Watercolor studies in Death Valley

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The desert can be an inhospitable place. High temperatures and low humidity are a given. Still, the brutal reality of no shade, little vegetation, and scarce water sources, make this an unusual destination for a landscape painter, particularly water media painting. Even so, it's hauntingly beautiful. Colors change throughout the day from a cadmium orange at sunrise to the shocking white sunlight on the crystalline salts of the empty lake beds at noon. And, the day ends with a cobalt violet sunset and a finale of stars after nightfall!

In the desert, the horizon is always just out of grasp. Often a single road disappears into the distance, and not one building, road sign, or cactus obscures the vast emptiness. As a painter, the challenge is often the simplicity. With this stark minimalism, I find beauty in the sculptured mountains—where the hot shimmering sky meets the alluvial fan of rugged terrain.

Death Valley, an unforgiving environment, is where I have chosen to make a home for a week while I paint. We set up camp on a plateau rather than the valley oasis of Furnace Creek. On the elevated land of Texas Springs, I find the best views to watch and paint the ever-changing skies.

I first experiment with the "wet into wet" technique. This process calls for an initial pass of clear water across the paper before I dip the brush back into the palette, loading it with color. With a touch of the brush to the wet paper, the colors bloom across the page organically. Did I say wet paper? Well, because of the incredibly low humidity, the paper nearly dries before I can return the brush to the surface. I am compelled to work quickly and, therefore, must not overthink my brush strokes.

I schedule my painting for the early morning before the sun becomes too hot and I can no longer paint. I set up my three-legged stool and easel in the shade of our little trailer. As the day wears on, the shadow cast by the trailer is consumed by the hot desert sun. I race against time and heat to capture the desert's treasures.

I found in Death Valley, not death, but a ghostly and heavenly life of natural beauty. With pigments bending into water, I attempt to convey what it feels like to be in a place not just of sand and emptiness, but a place of meditation and spirit!

Happier Camper, my mobile art studio in the desert.

Happier Camper, my mobile art studio in the desert.

100 Days of Artwork

Day 67 — Vintage green dessert dish from the 1960’s  

Day 67 — Vintage green dessert dish from the 1960’s  

Local Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud said, “You cannot expect your paintings to be delivered to your front door like the morning newspaper, you must climb Mount Olympus and steal it.”

The hard climb up the mountain of art practice is to overcome your doubts, and your discouragement, or even just to overcome the everyday boredom of daily drawing. One must wrestle with their spirit and return from the inner journey with a treasure from Mount Olympus.

Starting the ascent is always easy in the beginning. 100 days of making art will be easy. Right? I paint in my studio at least three to four days a week however, I had to find inner discipline and appreciation of the meditative process of drawing. Initially, my daily sketches were from life but later I started drawing and painting from memory—the light in the window of the old Alhambra in Spain and the curve of the waves of our American River. Some of my best drawings occurred when I worked quickly and effortlessly and just closed my eyes to see the true colors. And to keep it interesting, I used a new material or method every few days: pen and ink, watercolor, pastels, oil on paper, oil on board, acrylics, and cold wax. The larger pieces took several days to complete, but many I finished in under two hours. 

Day 74 — Perrier and Pink Carnations

Day 74 — Perrier and Pink Carnations

Drawing gets easier over time but mastery is a lot more difficult, and as my expectations grew, so did the difficulty. After completing stacks of sketches, canvases, and waters color studies, I have documentation of my climb up the mountain.  I may not have discovered the Mount Olympus of Mr. Thiebaud's epic journey as an artist, but I’m following in the footsteps of his words and his works, and the advice of other masters to draw, draw, and draw some more.

Visit the100dayproject.org to learn more about #the100dayproject. I encourage YOU to start a daily artmaking practice. 

Day 62 — Summer Flowers

Day 62 — Summer Flowers

Spanish Summer

Alcázar of Seville

Alcázar of Seville

I have imagined returning to Spain for many decades. This summer I was able to return with my husband and my sketchbook for a 3-week trip through Barcelona, Granada, Seville, and Madrid. I was grateful to slow down and enjoy the experience with a more mature perspective this time.

My 100 days of sketching happened during our trip to Spain, so it gave me an opportunity to take my daily drawing practice on vacation. However, it took some time and a practiced eye to search for that ideal sketching spot; a spot where the sun was at my back, lighting up my subject. Thankfully cafés abound in Spain, and for the price of a café con leche, I had a great view and a seat for about one hour of sketching. 

In Barcelona, we were lucky to stay in a hotel room with a second-floor balcony overlooking a bustling plaza. Several times, I sat with the balcony doors open and sketched the view below. In the morning the smells of melted chocolate wafted from the boutique shops on the square below our hotel, and each evening the locals played their guitars and sang Spanish love songs for the tourists crowding the Tapas bars.

Courtyard Spain

“Everything you can 

imagine is real.”

Pablo Ruiz Picasso

During our travels, the words of Picasso echoed through my mind, “Everything you can imagine is real.” And my imagination took me back to Spain many times after my post-college European vacation. I imagined walking the streets of Madrid, viewing the architecture of Barcelona, absorbing the great art in the Prado Museum, and sketching along the river in Seville. And, as Picasso promised, it all became a reality! 

When I return home, the sketchbooks are my favorite souvenir.  I share these visual notes and drawings with my family and friends, and all the wonderful memories come flooding back as I review my visual diary.

Guadalquivir river in Seville

Guadalquivir river in Seville

Painting Workshop at the Crocker Museum

The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento has invited me to teach a workshop in May. 

Artists travel the world in search of magnificent settings and use photographs to create powerful landscape paintings of their travels. After viewing landscape paintings in the Crocker’s collection, use your own photographs as inspiration for creating memorable landscape compositions with acrylics. This class is for all experience levels.

Register here before it's sold out. 

Foggy Morning Near San Rafael, 1881, Julian Walbridge Rix.

Foggy Morning Near San Rafael, 1881, Julian Walbridge Rix.

An Instructors Approach

As a practitioner of both fine arts and graphic design, I study and teach the principles of art practice and design, including a hands-on approach to teaching that emphasizes craftsmanship and creating art with traditional tools and media. Along with the practice of integrating real-world problems into the curriculum, I encourage students to keep sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are for research, the practice of daily drawing and sketching, and to understand visual problem solving. I integrate graphic design and the practice of making fine art in my studio as a professional and in the classroom curriculum.

My method of teaching emphasizes a handcrafted approach. Beginning students learn by using traditional tools and methods of design – inking, cutting and crafting each design problem. As students work, they are encouraged in an atmosphere that is both challenging and supportive, Activities of thinking, looking, and dosing occur interdependently on all design problems. Critique is an integral part of my classroom as students review, evaluate, and re-do each assignment before arriving at a final product.

Students take ownership of the learning process as they each create a textbook in the form of a spiral bound sketch book that will later become a reference manual, and I give the students an opportunity to lean by teaching as they work together in groups on design problems. Students are encouraged to lean and understand the vocabulary of the artist and designer as they practice both oral and written communication related to each design problem.

My role, in a design classroom, is both to teach and guide as I art direct each student’s work and share my own professional experiences as an artist for example and for the encouragement to their growth.

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Reflections on a landscape

Storm in November, American River Parkway, Mixed media on canvas, Plein Air

Storm in November, American River Parkway, Mixed media on canvas, Plein Air

My work does not always mark a particular season or place as much as these paintings reflect my personal views on making art. The landscape provides a story line in which to weave colors and shapes across the paper.

As a landscape painter, I am documenting a location and exploration of materials, but more importantly, I am exploring and reacting to my ever-present need to “keep my hand moving.” I like the surfaces, textures, and colors that come fromm the end of a bush or the broken end of a pastel stick. I am most myself when I have an artist’s tool in my hand and I can demonstrate what I envision a feeling to be through a landscape of color. When I am asked “What do you paint?’ I often answer that I create landscapes, but it is much more than a place I am rendering – I am documenting and inner landscape, or a journal of my days as an artist and a teacher. Instead of the language of sound, I use color. Instead of the rhythm of words, I use shape. All you want to know about me is written in the strokes of these paintings.I like to create Pastel paintings in such a way that the movement of the water or the silhouette of a tree is abstracted into colors and shapes not always seen by the camera lens or even the human eye.

Pastel painting can be a smoothly rendered reality, but it is the broken color that holds the light, the energy, and vitality of a place for me. I often work with Pastels because this medium is the most consistent, convenient, and easily handled material I know. Raw, pure colors, without the mixture of turpentine, or the use of a brush, are directly applied to a textured surface. This makes the material a natural expression of the hand and heart. Slowly, the process and the craft melt together in a non-linear, meditative experience, as the colors are applied one on top to the other.

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Crocker Museum Impressionist-style painting workshop (Sold Out) →

On Saturday, March 24th, Kristine Bybee will teach an Impressionist workshop at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. It's currently SOLD OUT, however you can still add your name to the waitlist here.  The workshop is designed for beginners to gain a working knowledge of composition and acrylic painting fundamentals. All students will produce a landscape painting in the Impressionist style. 

Photo by Bruce Damonte

Photo by Bruce Damonte