90.  Original Plein Air Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, Pelicans at La Jolla, 10-noon, 8.15-17.24”, Watercolor, 30 x 42”, 2024

Location: La Jolla, CA

When I began this painting, I’d never made anything quite like it before, and I didn’t have anything in art history as “proof of concept” that it could be done. The artist who joined me to paint for the first day of work thought I was a bit insane for trying - I won’t deny that allegation. This painting took three consecutive days of work, two hours each, working in the similar light conditions from 10am to noon each day. Obviously, the birds were coming and going, but they were the first paart of the piece to go in, placeholders, around which I then worked the waves and surf, around which I completed (most of) the birds, then lastly completed the foreground elements and textures. Each bird with a few exceptions is actually many different birds, in similar positions. Some of them have two heads, if you look for them, doing two different things, either by mistake or by small design because I loved both activities and wanted to include both movements. I’d made a 30 x 42” plein-air multi-session painting of geese before, but that work had disparate scales and backgrounds. This was my first attempt at locating the pelicans (or any birds) in a coherent scene, true-to-observation, and set a precedent for the possibility of works like “Plein Air, Lakeside Ultimate, 8.27-28.24”, which was made under an even more challenging set of dynamic variables. While I am proud of this work, I hunger to return to La Jolla to make more pelican-centric large-scale full-chroma work.