Marine Layer - Salinas River Channel - Stacks of Color

Brush strokes, and "not blending."
What follows is a quote from What Painting Is, by James Elkins, in which he discusses Monet's brushwork: "It is not possible to reproduce the effect of a Monet painting by jousting mechanically with canvas, jabbing a dot of paint here and planting another one there, until the surface is uniformly puckered in Monet's signature texture." Elkins delves much further,  but the message for me was to pay attention to the direction and purpose of each brush stroke.
I left the strokes intact, with minimal mixing of color, and tried to avoid repeating the same movements. Maybe it is a physical and mental reorientation to establish a channel through which the visual can pass.
As I was setting up, I saw the layers of clouds above merging with the ocean below, the horizon lost between, the waves shimmering with light and seeming to drift both north and south. I knew I had only moments to try to capture this light.

The other exercise that contributed to this morning's focus was this youtube video from Mark Carder, https://genevafineart.com. In this video, Mark Carder proposes we "paint ugly", get the values in place, don't blend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Qbw7Wlsgc&feature=share

Sketch Class

Feb 7, 2018.

This was an exercise in observation followed by drawing from memory. I stared at my subject, a wicker dress form/mannequin, for  a full five minutes, as instructed. Eventually it registered on my mind how the wicker stalks swelled and drew in to form the three dimensional shape. I noticed the little knots where the vertical and horizontal stalks were lashed together.
Normally you keep your eye on the subject as much as possible to maintain an eye to hand flow. In this case, the observing and the drawing were separated.
We were allowed five minutes to complete the sketch.
One of my favorite marks  is the unintentionally drawn line that leaves the body at the nipple line. I love it when things like this happen; it seems to set the whole thing in motion.
I also like the barbed looking marks at the waistline. It creates a constricting and metallic contrast to the fluid lines. Five minutes is not enough time to plan and then draw anything, but I think the intense observation was enough to absorb a sense of the thing.

Koh-i-Noor Jumbo Graphite sticks for the soft bands of grey in the interior - very soft and fun to draw with.
Willow charcoal sticks for the lines - these sticks are sturdier than they look and fun to draw with.
I got both the willow charcoal and the Koh-i-Noor graphite sticks at Michael's.
Drawn on 18 X 24 sketch paper.