On October 9, 2021, the San Diego Watercolor Society (SDWS) met at the Trevi Hills Winery in Lakeside. Michael Larranaga, the Sommelier at Trevi Hills kindly invited the SDWS to come and enjoy the winery views for a paint-out The vineyards were full of bulging fat and juicy grapes, and the mountain views are filled with interesting boulders, olive trees and oaks. Across the street there is a beautiful stream with waterfalls and yellow grasses and moss. Plenty of things to paint! Artists were also treated to some wine samples.
Geoff Allen was the demonstration artist at this event. Geoff’s journey as an artist has been an adventure, beginning with a love of street photography. It was just after he received a degree in Economics from UC, Santa Barbara and a year immersed in Black and White Photography, that Geoff realized he was destined for the arts. His first solo exhibition was entitled “Suburban Views” exhibited at Reno Museum of Art in the mid-80s.
Geoff then took post graduate courses at the University of Nevada, Reno taking a broad range of art and art history courses; printmaking, ceramics, painting, and most importantly Watercolor. After being accepted to the MFA program at Claremont Gradate University, Geoff moved back to Southern California once again. After receiving his MFA, Geoff began teaching Drawing, Design, and Painting at the college level as well as running Pasadena City College’s Art Gallery, Whittier College’s Art Gallery and Cerritos College’s Art Gallery. Also during this time, Geoff had a solo exhibition of his poured relief works at Post Gallery. Geoff’s dream job came true for a summer through Glendale Community College when he was selected to teach Watercolor for a summer in Greece. Here he truly fell in love with Plein air and watercolor. After moving to the San Diego area with his wife, Geoff transitioned out of teaching into illustration primarily done in Watercolor. In order to develop his painting skills further, Geoff was fortunate enough to study with his favorite watercolor masters, namely Joseph Zbukvic, Chien Chung Wei, and Charles Reid. Since then he has won several first place awards, notably the San Diego Fair Plein air event 2017, Temecula’s Ralph Love Plein air Competition 2019, and San Diego Watercolor Society’s Plein air Competition 2020.
For Geoff’s demonstration at the winery, he showed the various ways that “splattering” can be introduced into your work. Specifically, he focused on how to create natural edges, as a transition between shapes, and as a way to add reflected light color into shade. The watercolor demo was followed by the artists painting on location.
Geoff gave a critique of over 30 paintings created that morning! Thank you to The San Diego Watercolor Society, Lorri Lynch (Organizer), Mike at Trevi Hills Winery, and Geoff Allen for a great demo and critique. Lydia Velarde was good enough to make a brief video of the event, This video shows parts of the demo, some of the artists, and some of the paintings. The video can be found here:
We hope even more artists can join the next paint-out!