Paint Sausalito 2025 Recap

Sausalito is a pretty cool and unique town. It's very touristy, but it is beautiful and it's got a lot of great places to paint. It's a very maritime city. There are tons of cool old boats and the architecture of downtown is awesome. There are a ton of tourists, but it's for a good reason. It's got this almost European Riviera type of vibe, and it seems to be a popular destination for Europeans, which is kind of funny to me because Europeans travel halfway across the world to come to a place that looks like Europe, but to each their own.

"Edgar's Adventure" 8x10 inches. Gouache on paper. 2025

 I call this one Edgar's Adventure because I don't know, I'm a silly boy. I like to name the animals in my paintings. I was fascinated by Edgar the egret stalking around the canal there as I was painting. I was rooting for him to find his meal around the seagulls and crows keeping an eye out. Very opportunistic creatures, those seagulls and crows. This one was actually done over the course of a couple days. The first day was spent just trying to establish things, working as quickly as I could, but things just weren't totally coming together. I felt like I was trying to do too much in one two hour block, so I definitely had a much easier time finishing things. On the second day, I slowed down, putting together the right shapes where they go. But that first day was really valuable, because it helped me set up everything so that when I came back on the second day, I could just put in all the little details, tightening things up and refining them. When you do plein air paintings over a couple days, a lot of times you want to try and have some sort of continuity in the light, because if you come to the same spot the next day and the light is completely different, you're pretty much just painting a whole different painting. It's not really going to mesh together. I wouldn't have done that if the lighting conditions were different, but we had really consistent light the entire time. It's a great time to be in Sausalito because it's about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the North Bay. 

It was kind of a risky composition, putting one of the major focal points (the egret) right at the center-middle of the painting. But I do think that there's a nice eye-path that happens in the piece. Maybe you agree, maybe not, but that is how that one came together.

"Off The Beaten Path" 8x10 inches. Gouache on paper. 2025

The big iconic monument that is Mount Tam that looms over the entire area there, makes for a very dramatic subject. The light is constantly changing on it, especially in the late afternoon. One of the aspects I like about that part of the town is that it's where it kept all the local character of it being a blue-collar type of area. Things are very weathered, things are starting to fall apart. Most tourists aren't really there for that kind of stuff. But that is the type of character that I love about these kinds of towns, because that's where a lot of the history and grit of a town can be found, which can be really appealing to an artist who wants to play around with things like textures, composition, shapes, and forms. It took me a little while to find a good spot to actually paint that from. There are some compositions that I liked a little more, but they were in the middle of the street and it's not really feasible to paint where a bunch of cars are going to drive. 

He was walking my way as I was painting, and he looked either homeless, hippy-esque or just like a burnout type of dude. "Sebastopolian" (if you know you know).

He comes up to see what I'm doing and he goes, hey can I just watch you paint for a while? I'm like, sure (whatever) I have plenty of people who tend to stop and watch me paint for varying amounts of time. Usually inconsequential.

He just hangs out behind me for about 45 minutes or so. He never says anything but I can just feel him there behind me, ya know? Every so often I hear the crinkle of his plastic soda bottle.

Finally, he says to me "I gotta go, but I was mesmerized by watching you paint, watching it slowly come into focus" and other nice things. He proceeds to tell me that he just came to Sausalito on a boat from British Columbia. That was his story, at least. Do I believe it? Not really.

He tells me that he would offer to buy it but wasn't sure if I was painting it for a show or something, so I told him about the show and all that. These people never show up, plus he did not look like he had money. I'll be very surprised if he comes to the show.

He typed the show info into his phone, so we'll see. If I had to make a bet, I would say his whole deal is BS. There’s a whole population of “homeless” people in Sausalito that live in boats with no mooring. He was most likely one of them.

But like I said in a recent blog post, there will be some folks who will come across you painting something they’ve seen a million times and never saw the beauty of it until you show it to them through your eyes. And they’ll thank you for it.

When I come across people like that and they tell me that they're going to do something, 90% of the time they never follow through. And, this person didn't necessarily look like they had the money to spend on a painting that would go for $700 in a gallery. But you never know. I would love to be proven wrong about that. But, I was definitely judging the book by its cover there, but I've been doing this for 15 years, so I'm pretty good at judging that kind of thing. I love to have egg on my face in that situation.

Spoiler alert: He did not show up to the reception.

"Barracks in the Cypress" 6x8 inches. Gouache on watercolor paper mounted to board. 2025

For the most part, they wanted us to stay in the general vicinity of downtown Sausalito, where all the tourists are. And it makes a lot of sense because they're going to get a lot of people passing by who are going to be curious and asking about why there are so many artists descending upon their town. But there were a couple of days where we had opportunities to explore the greater Sausalito vicinity.

It took a little time and some thought into the design to figure out how to best depict this scene at Cavallo Point. So I surrounded that super bright roof with a bunch of dark trees. It really makes it pop out there. It's a nice little salmony-peachy color that can be appealing. You get a nice complementary color contrast with the light minty greens and that dusty red. So it is a complementary color scheme, but it's not in-your-face. 

This was also on hot pressed paper, which is not something I really enjoy. I find it a little too slick, and I have a little bit less control over my strokes with it, but there are some advantages to it. It's pretty easy to establish the shapes. You get a little bit more control over hard edges because the texture is not getting in your way. So it does make sense for these types of really small architectural scenes, because you could be a little bit more precise with each stroke. The texture is not getting in the way of your edges and lines.

"Under The Red Flowering Gum" 11x14 inches. Gouache on watercolor paper mounted to board. 2025

Those red gum trees, when they flower, are really dramatic and catching. So it was a scene that had caught my eye as I was scoping out the area before. I definitely wanted to come back and try and do something there. It’s a really small but nice little park that has a lot of benches so it was a popular destination for us painters to set up and paint. There were 3 or 4 of us painting there at some point. 

it's also great because it was a pretty hot day, so getting out of the sun and into these shady areas that still have a good view is pretty valuable. I knew I was going to do a larger piece there, and it was going to take me a while. So if I could find a place where the lighting was consistent, that was perfect for me. 

Dappling light is always really tricky to paint because it's always moving depending on where the direction of the sun is, how the shadows are going to be shaped, and how the light is going to filter through the trees. The best thing you can do is plan it out as best as you can. I took some photos and use my Notanizer app and I was just playing around with it, trying to figure out what will be the best three-value setup for this scene here. As I was analyzing the picture, I noticed that there were a lot more jumbles of values than I thought just by looking at it with my eyes. Your brain will do a thing where it will want to organize your subjects in a way that makes sense to your brain, and that's not necessarily going to translate to a photo, because the photo doesn't have a brain. It's not making decisions for you. You have to make the decisions whether you're looking at the scene or the photo itself. When you're looking at your notan photo, it's still not going to be perfect. You might still have to sketch it out or just on-the-fly make those adjustments to the picture as you go. 

This was a pretty ambitious painting. It took a couple of days, so I spent about five hours on it. But it's rich with lots of detail. I think I did pretty good with organizing the values in a sensible way. It's got some nice color pop to it. One of my favorites from the week.

There were a lot of people who came by and asked what I was doing, or they were just curious about the show itself, so it was good to be able to promote it a bit. 

One interesting interaction I had was when this girl, probably in her mid 20s, came out to me and asked me right away, “oh, are you using gouache?”

And, that always tells me that the person is an artist, because only artists know what gouache is. If it's a layman, I just usually say it's watercolor. If they want to know more, I tell them about gouache and just say it's an opaque watercolor. If they have more questions beyond that, then I'll tell them. But it's usually only other artists who are interested in the medium that I'm using, beyond just knowing what the name of it is. 

This person asked me if I know James Gurney, and in my head I'm like, “well, you can't really be a gouache artist and not know who James Gurney is.” But I tell her that I know his work very well and that he's been an inspiration for me. 

We chatted a little bit and she told me that she learned from him that shadows have color in them. That's one of the most basic things you can learn of course, but you don't think about it. If you've been studying art for 25 years like I have, these are just things you take for granted at a certain point because they're year-one concepts. But, most people who come to art just decide to pick up a brush one day might not understand that. She said something to the effect of “my artistic life changed when I learned that.” Welcome to being an artist! Especially a plein air painter. 

"Pride of the Community" 6x8 inches. Gouache on watercolor paper mounted to board. 2025

This was a charming scene from Galilee Harbor in Sausalito. There are tons of different scenes to paint just in that little spot. And, it's popular because it's right next to Dunphy Park, which is where I painted “Edgar's Adventure.” And most importantly, there are public bathrooms and free parking if you can get there in time, so it's a very coveted parking lot. It was a great time to be there because the light was really coming through in an awesome way. It was really illuminating the scene in a way that was appealing to me. It was also cool because the community loves those sunflowers. It's a very eye-catching little scene, so I'm hoping people in the community connect with it. It feels like a place that artists and art lovers would enjoy, so I'm hoping that it touches somebody in the heart in just the right way. 

This one definitely has some Heather Ihn Martin vibes. Not only the sunflowers. I mean, she paints sunflowers a lot so that's part of why I'm making the comparison. So not only was it the sunflower subject matter, but also it was the strong raking light and the simplified, almost whimsical sort of quality that the background has. So if anybody says that painting reminds them of Heather, I could totally see why.

I did have a funny interaction with somebody as I was putting my things away. 

A woman comes up to me and asks to see the painting I did. So I pull the paper that has the painting on it out of my backpack and hand it to her. 

She says something like “you got a nice photo of the scene.” And I just chuckled because I thought she was joking, but she kept staring at it for a little while. I started to take it back and she says to me, “can I see the painting now?” 

“Oh, that is a painting.”’

“...Oh.” 

Apparently it was so realistic to her that she could even tell it was not a gouache. It kind of blows my mind because I can look at most paintings and just be able to tell even very photorealistic ones right away if it's a painting or not. I didn't think I painted it so realistic that it was indistinguishable from a photo, especially if you look at it close-up. You can probably see some texture in the picture and all the brushwork.

I told her about the show and she sounded familiar with it. And, the way she was talking, she sounded like she was an artist, too. She wanted to apply for shows at the art center. And I'm just thinking to myself, “wow, you are an artist who I'm sure is familiar with painting, and you couldn't tell that it was a painting; that is a bit concerning, lol.”

I'm trying to take it as a compliment, but it is still pretty funny to hear. 

"Queen of Dock 265" 9x12 inches. Gouache on watercolor paper mounted to board. 2025

I spent maybe over an hour trying to find this boat. Why? 

Well, because Barbara Tapp, who is a fantastic watercolor painter, posted some pictures on Facebook and I saw a picture of that boat, and told myself, “oh, my God, I’ve got to paint that one.” 

 As soon as I saw that photo, the vision came to me. That's why I went with such a dramatic modern, contemporary style composition for it. A huge swath of negative space that dominates most of the composition is not something that people would normally go for, but I thought I would take a risk with it just because I saw in my mind that that's how I wanted to paint it. 

That's really what art comes down to in plein air painting. The decisions you make before you even start have so much impact on how the finished piece is going to look, because you see it in your head, you maybe sketch it out so that you can see it before you commit a bunch of time to it, and then you execute on it. 

I tried to use Google to find it, because I saw a picture of the same boat in an area that was completely different from where I actually found it. I kept expanding my radius as I kept failing at finding it. I was scanning all the docks and found a lot of interesting yachts, schooners and whatnot, because I figured even if I don't find the boat I’m after, there were plenty of other consolation prizes. I did finally find a popular red tugboat that was known to be near the boat I was after. As I was making my way over to it, who did I run into? Barbara herself! I'm really glad I did, because I don't think I would have found it on my own. She told me that you have to do this convoluted trek along the docks there to find my prized boat. It's even a really kind of small area that you could set up to paint. 

It was a nice, peaceful setting other than the docks bobbing up and down here and there sometimes when a large boat went by and caused some waves. But other than that, it was really nice. The painting came together pretty smoothly. It took me a couple of hours. If you know in your head what you're going to do and how exactly you want it to look, all that's really left to do is just execute on it and it will come together in a fairly smooth way. Stay locked in, concentrate, don't let things distract you, and it should come out as a pretty decent painting. I'd be curious to know what you think of the composition. Is it too bold? Not bold enough? What do you think of that shadow? I don't have a great objective opinion on it, so I would love to hear some feedback on that.

I’m happy to share the good news that I won a special award from Black Cat Studios in Sausalito for my overall body of work! It was a generous amount of store credit that I am looking forward to taking advantage of in the near future. Going to do some limited edition prints and other merch with it.

If you are interested in checking out the show in person, come to the Sausalito Center for the Arts. The show will be up until the 14th of September, so if you have a chance to come out to Sausalito, make a day of it. There are a lot of things to do in the vicinity. You can hike around the headlands, you get a nice lunch or dinner in any number of restaurants downtown and just explore the marina. If you haven't done so in a while, or ever, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much you enjoy the town. Hopefully you fall in love with it and want to take home a memento of that experience.

-Sergio Lopez