William B Pond, again!

March 4, 2012 - I went back to William B Pond, with my family this time, on a lazy Sunday afternoon (the plus side of having a mild winter).  I found a nice quiet spot on the bank by the “Islands” just down river from the bike trail bridge.  I liked the contrast of nature and architecture in this view.

 I really did not spend a lot of time working on reflection on this painting.  One of the hardest parts of watercolor is having patience enough to wait for areas of the painting to dry enough so it doesn’t bleed when I add another layer. When I first started to add reflection, it bled into the water…not the effect I was going for but let’s make all the reflections blurred to match the first one!

I really played with adding an abstract background. I avoided drawing individual trees but put in clumps of color to imply groups of trees. The bridge was a challenge because I couldn’t figure out the color of concrete. In hind sight, I should have just left it a negative space with a few lines to show the shadows because the black is too dark. This will be a spot to return to later to try that!

The geese were all over the place this day and I almost painted one or two right into the foreground. There’s space in that large area of blue at the bottom.  But I had no idea how to draw geese so I did a little “study of a goose” painting.

After I had packed up my painting supplies (which takes about 2 minutes) my family wanted to walk around and see the other areas of the park.  We headed over to the fishing pier by the pond. There on the pier were two other painters doing the same thing I was doing – bringing their paints outside and painting in nature! I couldn’t believe their set up—chairs, easels on tripods, paints and paintbrushes galore. Although I had been working with a minimalist approach when it came to my supplies, I was quite impressed.  One was working with acrylic, which I had never ventured into trying, even back in college. The other artist, who was working in watercolor, was doing a study of the geese! They were quite inspiring on that day.  After talking to them a bit and watching over their shoulder as they painted (I appreciated this because I know having someone watch as I paint is quite nerve-racking), they told me that they were there because of a Meet-Up group called Plein Aire Painters.  I had never even heard of Meet-Up at this time, and up until this point I was just saying I was painting outside. Now I had a name for what I was doing and apparently there was a group of people in Sacramento that was doing the same thing!  So I was anxious to get home and check it out!