Collaboration: Fogbelt Brewing + Sonoma County Parks Foundation + Sergio Lopez Fine Art
- Sergio Lopez
- May 26
- 9 min read
I'm proud to share with all of you this wonderful collaboration that I became a part of!
For years I've wondered if/when I would get to have my art on a beer can. I'm so glad to tell you that it's finally happened!
Linda Rosso is someone I've known for years, and she has her hand in lots of local art happenings and is a bit of a liaison between different organizations in the Sonoma County art scene. I'm not actually sure how she became involved with the Sonoma County Parks Foundation, but I'm really glad that she did!
I received an email in March asking if I would be willing to donate an image to the Parks Foundation as the can art for Fogbelt Breving Company's latest release. I immediately said yes! The original idea was to use a painting of or from Taylor Mountain from my archive, but when I looked at what I had available, nothing totally fit. Instead I proposed that I create a brand new painting for the can art from Taylor Mountain.
Once I got the go-ahead, I went to hike at Taylor Mountain and did a plein air piece, along with many photos from the scene. Since they enjoyed the look of my oils but the freshness of my gouache, I gave them a couple of options. I went back to the studio to create the studio oil painting from the study and photos.
If you 're interested in knowing about the beer, it's a hazy IPA. It's really good! I know I'm biased, but everyone who's had it really liked it. I don't know how, because there's nothing in the ingredients that would suggest it, but it actually has a subtle tropical aftertaste that reminds me of orange or guava. I'm really glad I don't have to pretend to like it lol.
For those of you wondering: I was not paid directly for the can design. However, since the design was donated to a non profit organization, I get to treat it as such. Furthermore, I retain the right to sell the original along with prints of the image. Not only that, but I earn royalties on the products with my image on the Foundation's online shop. So if you are interested in a glass or a coaster for example, some of the money comes my way, but more importantly, it supports the parks I love so much.
The actual canning and release of the beer was only part of the whole project. Linda and I both agreed that a pop-up show at Fogbelt's Santa Rosa taproom would be a great way to not only promote and showcase the can art, but also help me make money and promote myself as well. Fortunately, Fogbelt concurred, and the beer can release party got put on the calendar.
Now, the onus was on me to make a great show out of the opportunity. When I went home to think about it, I came up with the idea to do small paintings of the various regional parks near Santa Rosa (the home of Taylor Mountain). I am a big fan and frequent user of the regional parks. In fact, many of the landscape paintings I've created over the years have been of, or done inside of the parks.
I made a list of the parks I wanted to target, as well as the sizes of frames I had available. I only had two weeks from the date set to the show opening, so I had to get straight to work, This was going to be about a month's worth of work compressed into a week and a half.
I ordered a handful of new frames from Webpictureframes.com (highly recommend you bookmark them) and got to work on building panels to fit the frames. They have a lightning-fast turnaround especially for small standard sizes, but I've had no problem with their shipping times even for custom sizes.
I like to paint gouache on watercolor paper mounted to board. I have been doing a thin casein wash over it. It has to be thin in order to not change the feel of the paper too much when you paint on it. I'm a huge stickler for surface feel, and go through a lot to get it.
My first hike was to Foothill Regional Park. It was a hot and sunny week so I did my best to get out there before it got too hot. The hawkbits and cat-ears were in full bloom all over the park, and it made for such a colorful picture.
One of the main ideas that I knew I had to execute was to create prints of the painting to sell at the party. I had credit from Black Cat Studios in Novato as an award from the plein air event in Sausalito. It was just enough to cover the 10 limited edition prints i made. I had to go to Novato to look at the print proof, but on the way back I went to Crane Creek Regional Park, which is on the outskirts of Cotati and Santa Rosa. I found a mother lode of California poppies at the top of the Sunset Trail.
This was probably my favorite of the paintings I made for the show. I just think that I got the feel of the scene the best here.
I only had the energy for one hike a day, and in hindsght, even that was questionable. I barely had the energy to edit my photos, let alone start painting them the same evening. The next day was easily the longest hike I did during the week but it was SOOO worth it. I had never seen so many flowers there before! The grass hadn't totally browned yet, so they stood out from the green grass, making the flowers look even more vibrant.
I took tons of photos that day so don't be surprised if you see more paintings from it. It was probably about 7 miles total for the hike, so I had better get my money's worth.
The next day was a hike up North Sonoma Mountain. It sounds more intimidating than it is, and after the hike from the day before, I needed something less strenuous. Still, my legs silently protested any uphill climb at that point, It was still very much worth exploring the Umbrella Tree area. There were a lot of interesting flowers, such as larkspurs and winecup clarkias. The poppies tend to steal the show most of the time.
This was also a big favorite of mine as well. I enjoyed how the distant haze and the color temperature shifts in the layers came out.
My fifth and final hike was more of a stroll, but after 4 hikes in a row, even a short hike on mostly flat ground was a bit taxing. The ever-popular Spring Lake was lovely. I don't think there is one iconic picturesque scene to paint along the lake; however, there are a lot of small coves that create fun little vignettes to paint. This was someehere along the southwest shore. If you've fished along the lake, certainly you have either fished here or strolled past it.
Though you are seeing the finished paintings here, in the timeline these painting were nowhere near looking like this at this point in time. It was Friday and I still had to finish editing photos and prepare some of the panels. Some of the pieces were started, but at least I had all weekend to work on them.
Scratch that.
Evne though I plein air paint a lot, I'm actually pretty sensitive to heat and sun exposure, so when I'm out in the heat for hours, it really drains me even if I drink plenty of water and wear sunscreen. I exhausted myself after 5 days of long hikes in 80f heat. Which means that I basically made myself sick and had to take a couple of days to recover. I know that this meant I was really cutting out prime painting hours. It was starting to stress me. Did I bite off more than I could chew? Was I going to even be able to finish everything I wanted to in time, or was I going to have to hang my head and scale back the amount of new paintings?
At this point I had no idea, but I was determined to do everything, along with the typical show prep, such as varnishing, framing, making labels, etc.
On the Monday before the show, I was told that my prints were ready! I left the original with the printers so they could match the colors better, but I knew that was a risk. What if they weren't available in time? I'd have to go back and get the painting either way so that I could put it on the wall. Fortunately I didn't have to worry about that, but also, man! They got the color so well. They came out as close to perfect as I could hope!
Not the greatest lighting I know, but hopefully you can still look at the color quality and see what's going on. The certificate of authenticity is a nice thing to collect as well.
Tuesday! The day before the show! I marathoned 4 of the paintings the night before, then woke up early to finish the final piece. I started the varnishing process on the finished pieces the night before, so I had to finish the fifth piece to get to the varnishing process started on the final piece.
If you're not familiar with my varnishing process, here is the breakdown:
First, I start with a couple of layers of Krymar spray to make it as water resistant as I can before I create the barrier with acrylic gloss medium. Once that layer is dry, I do a third layer which is usually Golden semi-gloss spray varnish. I don't always do this, but I finish it with a fourth and final layer of either Gamvar or spray of Shellac. The shellac has a slight amber tone to it, so I save it for warm toned paintings. It's perfect for these paintings, which have a dusty, old-timey feel to them that lend themselves to a slight Old-World warmth to the finish. It really needs to be seen in person to appreciate the subtlety.
Anyway, each layer takes a minimum of a half hour in between to cure, and even more for the final layers. This meant that I needed a block of at least 3 hours dedicated to this process. So as I was juggling that, I was photographing and archiving the pieces, along with getting the frames ready (drilling holes for the hardware, etc).
Oh and did I mention labels too? In order to make the labels I had to title everything, price it, and send it to Staples to get it done. At least they were relatively fast so I got the labels printed that evening, before I went to the studio to do the varnishing/framing/photography.
Another thing I had to do was gather all my paintings that were in my studio and weren't specifically made for the show, but still wanted to share at the event. Of course, I had to make labels for them as well, along with loading them and the new pieces. It was pretty late at night but I did it! I don't get to sleep in yet though.
I went to install the paintings on the morning of the show. Linda came to help, which saved me a ton of time, so thanks again if you're reading this!
At this point, all that was left was to promote the show in the hour or two before I came back to be the artist in attendance. If you didn't see me on social media promoting it all that much, now you understand why! It was a ton of work to bring this show together, but it was a great success!
I walked in to find some of the Foundation board members who heaped tons of praise on me! Most of them left with some art. I ended up selling 7 of the ten prints, the original piece for the can art, and one small oil painting.
It was great to see both familiar faces and friends who came out to support. They loved the beer! The food there is yummy too. Vanessa came to support her dude and hang out with some of our local artist friends. Her mom came to support as well!
30% of the proceeds from the event went to the Parks Foundation, along with a dollar of every pint sold (not just of my beer) went towards the fundraising. I was able to raise over $500 for them alone! I feel like that was a successful evening.
Though you may have missed the event, there is still a chance to see the show in person! The guys at Fogbelt are generously allowing me to keep showing my work on the walls until Monday, June 1st.
If not able to make it, you can shop the show virtually by heading to this special page I made for my web shop (oh yeah another task I gave myself) by going here: https://www.sergiolopezfineart.com/scpacollection?page=2
Again, I can't stress enough how awesome this was for me! It was also nice to deal with organizations that are well-versed in making money. Fellow artists, you know what I'm talking about. The difference when people know what they're doing vs cobbling together a handful of volunteers is night and day.
The day was one of my favorites of my recent professional life. I can't wait to be a part of something like this again!
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