m happy enough with the results, although it’s nothing like Sorolla’s. His secret is still safe from me. Still, I’m more in awe of him now than before.

His blues are so much deeper, his lights so much brighter. And his reflections! His colors! How does he do that? I get drunk on his colors. I want to dive in and live there.

Here are links to more of Sorolla’s and Bischoff’s paintings where you can see them in greater detail. They are artists you could fall in love with. I did.

Images of Franz Bischoff’s artwork on Google

The paintings of Joaquin Sorolla Y Bastida

 

Redwoods and Waterfalls – Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

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Big Sur, Carmel, Elephant Seals, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, McWay Falls, Nature, Photography. Redwood trees, Waterfall

One of my favorite places to visit is the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur, a two-hour drive from our home. There you can find not only 300-foot (90 m) redwoods which are over 2,500 years old, but an 80-foot waterfall that drops into a protected cove, one of the few waterfalls that empty directly into the ocean. The masthead photo on this blog is of the McWay Falls.

Recently I had the pleasure of taking some out-of-state guests there. Following are photos from our trip.

The drive to the park on Highway 1, winding along the coastline high above the Pacific Ocean, is one most spectacular that you will find anywhere in the world.

Here you can see the highway hugging the coastline.  Often it is washed out by rains and mudslides in the winter.

Along the way are glimpses of beautiful coves and beaches and wild flowers..

Julia Pfeiffer Park is located 27 miles south of Carmel.  It spans the highway with redwoods groves and picnic areas on one side, skirting the McFall River.

My cousin shows off one of the largest, and perhaps oldest, of the redwoods found in the park.

Visitors can walk through a tunnel under the highway to find trails leading past the falls up to where a home once stood with fantastic views of the ocean to the north and south.

This home had been build by the former U.S. House Representative Lathrop Brown and his wife Helen who acquired the property in 1924. In 1961 they bequeathed the property to the State of California and dedicated it to their friend and neighbor Julia Pfeiffer Burns.  They requested their home to be demolished, so only a stone foundation remains.

This is the view from their home to the north.  The water colors are some of the most beautiful I’ve seen since traveling in the South Pacific.

A closer view of the northern shoreline.

Here is the view of the McWay Falls through the trees from where the house once stood.  Closer views of the falls along the trail follow.

The drive home is no less spectacular, passing along homes built along the hillsides, then dropping down to sea level where we find Elephant Seal Beach, and a peek of Hearst Castle.

Elephant Seal Beach is a protected sanctuary with docents available to answer questions.  It’s a few miles north of Cambria along Highway 1, before the climb up to Big Sur.

A chummy clan.

Here you see a bull, its mates, and a baby.

A peak of Hearst Castle high on the mountain top.  Soon after this view we turn away from the coast, passing through these mountains to our own hillside home on the other side.

Related articles

• Park and Point: The Big Sur Coast (pamphotography.wordpress.com)
• Photo of the day: Where the redwoods rule (quirkydirt.wordpress.com)