Oak Park Theater

Painted on a beautiful day in Oak Park section of Sacramento, CA.  The Urban Landscape Plein Aire group is managed by Patris.  She finds the place and takes us out to paint.  Weather has been ideal for plein aire painting.  Of course, we do need rain in California but have to take advantage of these nice winter days. 

The large building is the Guild Theater which has been restored.  It has an intricately designed brick facade which I did not deal with in this watercolor sketch.  I am curious to see the inside and take in a performance.  I painted The scene from across the street on Broadway.  The entire couple of blocks are being developed with condominiums and apartments.  Oak Park will not be the same when it is all done.  What a great place to live with everything in walking distance. 

An Empty Main Street

This is the main street of Locke. Locke CA is an old Chinese settlement of workers who built the great railroads and levees on the Delta.  It is a wonderful place for plein air painting because of the old buildings with porches and dilapidated  alleyways. Some business is still active but it is a tourist destination.  The bikers love to come here and roar up and down Main Street.  We have great weather and yesterday we were there for a paint=out.  I worked wet into wet and boned out some buildings as it dried.  It was a big puddle for a long time but I came back with some dry brush.