Went out for another landscape painting today with the classmates. This time we headed to Golden Gate Park around one of the lakes in the Botanical Gardens. We set up around a little pond with lily pads in it, surrounded with Japanese bamboo. I had a tough time with it all, too many reflections and small details, so it was hard for me to keep focused on an area. After painting, we grabbed some lunch and went to an art store where I got some stretched canvases, some raw, unprimered linen, a large tube of white oil paint, and some white art tape for masking the canvases with. The damage was under eighty dollars, not bad due to their "Back to School" sale. The rest of the afternoon was spent at another location, but due to the short amount of time left in the day, I decided to skip another painting and take a nap in the car while the classmates painted for a little over an hour.
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It has been a full day of activities starting with laundry in the morning. Since the day was going to be really hot, I decided to go old school and took the cloths out to dry on the cloths line. Afterwords, it was the chore of heat control by means of closing all windows, curtains and doors to prevent any hot air from circulating through out the house during the day. The house still gets warm by sunset, but not as much as it would have if I did not prep it, then everything gets opened at night to cool off til morning. Around noon, I headed down to the gym at work where the crazy co-worker insisted that we jog around the man made lake across from our campus. After the two mile jog, which was misery under the noon day sun, we did abs. Although I wanted to stay longer to complete my workout, I had to leave, so after a quick shower to wash off the sticky sweat, I headed on up to the City to meet up with a classmate to do landscape painting.
We decided to head to the coast in search of cooler climate and went down Geary to Ocean Beach. We parked the car on the North side of the Cliff House and had to climb down some hills, which sucked for me because I had to carry my heavy ass travel easel and a backpack with camera and a liter of water. The classmate had all his stuff in his new lightweight easel in his backpack - the bastard, I hate him! After painting until almost sunset, we grabbed a bit to eat, and after I dropped him off, I headed over the Bay Bridge to meet up with the Acupuncturist. But since I have never been to his place, I took the wrong detour and headed South from the Bridge, per his instructions, and never saw the exit he had instructed to take. By the time I reached the Oakland airport, the Acupuncturist called, by which point I decided to keep going South towards home and said that we'll meet another time.
I am beat...
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Last weekends' fishing trip with the Warden, his co-worker and the Professor was quite nice and relaxing. The GM was supposed to go with us, but the stresses with his work prevented him from going on the trip. I guess it was a good thing that he did not make the trip because we caught no fish, other than lousy catfish, which no one wanted to eat. Trout was what we were after and the Warden was the only one that caught one with a lure. Anyway, it was a great weekend non the less, we did catch a good amount of crawdads and that was part of the meal along with plenty of steaks. The Warden got plenty of sleep, which he commented on, and that goes the same for his buddy - I guess finishing off three quarters of a bottle of eighteen year old Scotch between the Warden and myself that first night of camping helped a great deal, hahaha. Here's a panoramic of Frenchman's lake
Although I had brought along my painting easel with the intention of getting in some landscape painting, the mood never struck me and I was happy to just be lazy and relaxing for the weekend. But here's the painting I did with a classmate on the eighth at China Camp in Marin. I had to stop a couple of hours due to the tide coming in and I was on the beach. I had to scoot a few times because the water was covering the legs of the easel and causing it to sink into the sand, also if I had moved anymore, my whole painting would have been off. Going to have to try and do another painting this week.
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Earlier last week I had the old Specialized dusted off and the trainer set up so I can start riding again. I even went and got a new seat because the old one was rock hard and torn - not very comfy on the buttocks. IMed a few people and the plan was to do some riding on the weekend. Of course, when I proposed that, I didn't really know if I was up for it, and therefore was going to try and slip quietly out of it if no one followed up. Well, that didn't work and I was called out to ride the Berkley hills yesterday.
Yesterday, we started kind of late. We were supposed to head out at eleven in the morning, but my co-worker, Mike, didn't quite get up in time, even though I called him around nine AM. He said to meet up at an ex-co-worker's place at 11AM. Since I was not fully prepared with not having found everything I needed, i.e., water bottles, and only one of two riding gloves, I had to go on a bike shop run. First, I went to Talbot's bike shop around ten in the morning, thinking they should be opened by then, but no, they open at eleven - I was denied! I had to think quick, and I knew there were two other bike shops in the area and headed there right away, but they were also closed and I had little choice but to go back to Talbot's for the eleven AM opening. By the time I got to the designated apartment, it was eleven twenty five, way late, but not as late as the co-worker, he didn't show up until after noon and then we loaded up the Trooper and headed to Berkley.
We got off at the Ashby exit, stopped to grab some lunch before finding a place to park at the foothills. There, we unloaded the bikes and started a five mile ascend. The ride was brutal on my out-of-shape legs, and by the time we got to the top of the hill, I had stopped three to four times and my legs were burning with pain and fatigue! As we took another path before the final decent, the road opened out to a full view of the bay! The view was absolutely gorgeous! The day was mostly clear and one could see the blanket of fog covering the City and the peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge poking through. I wished I had my camera, and next time, I will! The decent was totally fun with the wind in my face and the best thing was not peddling. The only thing that would have made it better was if I didn't have to constantly ride the brakes, for if I didn't, I would have blown past the people I was riding with because they were on mountain bikes, which have a lot of drag, also I didn't know where the hell I was going. After we got back to the car, we headed back to the point of departure, where after unloading the bikes, we all went for a two mile jog! After that, everyone hung out and had dinner together and that was a full days activity.
As for today, my legs were not too sore, but then again, they don't usually start getting sore for at least a couple of days, we'll have to see.
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Earlier last week I had the old Specialized dusted off and the trainer set up so I can start riding again. I even went and got a new seat because the old one was rock hard and torn - not very comfy on the buttocks. IMed a few people and the plan was to do some riding on the weekend. Of course, when I proposed that, I didn't really know if I was up for it, and therefore was going to try and slip quietly out of it if no one followed up. Well, that didn't work and I was called out to ride the Berkley hills yesterday.
Yesterday, we started kind of late. We were supposed to head out at eleven in the morning, but my co-worker, Mike, didn't quite get up in time, even though I called him around nine AM. He said to meet up at an ex-co-worker's place at 11AM. Since I was not fully prepared with not having found everything I needed, i.e., water bottles, and only one of two riding gloves, I had to go on a bike shop run. First, I went to Talbot's bike shop around ten in the morning, thinking they should be opened by then, but no, they open at eleven - I was denied! I had to think quick, and I knew there were two other bike shops in the area and headed there right away, but they were also closed and I had little choice but to go back to Talbot's for the eleven AM opening. By the time I got to the designated apartment, it was eleven twenty five, way late, but not as late as the co-worker, he didn't show up until after noon and then we loaded up the Trooper and headed to Berkley.
We got off at the Ashby exit, stopped to grab some lunch before finding a place to park at the foothills. There, we unloaded the bikes and started a five mile ascend. The ride was brutal on my out-of-shape legs, and by the time we got to the top of the hill, I had stopped three to four times and my legs were burning with pain and fatigue! As we took another path before the final decent, the road opened out to a full view of the bay! The view was absolutely gorgeous! The day was mostly clear and one could see the blanket of fog covering the City and the peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge poking through. I wished I had my camera, and next time, I will! The decent was totally fun with the wind in my face and the best thing was not peddling. The only thing that would have made it better was if I didn't have to constantly ride the brakes, for if I didn't, I would have blown past the people I was riding with because they were on mountain bikes, which have a lot of drag, also I didn't know where the hell I was going. After we got back to the car, we headed back to the point of departure, where after unloading the bikes, we all went for a two mile jog! After that, everyone hung out and had dinner together and that was a full days activity.
As for today, my legs were not too sore, but then again, they don't usually start getting sore for at least a couple of days, we'll have to see.
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I am ecstatic that half the goobers are blogging to keep all the goobers informed and entertained. Although I had my doubts in the beginning as to the value of all this blogging, other than a place to jot down one's thoughts or ideas, and wondering who the hell would actually read this stuff. It is by far quite fun to do, especially with friends. It is good to see the Discourser writing again, and the Super Goober participating. It's awesome to see the Professor starting his short stories and the rants of Steve T, It's always good to keep up to date with the Kawanga kid and his newborn across the seas. Now only if we can get the rest of the goobers to join in, hint, hint;) Anyway, it feels good to see that some of us are not just sitting back and waiting for the next entry, but demanding for more updates more often, hahaha.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to briefly sit in on a weekly drawing workshop at work. It's been a long while since I sat in on one due to not being around for eight months. Although I wanted to stay longer, a co-worker wanted to go get dinner, so I was only able to sit in on the two minute poses. Since I didn't like sketching the figure in such a short period of time, I decided to concentrate on the head and face, even that was too short.
Went to see the Carl Sammons show yesterday with a few class mates at the St. Mary's Collage in Moraga in the East Bay. There were a lot of landscape paintings by Carl Sammons, and they were very inspiring. I loved liked his pastel paintings of the desert and Grand Canyon, which were very beautiful. Maybe someday I'll be able to put on a show like that, which means I really have to start working, hahaha.
After the show the five of us went and found a spot off the side of the road where we painted some landscapes of our own. It's funny how all of us were Art Center grads, and even though one of the guys, whom I've just met for the first time yesterday, was in Trans major, was totally into painting, and from his stories, a lot more of one than me, doh!
As for the next painting, the current plan, so far, is to go paint a lighthouse next Friday with Cameron.
3 comments:
Whats "Trans Major"?
Sorry, "trans" major is just short for "transportation design" major
Tell me when you'll be sketching. I'd like to come with you and do some of my own crappy attempts at drawing.
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