Next part of my underwater sketches if scanned! You can see how jellyfish occupied a lot of my attention on some dives, my attempts at drawing spotted cow fish and a sketch of the largest spotter drum fish I've even encountered in my scuba diving adventures. And more eagle rays!
Redwood City has a sign at its entrance "climate best by government test" - and I just had to paint that as it was one of the first things I saw when I visited the city for the first time.
Downtown is filled with people at all times of the year and I loved painting it in early spring as I was able to see more of the buildings against the signature color of the sky in California.
This past Saturday I had a blast teaching next to Gay Kraeger and Suhita Shirodkar at our first "Sketching Trio" workshop. Suhita was working on sketching people quickly, Gay - on quick sketching, lettering and design techniques, and I presented basics of gouache and landscape. We provided all the materials (big part of which students were able to pack home to continue playing) and spent day in a magical garden in Santa Cruz Mountains on a beautiful day.
We got extremely lucky on this trip and saw a group of eagle rays on several occasions. They were completely undisturbed by our presence and continued slow swim (though it was not that slow - I had to work pretty hard to keep my distance and keep drawing :)
I enjoy recording little anecdotes about things I see under water - it's amazing how quickly one's mind is overloaded with information when there is such an abundance around you. And these little notes help me remember :) Can you find three groupers having a fight? How about a sergeant guarding eggs? and a pipe sponge that was spawning?
This is probably the South-most part of the Silicon Valley I painted. I love Los Gatos - with the mountains always in the picture and lovely streets lined with crooked trees and amazing colors of houses!
