To Angel Island and Back Again...to Off the Grid

My coworkers and I took the day off from work and toured Angel Island in San Francisco, my neck of the woods - finally! We took a ferry boat from the Pier, walking to the top of the deck to enjoy the great sunny weather we had. We docked on the island fairly quickly and purchased some light snacks to begin the day and off we went to hike.

To the top we aimed, but little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. It nearly took us 2 1/2 hours to get to the top before having to hike back down in time to make our 2 o'clock ride back the city. Not all of us got to the top but I did! Pretty amazing to see San Francisco from that view, I just wish we had more time to paint on the island.

Our hike back down was an adventure in and of itself, what without a map and all. Half of our group finished  getting to the bottom 15 minutes before the slower half - that's me - but we all took the long way around circling around the entire island. I saw some great plein air scenes but most were down at the base. I had hoped that through the hike, I was able to witness some leftover cannons to paint but I guess they took out all the military equipment long ago - at least from what I read at the information building, where we took a snapshot of a obsolete map thus our long adventure around the island.

We ended the tour with some beers and ice cream at the local cafe and I was able to sneak in a couple of sketches at the table looking across the pier. I didn't really have time to paint on location for this boat study so I had to take a quick photo with my horrible blackberry camera. You can kind of tell which photos were mine and those better quality photos taken by my coworker, Julie Ho - thanks for posting on Facebook so I could share on my blog!

After our lunch at Boudin, a few of us went to Off the Grid early to finally do what we planned to do for the day - paint! Found a seated location behind the Off the Grid event at Fort Mason and set up our gear for a quick study. The weather had already turned cold really quick so I was trying to knock in the mood as best I could with my shaking hands - I was smart for not bringing additional layers, even though I have lived in the Bay Area most of my life.

I need to practice more with the first couple stages of the painting using my gouache set. I'm not leaving enough white paper in places that I wanted or I try to tint a color and it goes darker than expected. Oh well, live and learn. I may have to purchase additional tubes of color since it was difficult to get that warm light that I wanted and/or even bringing along my tubes of gouache with my travel kit.