Christmas gathering and Saratoga Foothill Club

Today we had a small Christmas gathering for the plein air group at my house. The weather cooperated nicely and we were able to paint outside and enjoy the views. I was a little preoccupied with organizing lunch, but did manage a couple of quick brush pen sketches of the hillside behind me, and a half hour sketch of the valley in front. For some reason I started the sketches by drawing the middle of the hillside at the top of the page. So the brush pen sketches are actually the opposite way round in my sketchbook, but through the wonders of photoshop I can post them so that they actually look like the hillside!

When I got my paints out I realized that I had two watercolors in my sketchbook that I hadn't posted, from a previous paintsite in November at the Saratoga Foothill Club.
Looking back at them now I am quite happy with how the colors came out that day. I remember it was pretty cold that day and I was sitting in the shade for the first painting so I had to move into the sun to thaw out a little.

Birds at Emma Prusch Farm

This week's paintsite was at Emma Prusch Farm. I've painted the house many times so I strayed into the barnyard and was attracted by all the geese, chickens and peacocks strutting around.
The geese were busy preening and taking short naps before the day's next invasion of school children.
I was very pleased with some of these quick gesture sketches of the birds, trying to catch their shapes as they stood on first one leg, then the other, or stretched out their wings.

Shoreline Hike and Sketch

I've been a bit of slacker with posting my sketches. Better late than never, here are some drawings from our hike and sketch at Shoreline Park.


There were a lot of birds to watch, and the color started to get really interesting towards late afternoon. I didn't take my paints - so made do with pen only.