Fueled by Clouds & Coffee: Victorian Alameda

5/19/18 Alameda

I’m back from a week in northern California! The main event of our trip south was to visit Yosemite National Park, but we began with a couple of days in the San Francisco Bay Area visiting family and friends. Thanks to a recommendation from Berkeley sketcher Cathy McAuliffe, we discovered a place to stay that was completely new to us: the island town of Alameda just south of Oakland.

5/19/18 Alameda

Known for its Victorian architecture, Alameda is a sketcher and photographer’s dream. While Greg snapped away, Cathy and I sketched several colorful and intricately detailed houses. Walking around a neighborhood that was particularly rich in historic buildings, we had difficulty choosing from all the eye candy, no matter which way we turned. (Although I hadn’t planned this at all, my current series of Maple Leaf architectural sketches turned out to be ideal practice for Alameda. If I hadn’t done all those houses in my own ‘hood recently, I think I would have been much more intimidated by the Victorians and would have had a harder time getting started.)

On our last morning before packing up for Yosemite, I sketched an oddly pruned tree right outside our Airbnb house that had caught my eye the first moment I spotted it. Although no utility wires were in sight, it looked like it had been cut away for some.

Many thanks to Cathy for sketching with me and giving us a grand tour of Alameda!