This was the 2nd North Bay Plein Air Painters meetup. We went over to St. Vincent's church in San Rafael. I didn't realize there was such a cool building in San Rafael. It's out in the middle of nowhere, but it's really fun to explore and is ripe with great opportunities for paintings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can probably tell, I didn't start with any drawings in these paintings. I need to discipline myself a bit better with that. This first painting was done over another painting, which was done over one under that. It's like a matryoshka doll painting... The great thing about gouache that it's either as transparent or opaque as you want it.
We then went out to the Nicasio reservoir afterwards. It's a pretty good spot for painting, with it's many hills overlapping eachother. I still think the background hill can be pushed back a bit by lightening it.
It was hot today. So hot that when I was swimming at 10pm, a rat actually jumped into the pool randomly and just started swimming around. It couldn't get out, so I had to take it out myself. It wasn't a wild rat, it was one of those cute rats, probably someone's pet. I didn't want to grab it with my hands though, so I had to use my towel. I got it out before it drowned which would have really sucked. So the moral of the story is.... a rat made my soak my towel.
