Took the dogs for a hike in Benicia State Park on Friday. This was the view from the picnic table where we ate lunch. Well, it is sort of the view, minus 3/4 of the buildings, and the smoke stacks from the refinery that stick up in that blank hole between the foot hills and Mt. Diablo, but they just had no place in the view.

The trip was made more interesting by my forgetting my sketch pad. What ensued was about 45 minutes looking for a store that would have plain blank paper. I ended up with some very thin paper and an interesting set of pencils. I did notice a that there was a mechanical pencil included but didn't have my glasses on to really read what it said, besides the day was getting away from us. When I got to the car and started opening the pencils, I discovered that the mechanical pencil had multi-colored lead! Kind of a nice surprise when I had left home with nothing. This was not done with the pencil, this was done in ink and redrawn tonight on paper that would take a little water and then painted. I am still waiting on the rest of my watercolors...