Golden Gate Bridge I

2015-02-09T08:30:00-08:00

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of those landmarks that's irresistible to watercolor painters, especially me. Even with all the other closer, brighter scenery around, the bridge and hills of in the far distance lured me to paint them.

I painted this while sitting on the large cement steps of SF Maritime National Historic Park in Fisherman's Wharf, in front of Ghirardelli Square. It was a lot of fun to paint.

It was rather chilly. I wore a thick jacket and used my thick wool sweater as a blanket. My hands got pretty cold and shaky toward the end. I started in pencil, then added watercolor.

As I was painting, an elderly Chinese gentleman came up to me and started a conversation. He said that we were in the same location where the SF Commercial Artists group used to have annual shows of small paintings. I looked online but couldn't find any information about those shows; it must have been decades ago.