Today's event was a Hike and Sketch at Uvas Canyon. This is a gorgeous park and the waterfalls were flowing pretty well, so there were a lot of challenges to our watercolor skills. We got a good workout up the hills and practiced balancing ourselves and our painting equipment on various large rocks as we painted. At one point I almost lost my backpack in the river - such are the perils of outdoor painting!
I'm using a very small 7 x 5 inch "Cachet" sketchbook by Daler Rowney and while the paper is supposed to be for watercolor, the paint sometimes behaves strangely and it is difficult to glaze without lifting the original layer. Of course this should make for a more spontaneous look as you have to put the paint down and leave it, but I found myself lifting and mushing the paint around a bit, after the fact, so some mud ensued. The lifting ability was useful when I got around to scanning these sketches in as I scanned them in black and white first and that showed me that although I had a lot of different colors - they were all the same value! Oops, so I made a couple of adjustments here and there.
On our return to the carpool site at Calero Stables, Jenny and I did a sketch of the surrounding hills.
