[Week 42] Watercolor paintings on a kayak! Elkhorn Slough

Girlfriend and friend in a double seated kayak


What a summer so far! It's was one of the rainiest winters I have ever been in, roads were falling off the mountains and rivers were overflowing and flooding in some areas of Santa Cruz. We need the rain but holy moly it's tough being stuck inside for so long. I've been feeling so grateful to be able to spend so much time outside this last month.

It was a gorgeous day so we decided to paddle around on kayaks with a friend around the Elkhorn slough. It's a very active area and a birthing and raising location for many sea otters, harbor seals other wildlife. I saw so many otter pups! I decided to be super brave and bring a scaled down watercolor set with me and use the water off the side of the boat to wet my paints.



Tools of the trade: 8"x5" water color sketchbook, orange prismacolor pencil for sketch, 1" and 1/4" brushes and a very limited color small palette



More kayakers coming around a bend



The trees were waving to me :D


I've got to say, I didn't know what to expect but I hoped for the best and it was a completely enjoyable success. If you decide to follow my lead and bring a sketch book on a boat I can offer a few tips of advice. I brought a beanie with me to use as a towel and to keep my brushes and pencil from escaping the boat. That helped me to worry less about keeping everything on board so I could focus on the creation part and enjoying the kayak. Also, there is a lot of wind on the water that I wasn't expecting so unless your sketch book has an elastic band like mine fortunately did, it's a good idea to bring a few pieces of tape to keep your pages from flipping on their own. Pages with a mind of their own is the perfect way to ruin a great work in progress, haha. Other than those couple of things I don't think you can go wrong.

Painting with water colors takes a lot of patience and in order to get the right timings you have to wait different amounts of time to let the paint dry to the point you want them. I thought the combination of painting and rowing was perfect as it allowed me to scoot around and look at otter pups while my paints dried up a bit. Then when my arms felt tired from rowing I would just sit for a while and paint some more. Perfect day!

Thank you for coming along on this journey today with me I hope you enjoyed the paintings. Take care :)