Bill Drysdale

About The Artist

• Bill Drysdale is a Southern California native, born and raised in the Newport area. He was born in 1949 to a stay-at-home mom and a dad who was constantly working. His passion for art began when he spent a majority of his time with his mom, who was wildly creative. She was always keeping herself and her sons busy by doing projects with them such as building, from scratch, a full-size Native American teepee. When not constructing projects, young Bill would be found sketching or drawing cartoons. Bill started his explorations and adventures in his teen years, traveling to the coast several times a week with his friends. His dream was always to live by the beach, a goal that he has lived up to currently living in San Juan Capistrano with his wife and two daughters. 

• Drysdale’s focus on the beach lifestyles in Southern California came from his love for the ocean and all things surfing. It brings him back to a simpler time when he was a teen and would go surfing. Bill received a Bachelor of Arts Degree at California State University Long Beach and went on to pursue freelance art as he was working as a set designer for a furniture company. He worked in a variety of mediums, designing decorative three-dimensional silkscreened clocks, painting backgrounds for Jack Williamson, a film producer, and even worked under ex-Disney animator George Geopper to learn animation. He later went back to freelance art, working in architectural illustration for homes and commercial buildings in Southern California. 

• Drysdale entered the work of fine art watercolor painting in 1992, and now his work has been shown at many galleries, including the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts. Aside from watercolor and architectural illustrations, he also is an oil painter. He enjoys this medium because it allows him to use a technique that shows the brushwork, giving off a different vibe to his work, leaving it more “fresh,” as Bill puts it. The pieces represented in this gallery are composed of watercolor “nostalgic” paintings and one architectural illustration based off a photograph. Most all of Bill Drysdale’s work is illustrating the surf culture and Southern California life, depicting memorable places from his youth. Drysdale’s pieces represent the innocence and joy he feels from this place, and each one takes its audience through a different time. 

• Drysdale’s “Balboa Fun Zone” piece captures Drysdale reminiscing back on his 20s. This watercolor looks to a place that has been a hangout spot for families, young adults, and the elderly for centuries. The bright colors show the happiness Drysdale wanted to portray in this piece, illustrating the fun aspect. The second nostalgic piece picked for this gallery is called “The Surf Theater,” and its sepia tones to the watercolor gives off the older look, giving the piece a timelessness. This theater, in Huntington Beach, became popular in the 60s and was a place Drysdale remembers going to as a child, until it was demolished in ‘89. The sepia colorings of this piece stray away from the lighthearted aspect and give it more of a memorable feeling; showing how Drysdale looks back on this memory fondly. This piece represents the Southern California culture of a laid back beach lifestyle, where one hangs out and goes to the theater to spend time and have fun with their friends. The third nostalgic piece in this gallery, “The Love Bus,” portrays the hippie scene during the 1960s. The watercolor with bright brown and red tones focuses on the VW van parked in front of the Sound Spectrum, a record store in Laguna Beach that’s been around since 1967. The mix of records and floral, hippie art gives off the age of the countercultural movement, in which people were rejecting the traditional ways of American life. In this piece, Bill is showing how growing up during this time influenced him, while representing artistically how this time was viewed through many people’s eyes. 

• The last nostalgic piece is “Surfin’ Newport,” a perfect summary of all things Bill. Drysdale’s watercolors all have a retro feel that takes its viewers back to how someone would have been living in Southern California during the 1960s. This piece represents more of Bill’s young adult life. He has been with his wife for 38 years and the restaurant in this piece, the Crab Cooker, was within walking distance of where him and his wife lived. This famous landmark has attracted numerous people over the years and is somewhere that is still open, so for someone who may visit it now, they can see the transition from then to now, due to the depiction Bill gives in his watercolors. This piece is one of Drysdle’s most personal lifestyle pics because of the blue VW Bug that sits in front of the Crab Cooker. The car was stolen from him and his wife while they were at the beach, however he still paints it into this piece and with bright colors nonetheless. The energy in this picture comes from the detail and beautiful blue skies, representing a perfect beach day in Southern California. The final piece in this gallery is actually an architectural illustration,something Drysdale did in his earlier years of work. He would photograph a home and then render it into an illustration. The piece chosen for this gallery is a house sitting upon a hilltop in SoCal. When he renders the photograph into an illustration, he is representing what the development will look like when it is redone and finished. This is such a precise image because it must be correct in the final piece. This work is much more detailed, but if one looks at all of Drysdale’s architectural designs, he focuses mainly on wealthier parts of Southern California, giving a representation of only a small part of this huge area. This illustration is portraying what could be and not what is, or at least yet, so it represents the dreams of a future.