Monterey Landscape

It's been a busy two weeks. I had a contract order for educational illustrations from Good Neighbor Press for Childcraft publishing. With 30 small black and white line art illustrations done, it's time to turn my attention back to painting. This is a landscape painting that I'm doing just for myself for our bedroom, measuring 24 x 30. I'm painting it from some photos that I took when we took a small vacation to Northern California last spring. The weather was cold and rainy but the landscapes, seascapes and flowers in bloom were delicious! If you've never been to this area, I really suggest you put it on your list of places to see. The variety of plants and terrain here is simply amazing. This painting is focusing on a path that we walked along the cliffs of Monterey Bay. Monterey is near Carmel, famous for Clint Eastwood's stint as mayor ;-)

There was a carpet of gorgeous pink and purple flowers, which might be purple ice plant (Delosperma cooperi) blanketing the entire area. I have some ice plant in my garden that I got from High Country Gardens - it does really well for gravelly and dry areas. The other plant that is in this landscape may be a torch aloe. The tree is a cypress.

This is a work in progress and I'll post more photos as the painting nears completion. I'm using Gamblin, Holbein and Windsor & Newton Oil paints. I must say, although I've always been a fan of Windsor & Newton products, the Holbeins are very nice and consistent and the Gamblin is simply wonderful - velvety, rich, buttery and saturated!