Watercolor Painting of Monkey Face Rock, Chico, California

I’ve been painting a series of watercolors recently of places of interest in my hometown of Chico, California…..One of the latest is the painting shown here of Monkey Face Rock (named for obvious reasons) located in Upper Bidwell Park….It’s a well-known spot to the active people of Chico–a hiking destination along the North Rim Trail, reachable by most day hikers with a gradual climb of about 300 feet….from the top, you have a great view of the Central Valley, from Mount Lassen to the Sutter Buttes….As most of you know I am almost always drawing buildings–it’s my thing, but it was fun and refreshing to paint something non-architectural for a change….No straight lines, no reflecting glass, no tile roofs–just green grass, oak trees, and rock….Wow–this thing was done in no time!  I’m kidding a little, but it was a bit less complicated than my usual architectural subject….The challenges were to get the effect of distance to the background hills, to get the rock to have the right shape and texture, and to set it apart from the surrounding trees and rock with the right amount of contrast….Most of the painting was done in what watercolorists call “wet in wet”, but there is some “dry brush” here and there….a limited palette–a few complementary colors used over and over, but reserving the Rock’s colors strictly for the Rock itself, so it is differentiated from everything else in the painting….Compositionally, one of the things I liked about this painting is that the lower half has very little detail or interest to it–and that’s intentional–just let the Rock shine and take center stage….This artwork is hand-drawn and painted in the watercolor technique by Jeffrey Michael George, Architectural Illustrator.  Jeffrey lives in Chico, and creates many architectural illustrations for projects located in northern California and the San Francisco bay area.