Painting California’s Coastal Valleys and Beaches in ...

Painting California's Coastal Valleys and Beaches in Pastel & Watercolor

Goals: To create a mixed-media painting of a California landscape in watercolor and pastel, and to experiment with the effect of Tonalism.

To incorporate the atmospheric effects of a region's

climate and geography into a work of art.

A Mixed-Media Art Project for

Grades 4 ? 12 Inspired by the SBMA exhibition California Dreaming: Plein-Air Painting from San Francisco to San Diego

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KEITH, William , USA, 1839-1911

Loma Prieta, Morning in the Santa Cruz

Mountains, 1874 oil on canvas, SBMA

The SBMA exhibition California Dreaming: Plein-Air Painting from San Francisco to San Diego (2012-2013) featured:

"...a selection of early modern paintings that celebrate the topography of California. By the end of the 19th century, landscape painting had become the primary vehicle for depicting national identity in American art. California provided breathtaking scenery of newly integrated lands for painters working "en plein air," or outdoors. This was an approach employed by cutting-edge artists in Europe, particularly in France, which artists in America then adapted to create a style that has become the hallmark of what is commonly termed Californian Plein-Air Painting or California Impressionism. In Northern California, an atmospheric, poetic and decorative style called Tonalism was established by the artistic community of San Francisco. Southern California was a mecca for young, modernist artists influenced by French Impressionism, a movement preoccupied with capturing the immediate effects of light and color under ever-changing climactic conditions. The regional style of California Plein-Air Painting was created by a group of cosmopolitan painters, whose mobility was facilitated by the new railroad lines to the West Coast. While technically varied, all of the artists represented here were

utterly devoted to depicting the natural paradise we aptly call the Golden State."

(exhibition notes, SBMA website)

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HINKLE, Clarence, USA, 1880-1960, Coast Line, Laguna, n.d. (ca. 1924) oil on canvas, SBMA

The California plein-air artists depicted the many moods of the landscape:

from a bright, clear, afternoon depicted with energy and movement ...

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MCCOMAS, Francis, USA, 1875-1938, Old Oak (Landscape), 1900, watercolor, SBMA

...to quiet, pastoral scenes of California's coastal valleys.

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WACHTEL, Elmer, USA, 1878-1929 Sunlight and Shadow, n.d.,

MATHEWS, Lucia K., USA, 1882-1955, Carmel Valley Oak, n.d.

oil on canvas, SBMA

watercolor on paper, SBMA

The palette chosen by the artist for each painting helped to convey

mood, season, and time of day.

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