Painting Portugese Bend

OK.....actually painting the wild mustard at Portugese Bend...which is an area of the Palos Verdes peninsula which is the boot looking piece of land just south of Los Angeles along the coast. It's a beautiful area that I have driven through many times. I was recently invited by friend and fellow painter Bruce, (boomerbeach), from WC to go do some plein air painting and catch the wild mustard in full bloom before it's gone. The mustard here grows to 6 feet tall and some of the areas we walked you were hidden in the mustard. We had a great time.

By the time I had gotten there a lot of painters, including Bruce and Bill Wray, were already out painting. We had about 10 painters show up. I ran into Bill when finishing my painting as he stalked out killer reference shots with his camera. I saw Bruce later at dinner. This was not an offical plein air painting deal, just a group of people getting together to paint and have dinner later. Here are some pics from the day.

The view to the top of the peninsula Mustard abounds....

Me, working it up on the 9"x12" panel. This was a great spot. The field in from of me used to be a bean field way back in the 40's.

Walk to the edge of the bean field and this would be your view down onto the Pacific Ocean. Is this place awesome or what!

That's me, all finished up with my painting. I have done 2 other paintings in the studio with mustard fields and used a brush to do the mustard. On this one I decided to see what using a knife would look like. That decision was brought on by me rubbing on a tinted ground that didn't quite dry and I was worried painting in the mustard would blend too much with the undercoated paint. I think I prefer the brush method though....next time, no tinted ground.

This is where I chose to paint...right off the road next to the beanfield. Took lots of reference shots so I'll be doing more paintings from this area. The cliffs down along the beach are totally awesome and I plan on returning to do some PA work there once I get painting cliffs down to a science...hahaha.

the finished painting.....needs a brush for that mustard!
and a detail shot.....