Sitka Weekend

Last spring, I received tuition for a workshop at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology as a birthday present. I chose a landscape watercolor class, which was held this weekend. It was quite nice to leave my work at home for three days to paint the coastal scenery at Cascade Head.

On Friday morning I drove from Hillsboro to Sitka, which is a few miles south of Pacific City, for the first day of the workshop, lead by Molly Hashimoto.

Our first project involved painting a view of Cascade Head from the Sitka campus.

We began the paintings outside and touched them up in the studio. Under Molly's instruction, I painted the negative space to create alder trunks and darkened areas to separate individual alder canopies.

On Saturday, we began the day at the Salmon River Estuary.

I painted two panels capturing the conifer forest, spit, three offshore rocks, and the headland.

In the afternoon, we painted in the forest behind the Sitka studios.

I focused on pairs of Sitka spruces, red alders, and red elderberries.

On our final morning, we painted Proposal Rock at Neskowin Beach.

I hiked up the beach so I could capture the rock and the headland.

I then walked closer to the rock to do a quick painting of a keyhole on its east side.

At the end of the day, workshop participants shared aspects our favorite paintings and admired each others work. We all left the weekend with a new way of seeing the forests, beaches and rocks of the coast.