This is a watercolor painting I did recently for my sweetheart….So what better time to post it on the internet than Valentine’s Day ! It’s a historic structure in Central California which has a lot of personal significance….My wife, Susan Lynn Dana, is a direct descendent of William Goodwin Dana, who constructed this home in 1837….The following is a description borrowed from “historycenterslo.org”: “The Dana Adobe or “Casa de Dana” is a historic
landmark in Nipomo, California, lying about 25
miles south of San Luis Obispo. It was one of the
earliest adobe dwellings built in San Luis Obispo
County and became the celebrated home
of William Goodwin Dana, his wife Maria Josefa
Carrillo Dana and their very large family. William
Dana was a wealthy Boston sea captain who
settled first in Santa Barbara, where he courted
and married Maria Josefa in 1828. In 1837,
Mexican California Governor Juan Alvarado
granted Rancho Nipomo to Captain Dana, over
50,000 acres, as a reward for his loyalty. Dana
employed many native Chumash laborers and
others to build the adobe between 1837 and his
death in 1858, a tumultuous time in Alta California. The Dana
adobe and Rancho Nipomo also served as an
important exchange point on the first official U.S.
mail route between Monterey and Los Angeles.” Regarding the watercolor painting, I really enjoyed working on it….Some of the challenges were capturing the hills in the background which are soft and gorgeous in the distance, and concentrating more on the landscape than the building itself–something that I don’t usually attempt because frankly, my job is typically focused on the architecture….It’s actually liberating to shift the balance away from buildings, and focus one’s attention on the natural beauty that surrounds….I wanted to keep the background and the house itself light and bright on the value scale, then frame those elements with darker richer tones in the foreground trees, landscape, and historic El Camino Real monument….This artwork is hand-drawn and painted in the watercolor technique by Jeffrey Michael George, Architectural Illustrator. Jeffrey lives in Chico, California and creates many architectural illustrations for projects located in all parts of the great state of California including the San Francisco bay area.
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