Monterey Bay by Foot

After a gorgeous morning on the water, Monterey Bay offered many interesting activities and sights - I had a great afternoon, but sketched only two of them: a view from one of the coves:

And a breakwater beach, which is at the moment completely occupied by sea lions. Apparently, sometime in August, a colony of sea lions moved onto the beach, and now it is closed for all but tiny-eared, and as graceful in the water as they are not on land, pinnipeds. I sketched them for as long as I could stand the fragrance and level of sound and ran away. 

Kayaking in Monterrey Bay

I recently spent some hours on the water - kayaking in Monterey Bay. It was a day with a perfectly gray morning and temperature, and a very gentle swell. I forgot my binoculars this time (which possibly contributed to drawing more) and took my "water" sketch kit consisting of a PVC support board, stone paper sketchbook (connected to each other with a rubber band), and a plastic mechanical pencil with a chisel lead - on a string, also connected to my board. 

There were several beautiful pods of sea otters, lots of sea lions jumping out of the water (at first I thought they were dolphins), and quite a few curious harbor seals. Tons of birds: brown pelicans, oystercatchers, double-crested cormorants, pushing brandt cormorants off the rock,  and some snowy plovers up close! Oh - and seagulls, so many seagulls. 

There were several types of jellyfish - notably the Purple-striped jelly (Chrysaora Colorata) - needless to say that I kept my hands out of the water while we were nearby! 

Here are my sketches as they looked right there in Monterey:

I had more pages with some sketches so "abrupt" that I did not even take pictures of them - but ended up joyfully adding color later at home - this is how watercolor and gouache act on stone paper:

Sketching on the Water - Kayaking in Monterey Bay

I had a wonderful opportunity to go kayaking in Monterey Bay and was excited to sketch while on the water - especially since the plan was to go around a small cove at a turtle-pace. The weather was gorgeous, and nothing could stop me from sketching for a good part of two hours! Except somehow either from looking for kelp crabs too intently (I found quite a few kelp isopods but very few crabs :) or from looking at the bottom of the ocean (the visibility was astonishing - I could count all the urchins on the sandy ocean floor!) but I got seasick and could not sketch as much as I hoped. 

Still - here are my two attempts - which are filled with memories for me but otherwise are a glaring example of how some sketching outings are not exactly successful on the art axes :) 

And some photos from an outing.

My tools were a trusty all-weather notebook from the Field Notes (with Yupo Synthetic paper) and one of the best black pencils I know - an extrasoft Nero pencils from Cretacolor.

Visit to Monterey

I am done with the sketchbook #78 - the paper was a disaster but flipping through it I see that it was a fun month and a half :) It ends with the trip to Monterrey Bay - aquarium and all :)