Friday, April 3, 2009

Sunsets in San Luis Obispo

Usually when I sketch or paint I depict something that I can "see" with my own eyes. Long distance communication with two of my boys has given me another perspective - painting a scene from someone else's description of it, without seeing it myself. It all started with a phone message left by my middle son over a year ago. He called and left me a phone message about a beautiful sunset in San Luis Obispo (SLO), California where I used to go to college and where my son now is. The phone message was certainly a tease as he described at length the beautiful sunset that he was seeing, and I was not. However, I turned his message into a challenge to myself to sketch and paint that sunset. It was a fun exercise. (skip to the end of this post to see the 2008 sketch)

Fast forward to this year.... my son Sean knows that I'm having fun with my sketching and painting, so he recently left me another phone message as an art challenge. His message was a detailed description of another beautiful SLO sunset. My son included
an explicit request for me to sketch and paint the sunset before he would be home for Spring break. Always looking for ways to connect with my boys... I took on Sean's latest challenge and finished it before he arrived home. I sure had fun sharing my effort with him. Here is the latest SLO sunset from 2009:


Backing up to 2008, here is the watercolor sketch that I did with Sean's first detailed sunset phone message last year:

4 comments:

K said...

What a wonderful and creative way to connect with your sons, and lovely sunsets too! I especially like the 2008 one.

Claire M said...

Thanks for the feedback. It has been fun sharing back and forth with Sean (middle son) on this. When I did the first one last year I didn't know what view of the mountains that Sean had and I didn't really remember what the mountains looked like anyway. For the 2009 version I was able to take a couple of photos to get the outline of the mountains put in place. Stay tuned.... I'll be posting another in response to my oldest son...

winna said...

I sure love the mother/son (I have 4 of them) interaction and the resulting work is inspiring. Your printing is beautiful, too. I love the great names of the mountains being part of it all--I hope I don't miss the next one. I also wonder how you got the Blogs on one of your sites, listed with a photo for the recent blog there--that's amazing---I'd like that on my blog---but am not computer bright if it's too technical a process.

Margaret Ann said...

A wonderful post...everything about is is joyful! :)