We didn't have to evacuate but we did pack go bags and important papers into our cars because that's what you do when part of your town is on fire. I live in Simi Valley, California. Every Fall we get Santa Ana winds. Sometimes they're hot, this time they were cold. The temp doesn't matter. It's the dryness. They suck every bit of moisture out of the plant life that's already been killed by the heat of August and September. They typically blow 30 to 40 mile per hour with gusts through the canyons sometimes clocking in at 80. After that, all it takes is a spark. A branch hits an electric line, somebody pulls their car off the road in high grass with a hot muffler, a cigarette toss or the blade of a lawn mower hits cement or an errant rock.
Home owners in more rural areas than my neighborhood are told to clear brush back to 100 feet with no continuous line of bushes or plants leading to the house. But embers can come at you horizontally when the Santa Anas blow. None of the fires were especially close to us, and none were upwind. There was a spot fire that started just a few blocks away when someone tossed a cigarette out of the car when getting onto the freeway. There's no proof of that but there weren't any other ignition points. Suddenly there was a fire behind the houses of a neighborhood. The winds blew, trees started to burn.
Suddenly, waterdropping helicopters appeared overhead, diverted from the huge fire across town. Why? Because this was starting in a neighborhood, not open land, and there was no time to waste. Fire was tamped down in record time.
So it's hard to get stuff done when things are that tense. In fact, the painting of the koi was started and stopped several times.
There's lots I like about that fish, notably some of the random water distortion, but this is a case of following a teacher's directions, step by step. We all paint the same thing. If you ask me to paint your cat, I'm not sure where I'd start. I'm hoping that I'll be able to approach things like that, cats, dogs or landscapes, by the end of the course. The rest of the time since my last post was filled with color swatches, color wheels, grey scales and a few more exercises posted below.
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