Waterfalls at Uvas

Today was an impromptu trip to Uvas Canyon to try our hands at painting waterfalls. It's a 40 minute drive to Uvas for me, but once you get off hwy 101 it's gorgeous. The rolling green hills are studded with twisted oaks, and rock strewn fields had the first blush of wild flowers streaking across them. Then you wind up into the mountains, into the aromatic realms of pine, and redwood. (Spring brings out the poet in me!)

(above) Granuja Falls

Natural waterfalls in CA are short lived events, but recent rains made us hopeful, and we weren't disappointed. Uvas has five falls on a readily accessible 1 mile loop trail. The first stop was barely out of the car park, but we had a lovely view of the Granuja Falls from a little bridge. There were lots of butterflies flitting about nearby and dappled sunlight on the falls. Very pretty.

There are so many paintable views we could have stopped every few yards. This next sketch was done looking back down the path. My fellow artists looked upstream and painted the boulders and water. I like the look of the three of them clustered together perched on the edge of the trail.

We eventually forced ourselves to move on to the biggest of the cataracts, Black Rock Falls.

(above) Black Rock Falls

The spur trail ends directly in front of the falls and we set up a little camp and had our lunch, then painted. My painting captures the upper part of the falls. The water falls about 35ft at this point. The surrounding rock is black and covered in mossy spring green patches. Fallen branches interrupt the cascade and ferns reach out from the canyon walls to catch moisture.

(above) Basin Falls

When our bottoms became numb from sitting too long on various rocks and branches we moved on to Basin Falls. The cascade here was impressive too, but the only view of the falling water was from the other bank and you had to look into the sun, so we settled for an easier view of the water exiting the basin and tumbling among the trees and ferns.
I had a great time. An excellent day spent in the company of artist friends and mother nature at her most scenic.