Winter, 2014

Whenever a new session of my watercolor class begins, Ron spends the first couple of classes going over materials and basic techniques for the new students. The majority of the class are continuing students like myself, and we spend those first classes working on whatever we want.

Maureen and I had recently been to the DeYoung Museum to see the David Hockney exhibit, and on the way back to our car we walked past Stow Lake. I thought the scene would be good for a painting, so I took a few shots with my iPhone. At the first class of the winter session, I made an attempt at painting it. It wasn't too bad, but I wasn't satisfied with it and I had an hour or so of class left, so I started it again and finished later at home. I was having a hard time getting the lake to look like I wanted, and I almost messed up the second attempt too, but I was able to lift off some of the paint and start again, and it finally came out pretty good.

Whenever I'm out hiking, I love finding interesting rocks. For one Wednesday class, I really felt like painting some rocks, so I looked through my photos and found one from a hike on Pleasanton Ridge. I feel like this is one painting where I got lucky. The washes all came out pretty much how I wanted and it is now one of my favorites.

While my mind was still on rocks, I decided to try another one. This was from a photo taken on Dinosaur Ridge, a hilltop just north of Castro Valley in the EBMUD watershed. These rocks are sandstone with lots of fossil seashells embedded. I thought the shells were too small to paint, but I still liked the look of the rocks. I was not so lucky with this one, and at times thought it was too messed up to finish, but I somehow managed to fix it enough that I'm OK with it.

I missed a couple of classes because I was in the hospital having bypass surgery, and when I came back, I worked on this class project — a Mexican house from one of Ron's photos. It was not an easy picture to work from, with flat lighting and lots of detail. But I'm fairly pleased with how mine turned out. One thing I learned is that I shouldn't have tried to paint every rock in the stone wall.

This was another class project. Once again it is based on one of Ron's photos. In the photo, the stream was nearly invisible because it was mostly in shadow. I did a lot of thinking about how to make it show up, but it luckily came out a lot lighter than the banks which worked out well.