California: Mustard Fields and Blue Sky

Spring in the San Francisco Bay Area means lots of mustard flowers! My friend showed me one of the early fields, and as we were sitting there drawing a blanket of yellow flowers under the piercing California blue sky, we talked about Ukraine, America, the past, and the future.

I was torn between doing a full-color sketch in watercolor or gouache but then decided to dive in with the two main colors: blue and yellow and have the rest in monotone. Yellow proved to be a tricky layer as it did not go well over the gray texture that I created - so I added darker tones as a background and then used white gouache, and when it dried - yellow oil pastel (from Jennifer's kit). The sketch turned out not as I thought as my yellow is a much gentle but I like how it did not overwhelm the rest of the sketch. 

Saratoga Public Library crossed off my list.

I am a "list" person - I have many lists. For example, I keep a list of places/things/events I want to draw. It's long and there are some destinations on it that will take time to get to (who wants to go sketch glaciers with me? Aurora borealis in Iceland? :) but there are some places that are not that far from my everyday life.

The life of this list can be described as a sinusoid wave - I add things and then I don't and then I forget I even have this list and then suddenly I decide that no matter the workload and life load but the morning of upcoming Friday should be spent outside painting. I have a friend who always supports me in these decisions (and often inspires me to make one:) - Suhita. And my list is where we got an idea to sketch Saratoga Public Library as it stands against Santa Cruz Mountains. We ended up drawing library, church nearby, lovely mustard flowers and then library visitors.

As usual, after I cross something off the list a few ideas come to mind so the more I use it the longer it gets...