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Sunset Reservoir

I live a hop, slip but not even a jump from San Francisco’s largest reservoir: Sunset Reservoir.

This terminal reservoir was completed in 1960 and has an impressive capacity of 270 acres. To put this into context the sides of the reservoir are four blocks north and south and two blocks east and west. The surface area is 11 acres.

The reservoir is covered and fenced off. Over half of the reservoir is blanketed in 25,000 solar panels. The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project started in December 2010 and has tripled San Francisco’s solar generation capacity.

The irony is that the Sunset is the foggiest part of the city.

Some of the 25,000 solar panels of Sunset Reservoir.

While the reservoir itself is not a sight to behold, the northwest corner (featured sketch) affords some of the best views in the Sunset. Along the embankment are walking paths and at the northwest corner are a line of benches.

The bench-view to the north. I can almost see the Farallons. These paths are popular with dog walkers.

Here you can look out to the west towards the Pacific Ocean and on a clear day, you can see the Farallon Islands perched on the horizon like a large, gray battleship.

The views to the north as just as stunning taking in Golden Gate Park, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, and Mt. Tam. On really clear days you can see outer Pt. Reyes.

Looking north down 27th Avenue towards the Golden Gate from one of the walking paths.
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Mill Valley Depot

I love exploring local rail history and finding relics of the past that are still standing like the Northwestern Pacific Depot in Mill Valley.

The Northwestern Pacific Railroad’s logo still adorns the Mill Valley Depot.

The depot was constructed in 1929 in a mission revival-style. It replaced a previous depot that also served as the terminal for the railroad in Mill Valley. The first train arrived here in 1890. It was also the terminal for the Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods Scenic Railway, also known as The Crookedest Railroad in the World because of its 281 curves.

From the depot the three car train would be pushed up the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. At the summit, after enjoying some of the best views in the Bay Area, passengers would then board a gravity car for the downhill journey back to Mill Valley.

A replica of a gravity car is on display in the plaza in front of the depot. The depot is now a coffee shop and bookstore.

The gravity cat replica with the NWP Depot in the background.
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Portola Valley Sketches

Saturday morning found Grasshopper and I in front of the Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Portola Valley.

Before us is the 1912 chapel designed by Timothy L. Pflueger in a Spanish Mission Revival style. Plflueger is best know as a designer of art deco movie palaces such as the Castro, Alameda, and Paramount Theatres.

The chapel is believed to be the first building that Pflueger designed, and he was just 19 years old.

I immediately understood the language of this building, having sketched all of California’s 21 Spanish missions (and a few Mission Revival buildings like the Burlingame Depot). This chapel is influenced by Mission Dolores in San Francisco. The arches, bell alcoves, tiled roofs, and angled buttresses were like sketching an old friend.

After sketching the chapel and adding watercolor, I looked at the California Historical Landmark plaque. Our Lady of the Wayside Church is Landmark No. 909.

Our next stop is another California Historical Landmark in Portola Valley. In this case: Casa de Tableta, Landmark No. 825.

Now known as the Alpine Inn, this building was a tavern and gambling joint for the Californios on their way to the coast. In was eventually bought by an American where it served as a roadhouse and a saloon. It is one of California’s oldest drinking establishments, having opened in about 1852.

On August 27, 1976, the Alpine Inn made history when a group of scientists from Stanford sent an electronic message from a computer while in the picnic area of the inn to Boston. This message, according to the plaque on the building, marked “the beginning of the Internet Age”.

The beer garden was calling my name, but it wasn’t opened for another hour!
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China Camp Sketching

I took a weekday off and enjoyed a Wednesday morning sketch at China Camp State Park in eastern Marin County.

I headed to the old shrimp fishing village and walked down the pier to look for a good sketching perspective.

China Camp from the end of the pier.

It looked like the beach to the southeast looked best. I walked down the beach and found a picnic bench and started my sketch.

A fishing boat with the pier in the background.

Along San Pablo Bay there were many Chinese shrimping camps that fished for glass shrimp in the tidal waters of the bay. The camp at China Camp was founded in the 1880s and at one time contained 500 residents from Canton, China. The shrimp were brought ashore and dried at China Camp and then exported to China.

In the early 1900s, laws were passed limiting the amount of shrimp fishing in the bay, thus reducing the population of China Camp. By 1914 only the Quan family remained and they continued to fish for shrimp.

The Quan family continued to live at China Camp into the new millennium. They built a cafe and rented out boats to sports fishermen. Frank Quan lived in his cabin at China Camp until his death in 2016 at age 90.

The site eventually became a state park in the 1970s and one of the conditions of the site becoming a state park was that Frank Quan was permitted to remain living in the village.

While the Quan family is gone and China Camp village is a ghost of itself, fishing still continues on in San Pablo Bay in the form of the ultimate king fisher: Pandion haliaetus, the osprey.

A few stops up the road from the village is Buckeye Point. Jutting out from the point are pylons of a former pier. On one of these piers is an active osprey nest looking like a long legged bunch of sticks. Amid the bunches of sticks I could see the white head of an osprey.

Osprey nest sketch, Buckeye Point.
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Sunset Sketchers at the Columbarium

I’ve been wanting to join my local sketch group, Sunset Sketchers, for a weekend sketch and it was fortuitous that Sunday’s location was San Francisco’s Columbarium.

I have been to the Columbarium many times and I have even sketched it a few times.

It is here that my grandparents and father are interred.

In all, we had about 15 local sketchers show up on a cold Sunday morning. The group consisted of a few architects and designers and artists sprinkled with some sketchers for sketch-sake. I’m not sure which group I fit into.

I found a bench and started to sketch the imposing lines of the 1898 Neo-Classical columbarium. The building is very ornate and I was trying to keep my sketch loose and at the same time take a little Sketcher’s Liberty and simplify or leave out certain complex elements.

I was soon joined by another sketcher and we sketched and talked about gear and materials and future sketching trips. I finished my sketch (featured sketch) and I went into the Columbarium to warm up and visit dad and my grandparents.

We still had some time before we all met up for the “throw down” so I decided I wanted to sketch the exterior from another perspective. I walked down Loraine Court and sketched the entrance with another Sunset Sketcher (our organizer) for perspective. This time I went really loose with no pencil undersketch. The whole quick sketch was done in brush pen and then painted loosely.

My loose brush- pen sketch with a Sunset Sketcher for scale.

At 12:30 we had the “throw down” where all the sketchers laid their sketches down and it was great to see the columbarium through other sketcher’s eyes.

We all talked about our sketches and shared insights into our process. Comments are allowed but only of the positive variety. You aren’t even allowed to talk trash about your own work!

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Nevada County Sketching

I have spent a lot of time in Nevada County visiting my mother in Penn Valley. I love to explore this deeply historical part of the Gold Country and there seems there is alway something new to visit and sketch.

And so it was that I found myself on a chilly but sunny morning on the first day of my Spring Break, sketching a statue of a draft horse at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley.

The massive statue is called The Gentle Giant by Todd Andrews and represents a draft horse hitched to three logs. The statue is highly kinetic for a static statue. The horse is straining to pull the logs, perhaps uphill. I hoped I was able to capture some of this energy in my sketch (certainly my spelling had much to be desired).

Sketching at the County Fair.
Turns out I was a day late! Darn.

On another morning I headed out to sketch a piece of narrow gauge rail equipment that had recently been put on display near the Sacramento Street exit from Highway 49 in Nevada City. This is a wedge snowplow from a narrow gauge logging railroad. It found it’s way to Yosemite Mountain & Sugar Pine Railroad in Fish Camp. It was burning in a fire on August 30, 2017 where it’s wooden parts were destroyed. It was donated to the Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Nevada City were is was restored and put on static display on the site of the former Nevada City narrow gauge depot.

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The Sand Wraith

An endangered plover that is rarely seen on the west coast was being seen at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern San Mateo County.

Grasshopper Sparrow had seen the piping plover a week before and this Saturday morning was my first opportunity to add a rare Bay Area lifer to my list so I picked up Grasshopper a 7:30 and headed to the ponds east of the vast Meta headquarters.

After a circuitous route around the entrance to the Dumbarton Bridge, we found the muddy parking lot and the trailhead that led to the Ravenswood Ponds.

There were already two cars in the parking lot, the more eyes the better! Within about a five minute ramble we came upon the pond where Charadrius melodus had been seen. Two birders already had scopes focused on the sandbars in the middle of the pond. They had not seen the piping, yet.

We scanned the ponds for about three hours (finding a pale plover amongst hundreds takes time and patience). In that time more eyes with scopes began to arrive.

At times the flock, consisting of western and least sandpipers, dunlin, and semipalmated plovers, would land near the watchers on the mudflats. We would quickly scan the birds for a sandy pale plover with orangish legs that was loosely associating with the semipalms, before the flock would erupt in flight.

Watching the shorebirds fly as one, with flashes of white as the birds twisted and turned as one was an absolute joy!

But the pale stubby-nosed, orange-legged plover was proving to be elusive. It seemed that I had tried to turn every semipalmated plover in my scope-view into a piping, with no luck.

Yup, a rare plover brings the birders out on a clear Saturday morning.

As we were nearing our third hour of Plover Watch 2024, a birder to our left called out, “I got the bird!”

What followed was a play by play of the piping’s location and movement; “Do you see the five wigeon in the far channel? Just to the right below the two pylons? The plover is moving to the right. Passing near the green shrubbery. Now it’s facing us, right near the two ruddy ducks now. It’s now going left just past the two semipalms.”

I was following the plover commentary with my scope, looking for the five wigeon and the shrubbery and the ruddy ducks when I finally came upon a pale plover with a pale broken breast-band.

Lifer!!

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Happy Vikings

The list of the happiest countries in the world for 2024 has been released.

In the top ten, half of the happiest countries are from Scandinavia (in order): Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. Yes the Vikings are happy!

I have been to one of these countries, Iceland, but will visit Denmark, Norway, and Sweden this summer.

Could I really tell that Iceland was the third happiest country in the world on my visit? No not really. Icelandic people were polite and good natured but they weren’t exactly widely smiling while dancing in the cobbled streets. There was something deeper than one could glean from a two week visit.

Why Scandinavia? Universal healthcare, paid university, low crime rates, strong national identity, and faith and trust of government, and well designed furniture. Overall these Scandinavian countries look after their people.

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Marin County Civic Center

I have had the opportunity to sketch a few of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings but I have alway wanted to sketch his biggest public project: the Marin County Civic Center.

Construction started in 1957, and Wright never saw the building completed, he died August 9, 1959. The building was completed in 1962.

The civic center is constructed in two long wings, one three stories and the other four with a combined length of 1,460 feet, which is almost five football fields. This futuristic space ship is longer than the Titanic by 578 feet!

I have driven by the Marin County Civic Center many times and I have even attempted to sketch the large building before without success. The building always looks like a space ship that somehow fits in with the rolling oak-studded hills.

The building is so futuristic looking that George Lucas used the building as a filming location in his first feature film: THX 1138 (1971).

On a wet Saturday morning I knew I was going to add the iconic building into my panoramic sketchbook. I just needed to find the right angle. This is challenging because the building is so large and trees have grown up around the center.

When I arrived it was raining with the sun breaking through the clouds creating a rainbow above the building. I pulled off and parked and although the building was partially obscured by trees, from my perspective I could sketch the 172 foot gold spire and the distinctive arches of the Civic Center.

The final sketch looks like a forest of tree’s occasionally interrupted by a futuristic civic center.

The gold spire is used as a radio transmitter and a boiler chimney.
I have been inside the Civic Center once when I was fighting a traffic ticket. The interior reminded me of a dated shopping mall.
Historical Landmark No. 999.
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Continuous Line Sketching

I have always wanted to loosen up my sketching so I did a sunrise sketch at the Santa Cruz Harbor mouth to try and keep it loose.

I started with a basic pencil sketch and then chose my Pigma Graphic 1 pen. I figured thicker lines would work best.

To sketch loose, it helps to change your grip on your drawing implement. Most of us hold a pen or pencil like we were taught in school: close to the tip with a firm grip. This is a grip for writing.

To loosen up my line I hold the pen away from the tip near the opposite end. This means sometimes I lack the precise control in my drawing but then it provides the sense of improvisation with my line.

The other way I try to loosen up my sketching is continuous line drawing. To sketch this way you draw without lifting your pen or stopping. I rendered the rocks in the levy with a continuous line sketch.

Sunrise sketch looking south towards Monterey Bay. I chose to leave the dredging barge out of the sketch.