Santa Clara mission church sketch - Mission Santa Clara de Asis (Updated)

Santa Clara Mission Church in December Storm
Catherine K. Moore 2014

I went out in the very rainy and windy storm last Thursday night, soaking my shoes and clutching an umbrella to save my camera, to get a photo of the Santa Clara mission church reflecting in all of the rain water pouring down.  I wanted to also frame in both the Christmas tree and the cross against the warm colors of the uplit church with the wind bending the palm trees.  Having both a Christmas and Easter reference in a painting was something I did in "Eggs and Ornament" which is in this blog.

I did not know very much about the church so in between the several iterations of making this oil painting sketch I read up on it.  There is an "A" under the center top eaves which seems to be for the branding symbol the mission used to use on their cattle.  This is the sixth Santa Clara mission church to be built, this one is modeled after the 1825 version with toned down interior paint colors.  The left tower has bells in it, and from referencing old photographs, the Christmas tree in front sometimes has multi-colored lights on it.  I must admit this painting was a real struggle; it is a very direct view of the church with lots of contrast and there is rainfall pouring down to try and capture in a relatively tiny painting.  The rain is slightly indicated in the sky through brush strokes.  Additionally, the paint never dried due to high humidity this week and it was worked entirely wet in wet, limiting dry brush technique and requiring blending instead. 

After painting the Stowe church in snow from the east coast, this is quite an interesting contrast with a mission church, in rain with green grass in December from the west coast.  Enjoy!

Update Note:  I did work to redo the tree lights because they were looking too much like snow on the branches to me, and alter the sky to reflect the gray-purple which my camera still shows more saturated than the painting for some reason and I could not get Photoshop to correct it.  I especially like the metaphor of the church as being solid and warm during a storm, and the "storm" being life's trials and tribulations.

Here is the altered painting as it is today (1/7/2015) but the sky is gray-er.  Enjoy!

- Kitty Moore Cupertino

Santa Clara Mission Church in storm
2015 Catherine K. Moore

Stowe in snow

Greetings! Here is the church in the village of Stowe, Vermont in an early snowfall at late dusk.  In this painting I am trying to recreate what happens with vision at low light levels when there is a bright light (on the church) and the background hills still have a slight glow on them at higher elevations.  Between the mountains the light level gets low quite early in the winter months.  Unlike the fall painting I did of the same scene, you can see several of the village shop buildings and the Memorial Building (on the right) when the trees are bare.   Enjoy!

Stowe in Winter Twilight
2014 Catherine K. Moore

Danville, Vermont in August oil painting

N. Danville, Summer
2014 Catherine K. Moore

This summer I returned to my 'home' state of Vermont and while the locals weren't happy about the week of rain and chillier weather they were having in the midst of summer, I happened to love it as a great departure from the California drought.  Everywhere we went it was green.  I could see the Queen Anne's lace and the goldenrod blooming and trees in full green everywhere.  Now I did add in a terrible new weed in this painting, the purple loosestrife, to add a little color in the right foreground.  Purple loosestrife has invaded the state and while very pretty, it chokes out the natives and really changes the color of the landscape.  As a late teen I purchased a book on wildflowers from a new and used bookstore in Lyndonville and collected many and pressed them into one of those plastic photo albums.  I had a little time on my hands between semesters and would bike around the Lyndon area collecting and pressing plants and doing my best to identify what was around me and try not to get lost on dirt roads without a map (pre GPS so you better remember where you've been).  So, upon zooming in on the photo basis of this painting, the tan grass seeds seem to be a non-native, and of course the purple loosestrife is new as well.  The Queen Anne's lace was indeed abundant along with the goldenrod, but it would have been more in keeping with my memories of the past to see more milkweed with browning milkweed pods mixed in.  As to the book on wildflowers, I ran low on money and sold it back to the little bookstore I had bought it from and got a lift back to college.

Here is the video of the painting being made, enjoy!

Stowe Church in Fall

This is a painting of the village of Stowe, Vermont in fall foliage.  I lived very close to Emily's Bridge (a covered bridge) in the Hollow for 8 years as a child.  This view of the village church is well known to visitors returning from a trip to Mt. Mansfield from the Stowe side back into town.

While I saw the white steepled church nearly every day, we attended the Blessed Sacrament Church.    Andre Girard, a French artist whose wife spent several years in a concentration camp, painted the entire church: walls, ceiling, glass, and exterior.  His paintings depicted many scenes from the New Testament (including some rather intense and modern stations of the cross) and the work of "Brother" Dutton, who was born on the site, converted to Catholicism at 40 and worked with lepers in Molokai for 44 years.

Stowe has always conjured up a magical feel of mischief in the mountains from those days long ago.  Enjoy!

Stowe Church in Fall
2014 Catherine K. Moore

Halloween painting 2014

I found the inspiration for this painting on a trip to Shelburne Museum this summer.  There is a fairly large antique doctor's office housed with an apothecary and antique dentist's offices.  In one of these rooms I came upon this skull with the anatomical features written on it.  Having taken a year long anatomy and physiology course I was drawn to the 'study aid' but pretty dismayed at it being a real skull with what could be called 'graffiti' on it.  This skull became the inspiration for the painting and I did make an effort to accurately depict both the skull and the labeling.  Unfortunately some of the words were not legible and others I had to search online to determine from the few letters I could read, what the feature's label actually was.  The top of the skull was removed, probably by a fine saw blade, and that is what gives the odd appearance on top.  The effort was to produce something close to photo-realism due to the accuracy required to show the lettering on the skull.  Since this is not the most frightening Halloween painting, just pretend it's ghost is haunting the museum ;)

 

The Physician's Skull
12"x16" oil on linen on board
ckm 2014

Poplar Cove painting

Been a while since posting, lots of work to do and little time to paint.  Here is the painting of Poplar Beach (cove).  The lighting was like headlights at sunset on the rocks.  The trash people had thrown in this cove was certainly a detractor along with the graffiti.  Those items along with the foot bridge were edited out.  There is an unsettled feeling from the flatness about the rocks, the pairs of trees along the crest, and the composition with constraining walls.   The dimensions are 18"x24" oil on canvas.  Enjoy!

Shark Fin Cove

Wow! What a glorious place, cannot figure how I've driven past dozens of times and not gotten a glimpse of this spectacular cove.  Arrived late in the day and had the good luck of high surf and huge waves crashing in, therefore many photographs were taken along with getting a little poison oak which is almost gone.  Here is the (hopefully) first painting:

I'm not sure if it is completed since I've been staring at it too long.  Here is the video of it being made:

This is 24"x36" oil on canvas in the deep frame.  I'm most satisfied with the water and rock area in the lower right quadrant which pulls a bit from the pale blue shimmer along the left.  Enjoy!

Hoover Tower 3

Finished up a 12"x16" 'sketch' of Hoover Tower on linen board.  This one is working on the effect of a lit background with the foreground in shadow.  This is the case when looking at the hills on the east side of San Jose and Milpitas. 

Hoover Tower 3
2014 Catherine K. Moore

Here is the previous one I did:

and the video of the current one is here:

Third Davenport Cove Painting

Installed two of the three Davenport Cove paintings!

The soft lighting of the late day fog made these very peaceful.  This is 16"x20" oil on canvas.  I did not film the third painting completed last week.

Amaryllis

Here is what I'm working on this week:

It is oil on 18"x24" canvas.  Lots of red.  I'm still working out the veining on the petals but it's pretty well set.  Enjoy.

Hoover Tower 2

Trying out another painting of Hoover Tower, this time later in the day with the foreground in shadow.  This is from a different location than my earlier Hoover Tower painting.  I ran into problems of not having the end in mind at the beginning which shows up in the video with several large edits.

 

 

Hoover Tower 1: