Malibu beach and pier

I spent Saturday morning with my son Craig and my brother Dean on a plein aire painting outing. We were originally going to go to Vasquez rocks to paint, but considering it was predicted to be about 110 degrees F, we opted for the beach.

It was still warm at Malibu, but MUCH cooler than inland. It was a beautiful day and the beach was full of people escaping the heat and there was a nice breeze which kept readjusting my umbrella and palette.

This water color was done on an Arches 10" x 14" 300lb block. I probably spent 2 hours painting. Because these are learning exercises for me there are parts I like and parts that I feel didn't come off so well. I decided to post it for the sake of the good parts and to keep the continuity of all the sketch paintings. If I were to do a version of this as a studio painting, I would work out a stronger value pattern and vary it a bit from what I actually observed for the sake of a stronger painting.

The Top water color sketch was done from the terrace at Casa Buitoni and shows the view of Sansepolcro through the Italian Cypress trees. Our car came to take us to Florence before I was quite done, but I left the sketch unfinished as I sometimes overwork things anyway.

The pen sketch below was done in the city park with a statue of Peiro Della Francesca, the famous renaissance artist born in the town who was also the inventor of formal mathematical 2 point perspective.