Forest Falls California

Yesterday was my watercolor class.  I'm in the class given at the adult ed. of Yucaipa.
It is a good bargain compared to other classes.

So on Monday the subject was TREES. The teacher had a table full of photographs.  She had taken them in our local mountains. The area is called Forest Falls. My parents lived there for many years and I have very fond memories of holidays and summers spent up there.

Most of the "old", aka retired people get there so early so they had already picked their photo. I was looking at what was left on the table and I thought, WOW they missed a very good one.  You see the new painters were picking photos with big trees dominating the photo.  Not me.  I was mostly looking for a photo that had lights and darks and lots of shadows.  I spotted the one.  It was a gem. How could the others pass it up.  I felt very lucky.
My photo had mostly trunks, dirt and rocks.  But wow, look at the long shadows!
Here is my painting after 2 hours.


The teacher told everyone to first sketch in their sketchbook. Not to start on the watercolor paper.  Opps, I had already sketched out a lot of my painting.  hehehehe

She yapped for a while and then she was doing some bookkeeping for the class. Then she walked around the room.  Well when she got to me I had already begun painting.  She said, "OH, your painting",  I just grinned and said that I jumped in.  She liked what she saw so she left me alone.
I don't like to put too many pencil lines on my watercolor paper. I just put enough as a guide so I know where the main things go.  I look at the photo constantly which I noticed that most of the students had put down the photo and were just painting their pencil sketch.

I'm stuck in my old ways of painting I guess.  I told the teacher, "I may get one good painting out of 5 paintings. I don't hold the painting so precious that I don't take a risk."
And she said, "Oh I always take risks."
And I thought.....were we talking about you? Why didn't she converse with me on this idea?  Because I would have said that; yeah the nice paper I use is expensive but so is a lunch out, but I get so much more pleasure from the time spent painting. So why be so careful with the paper and paint for fear of messing up or making a mistake?  Go ahead and experiment, you could discover something with the paint that you didn't know before.

I think it would have been helpful to the new students for her to just say to them; don't treat your paintings as precious or a valuable work of art.  Just jump in and try different things.   Oh well, instead I learned more about how she likes to paint.  :-)

On the knitting side I am done with one sock.  It is a Anne Hanson pattern called Longjohn Socks I love it.  It is so squishy and easy to memorize the pattern.

Here is my sock when I was knitting on the foot.


I've already begun sock #2.  The yarn I have been saving for a long time and this is a good pattern for it. The yarn is Madeline Tosh Sock in the color Robin's Nest.
I love how the pooling went into a spiral.

Happy Painting and Knitting
Carol