This is one of the larger paintings I've done, 36 x 84 inches, oil on canvas. I think I'm calling it "Belmont Park, Mission Beach". It was a private commission for a client in La Jolla, he used to drive the yellow 1972 Malibu convertible back in the day.
The painting took several months to complete. I started by scouting out locations along the San Diego coastline. I began with a couple of smaller drawings of potential compositions. My client primarily wanted the yellow convertible depicted with his family, ideally in a beach neighborhood. We actually tracked down the original car and used it for a photo shoot. But the current owner painted it red, so I used a model of a yellow car to get the color and light to match.
When we settled on Mission Beach as the landscape, I had reservations about choosing the complex scaffolding of the rollercoaster as part of my subject matter. I like how it turned out though, and I enlarged the actual scale of the roller coaster to give it the larger than life effect of memories long ago.
