Weekend in Yosemite: Part 1

We did a quick weekend trip to Yosemite for Hari’s birthday. Our timing couldn’t have been sweeter: the weather was warm enough for me to enjoy sketching outside (which means it must have been close to 70 degrees), the waterfalls were glorious and the dogwoods were in bloom.

I had just switched up a whole bunch of colors in my palette, literally hours before we left, which always makes for an interesting experience, since some of those colors I’d never used before. But travel sketching with a brand new set of colors also means you get to know them quickly! I’m posting these sketches in the order in which they were sketched and I think you can see I wasn’t sure how to mix those colors yet, particularly in the first few ones…

Lower Yosemite Falls. Not much of a hike, but always spectacular, in spite of the crowds. Also, always cold from the spray off the falls.

Sometimes I really can’t make a sketch work. This small corner of one of a gurgling stream is the only piece I liked. I’ll take a corner I like, it’s still fun to make the sketch, whether it works or not.

No Yosemite trip is complete without a sketch of Half Dome. See that slash of Aussie Red Gold? A new color for me. I love it, but have yet to know it well enough to not get carried away with it…

Later that afternoon at a sandbank by a river. Luckily my kids will still build sandcastles if they find anything resembling a beach. They played. I sketched. Hari napped (he’s not in the sketch).

I toyed with the idea of paddling down the river in an inflatable dingy, but it was just so much easier to sit in the sun on the bank and watch Yosemite Falls (see it?) in the distance…

A few more sketches from Yosemite, coming tomorrow.