The Rain

After the smoggiest summer since 1998 rain arrived in the Bay Area today. I thought the deal was you live in California, it doesn't rain for six months. By my count it's only five months since it last rained. Next year I better get seven months no rain. It also was raining in New York by game time so we have to wait until tomorrow to watch the Yankees Tigers match up. Fittingly we painted dark, moody skies in water color tonight. Painting skies is one of my favorite things to do with water colors. The water on the paper mixes with the different color paints to form threatening storms or maybe a little blue shining through as the bad weather passes. Skies when not the clear blue variety are fascinating to look at as they come in all colors depending on what time of day, what season, what else is in the air. Purple, blue, red, yellow, orange, green you can pretty much do what you want with a sky depending on the mood you want to set. The colors blend so easily and randomly on the wet paper it's not hard to get realistic and interesting effects. It's adding all the landscape, or seascape or whatever else you're painting that's the hard part. But that's next week's lesson. Tonight it was all about mood and light and dark, the perfect thing for a rainy night.