The foothills near our home include many treasured spaces. After a casual lunch at Alice’s Restaurant (the one from the Arlo Guthrie song) we spent the afternoon at the David C. Daniels Nature Center.
We had the pond and surrounding trails to ourselves as Mark took photos and I painted. The Daniels Nature Center is adjacent to Russian Ridge which is at the junction of Page Mill/Alpine Road and Skyline (Highway 35). So close … but … so far from the hustle of Silicon Valley.
I will likely add some of the foreground reeds to the painting. If you look closely, you’ll see that I’ve just started to sketch them in. I planned to add them at the time but needed to wait for the paper to dry to enable me to paint the crisp sword-shaped spikes.