A chance to drive by and see real artists at work.

Elegant outdoor dinner parties with entertainment and tours of fancy Palos Verdes Peninsula kitchens have been past attractions for raising money for the community-based Palos Verdes Art Center.

But this year, working peninsula and San Pedro artists--what they create and where they create it--will be the stars as the center’s largest support group tries to raise a sizable sum for programs that range from exhibiting art and giving classes to presenting arts programs in South Bay schools.

“Most people want to know how artists work,” said Susan McNeil, an artist and member of The Circle, the group putting on a six-hour “drive yourself” art tour Sunday. It will take visitors into the studios of 21 artists from Palos Verdes Estates to San Pedro, with San Pedro’s Madrona Gallery of contemporary art as an added attraction.

“The idea is to drop in on an artist in his environment,” she said. Visitors will see completed work and projects under way and be able to talk with the artists about their craft. “It really shows the creative life style.”

McNeil said the 21 artists were chosen to reflect a variety of styles and disciplines--sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, assemblage art and painting that ranges from abstract to landscapes.

One artist does miniature oil paintings with intricate detail rivaling the Old Masters, McNeil said. Another creates landscapes so vivid “that you can almost feel the wind blow and the sunshine in his things,” she said.

Other artists do op art that plays tricks on the eyes, paper sculpture, black-humored collages of colored photographs, works of textured wax on canvas or plywood, and paintings and sculpture that evoke dreams.

“These are major, professional artists who have had exhibits, been in galleries, or are known artists,” said McNeil, adding that San Pedro, and to a lesser extent the peninsula, has developed an “art energy” that has attracted creative people.

Tickets at $15 will be on sale at the art center in Rancho Palos Verdes and the Madrona Gallery through the afternoon of the tour. Tickets come with a list of artists and a map with each studio numbered; people make up their own routes.

Eva Kolosvary, who creates etchings with her husband, Paul, said she views their involvement in the art walk as a “donation of time” to the art center and a means of making South Bay people aware of the art community around them.

“People don’t realize they have artists right there at their fingertips,” she said. “This is exposure for the artist and the public.”

The walls of the Kolosvary studio in Rancho Palos Verdes on Sunday will be covered with abstract etchings of rock formations at Joshua Tree National Monument. “The sun is setting, and it looks like the rocks are glowing from the inside with extremely bright colors of red and orange,” she said.

Working on the deck of his striking San Pedro home overlooking the harbor, artist Jay McCafferty conducts sunlight with a magnifying glass, burning abstract images on rag paper. He said creating one of his “burns,” as he calls them, is like a “meditation” because it takes hours and requires careful focusing of the magnifying glass.

“I’ll be here (on Sunday) to answer questions,” he said. “Hopefully, they won’t be ‘Why is it art?’.”

Pat Cox, a Palos Verdes Estates assemblage artist, uses such cast-offs as wire and driftwood to create what she calls “small shrines”--boxes with miniature figures that come out of myth and legend. Crushed bottle caps become shields in the funeral of a medieval lord, and bits of wood and trees are transformed into forest nymphs.

Cox admitted being nervous about the tour. “I don’t know what kind of art people will like,” she said. “If it’s the limpid-pool-surrounded-by-trees variety, they’ll be puzzled, if not irritated, by what I do.”

Calling Sunday’s art walk a first for the art center, McNeil said The Circle wants to make it an annual fund-raiser “if it works and the community is interested.”

Maudette Ball, executive director of the center, said she would like to see it become as successful as the Vence Art Walk.

“That started as a gleam in someone’s eye, too,” she said.