Watercolor Painting: Autumn Light

California is graced with unusually warm Fall weather. Now that we're in the midst of a cold and rainy winter, I'm looking back on this painting from November and realizing how lucky I was. As the leaves change color, and the days get shorter, the temperature around 4:00 pm rarely drops below 50°F. This is great, because I'm able to capture the beautiful autumn light with big color washes that dry in under 20 minutes. Warmer weather means faster drying times. Furthermore, the golden hour window is approximately 30 minutes (between 4 and 4:30). After that, I have to stop. The light is completely different.

Check out the animated gif below!

Landscape Painting: Tilden Park

This is an acrylic painting from "Inspiration Point" in Tilden Park in Berkeley, California. Aptly named, it's a beautiful view to say the least on a very warm Fall day with a clear view of the bay and the Marin County shoreline in the distance. I was really happy with how this turned out.

Watercolor Paintings

I'm taking a break from traditional sketching this summer to learn more about painting. It requires the same skills (composition, simplifying forms, value contrast) with the added challenges of mixing wet media, understanding drying times, and color contrast.

These were all done in Burlingame, California at various times of the day.