Festival in the Mission: Fiesta de las Américas

After a month-long hiatus (definitely not by choice, somehow work and travel needs squeezed out all my painting outings, unfortunately) I finally had a chance to head into the city on a nice and sunny day. This time is to join the SF sketchers on sketching the Fiesta de las Americas happening in the Mission district. I didn't even need to head into the festival to get distracted. I miss the sun and back alleys and dry weather so much that I immediately got to work after dispersing from the meeting point. The back alley - Lilac Street is actually famous for its murals and graffitis, but I was so excited just to see nice quaint buildings set against the sun that I hadn't time to study them in depth. Maybe next visit!

This time the interesting shadow on the canopy caught my attention, also the clothes for sale that were dancing in the wind. There was actually a huge mural behind the canopy on the building behind, but scared of directing the focus away from the shadow I dared not touch that surface (also from a bad experience painting murals in Chicago still left me reluctant to try again) I brought the new blue and red I bought in Japan earlier along, but I did not expect the red ("Scarlet Red" from Schmincke) to be so over-powering... the weakness of the blue ("Cobalt Azure" from Schmincke also) was expected because the swatch shows a very light blue. So I had to layer on the Phthalo Blue to balance out the scene.

After getting comfortable with the colours again I switched to the full-size Arches... and again found a shadow to work on. This time an orange building set against a long row of trees. After getting the Olive Green again on my palette, the greens finally feel full-bodied again!