Fall in Almaden

We’ve had some spectacular color in the our neighborhood this year. And while it holds I’m getting out as much as possible to record it.. Even if “getting out” means drawing right on my street.

I used water-soluble colored pencil and white gouache to finish this one. It started off as simple, big shapes in watercolor like this:

Sitting by my curb, near the leaf pile, sketching.

Here is a second sketch, using the same media, sketched a little further up the street.

It’s funny how I will sit on the street and sketch almost anywhere in the world, but will rarely do it on my own street. This came up in a discussion with Liz Steel and so we decided to sketch a lot more within walking distance of home and tag our sketches #sketchinglocal. Now that I’ve sketched on my street for a few days the neighbors have gotten used to me standing around. I think I’ll be doing it more often. Hoping this fall color holds until the long weekend so I can capture some more of it.