Asilomar, California - by Gay Kraeger

Every November Christina Lopp and I teach a watercolor journaling class at Asilomar. It is a lovely place on the Monterey peninsula.

This year we almost had an extra student with a mask enter the classroom. He (or she) was checking out the garbage can and noticed the window next to the garbage was open. He was just reaching for the window to pull himself in and and have some cookies when I tapped on the glass. He ambled away and I closed the window. I saved the cookies for the registered students.


I took a little time to myself after breakfast on Saturday to walk along the beach. The ocean was wild after a storm the day before. I really enjoyed the smells and the sounds of the crashing surf. Hopefully I walked off all the calories I consumed at breakfast. Wishful thinking.

Otter 501 - by Gay Kraeger

Otter 501 is a feature film soon to be released. Sea Studios, the organization creating the film, believes the film will draw a lot of attention to the otters at Moss Landing State Beach in central California. So they decided to raise money to put an interpretive panel at the beach.

Holly and I eat at the restaurant across the inlet here all the time when we have meetings in this part of the world. We love sitting at the window and looking out at all the wildlife. The otter raft is one of the very cool things to watch while we eat, so we were delighted to be contacted by Sea Studios.
We met with an amazing woman from the film company to talk about creating a panel about the otters. She told us the group at Moss Landing Beach are almost all males. They come here to eat yummy fat innkeeper worms, (something they don't serve in the restaurant across the bay) clams, (something the restaurant does serve.) The otters also shelter from the rougher weather in Monterey Bay.

I did some rough sketches on the spot as Holly and Arlene talked, but most of these pages I did back at the studio. I could not find much in underwater still photography of the southern sea otter, so I looked at underwater videos of swimming sea otters. I would pause the video and sketch as fast as I could.

Annual Summer Camping Trip - Utica Reservior

by Gay Kraeger

Every August our neighborhood goes camping in the central Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Years ago a friend of mine found this secluded reservoir in the Stanislaus National Forest. She told me it was like having your own private Sierra lake and I would would never want to leave. We did leave, but I have gone back every year since that first trip.

This year I was a little disorganized with the packing. My youngest daughter had a baby shower the day before we left. I was not the one who couldn't find my sunglasses though...



I love waking up in the morning and sitting on the granite and having a cup of tea




We hiked up to Lake Alpine, six miles up the hill from Utica. The spot where we stopped for lunch has a lovely creek that flows directly over the granite rocks. I have drawn it a couple of times. It is always a hard decision, eat, or draw. I usually draw fast then I have a little time to gulp my food. I color when I get back to the campsite.

Big Basin Redwoods State Park-Gay Kraeger

In June I took my daughters and great niece to the ribbon cutting of some of my interpretive panels at Big Basin. It is always fun to see the finished product in place. These panels were delivered directly to the client, so this was the first time I was able to see the actual thing instead of on a computer screen. The photo is my great niece pointing to a hike she took with my husband. He hiked all the trails and measured the elevation gain for the trail profiles.


After the ribbon cutting, We hung around and checked out the headquarters area of the park and I worked in my journal. The redwood is a composite of the trees we were driving by on our way to various panels. We checked out the small museum in the park. They have some very well done mounts in the little museum so I added a couple of creatures to my journal page.

Point Lobos, California - Gay Kraeger

Christina Lopp and I teach a class in keeping an illustrated journal every year at Asilomar near Monterey California. It is a beautiful place to teach a class. Normally I don't have time to work in my journal because I am teaching, but this year we had a half day to go out and draw in public somewhere nearby. I managed to convince a couple of students from San Diego that they needed to see Point Lobos. It says on the brochure that it is the "greatest meeting of land and water in the world" I don't know about that but it is pretty spectacular. It was even more spectacular because of the ten to twenty foot waves that were cascading over the Point Lobos rocks.

The High Sierra (again)

Work has been very intense lately. Most of my time is spent in front of the computer. So when my sister invited my husband and I to go on a hike with her I took a weekend and a day away from the computer and off we went to the Sierras.This hike had been planned for a while, but we did our hike on Sunday instead of Monday because the weather was scheduled to deteriorate. . You wouldn't know the weather was supposed to change. It was beautiful. Even at 10,000 feet it was about 75 degrees. I was able to make the whole hike this time. No waiting for my very advertursome sister and husband to come back after some steep climb up tilted trails, so I didn't have much time for drawing. We did take a couple of 20 minute breaks for lunch and then later for tea. I took advantage of the sitting time to draw as well as eat. (eating is very important to me, otherwise I would have spent the whole time drawing.) My sister told me that this hike would be all down hill. We would park a car at the end of the trail the night before and her friend would pick us up in the morning and drive us to the trailhead. Then we would pick up the friend's car on the drive back. All down hill. Ha Ha. The first part was all uphill with me making sarcastic comments all the way to the top. But when we got up there we were on top of the world. You could see forever. Then we started the downhill part. It was not all downhill, but mostly it was. We walked on the Mormon Emigrant trail. This is the trail over the Carson Pass that the gold seekers coming to California in 1848 used. The ruts are still there. Amazing. Further down the trail it is being used today as a 4-wheel drive road. There were deeper ruts on that part, but a part of me thinks it is cool it is still in use. We got to the car we left at the end of the trail at sunset. Perfect timing. And I was still able to walk. We hiked about 15 miles.



The other page in my journal has images from some of the other things we did over our weekend.

My sister called me one week after the hike to tell me there was 5 inches of snow in her backyard. It was a good thing we did the hike last weekend. The weather really did change.

Utica Reservoir in California's Sierra Nevada-Gay Kraeger

Every summer my neighborhood goes camping at a small lake in the Sierra Nevada. We take all the dogs, kids and grandkids. The kids are growing up now, but they still want to come. My neighbor's 20 year old son was counting the days until we left. My daughters are in their 30s and they still come if they can.

The lake is surrounded by granite, so our week is made up of canoeing, relaxing on the rocks, swimming in the cold water, (not me too much. I don't like to get cold.) and other fun stuff.


For this page I took one of the kayaks out to try and draw the boulders on the edge of the lake. The wind was blowing and I kept drifting past my rock. I had to stop drawing and paddle back upwind from the rock and start drawing again as I drifted by. I had to do this a few times to get the whole rock drawn. I colored it in when I got back to the campsite.


We went on a hike to Lake Alpine, on Highway 4. We didn't go on the paved road. We walked up a 4-wheel drive road that I can't believe anyone would take a vehicle on. We stopped for a few minutes on the way back so I whipped out my sketchbook and drew a little more granite. The blackbirds kept me company as I colored back in camp.

Menzies' Wallflower

My current project at work are some informational panels on the dunes at Asilomar State Park in central California. Whenever I start a new project it always seems to take me a little time to get going. I find it helps to do a prelimary drawing in my journal. I draw and paint from my reference photos then I write about what is going on at the time. The illustration often does not reflect what I write about, but I always learn a lot about what I need to draw.

This is an endangered little flower that grows on the coastal dunes in the park. It needs to be protected from the deer (they think it is yummy) so visitors always ask the rangers why the plant is in a cage. It needs to protected from the visitors too, so we will talk about deer and how important it is to stay on the trail on the Menzies' wallflower panel.

California's Channel Islands

The Channel Islands off California's coast are called California's Galapagos Islands. There are species there that have evolved differently than the ones on the mainland and found nowhere else on the planet. Every year I teach a 3 day workshop aboard the boat the Vision. I wait all year for the trip and the three days fly by. This year we got to the western most island San Miguel. Only about 200 people a year are able to get there because of the weather. There is no pier for a boat landing so the crew runs the zodiac right up on the beach. This trip there were no waves and no wind, so we were able to spend the whole day on the island. Not only did we get great weather allowing us to visit most of the islands, the crew took very good care of us and fed us with freshly caught seafood. The only problem is now I have wait a whole year for the next trip. You can see more about the trip here. http://www.watercolorjournaling.com/trips.htm

A walk to the Mailbox

We know the mail doesn't get delivered on Sunday, but we have had some grey days when we are used to sunny skies, so my husband and I decided to at least get out of the house and take the dogs up to the mailbox for a little fresh air. The dogs bounced around happily and on the way back I took a little sample of a plant I had been watching on my morning walks home to draw. Who needs mail to read, when I can go home and draw.
The walk to the mailboxes was a contrast to the other journal entry on this page. A day at the mall in town with my sister.

Meet the Corespondents--Gay Kraeger

I grew up next to a redwood forest. I am very lucky to still live on the edge of that same forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains along California's central coast. As a child I loved to draw. I grew up and decided to go into art. I was going to study illustration in college but then a very inspiring professor changed my direction to graphic design.

After graduation I went into the design field and worked in advertising agencies as a production artist. Those were the days before computers, when everything printed was pasted together. I remained in the production field through the advent of the computer. On a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium bookstore I found Hannah Hinchman's book "A Life in Hand, the illuminated journal" in the bookstore. Wow, the book inspired me, but I was very intimated because I hadn't drawn in years. I bought more books (all those by Cathy Johnson and some by Claudia Nice and Claire Walker Leslie) Then a friend and co-worker, Christina Lopp, went to Paris and came home with an illustrated journal of her trip. Though not a professional artist, her drawings were so charming. I loved seeing Paris through her eyes. I went out and bought a watercolor kit and a cheap book and started keeping a journal. That was 12 years ago and I have been drawing and journaling ever since. Amazingly as I drew regularly my drawing skills improved.

Journaling has changed the direction of my life. Christina Lopp and I started teaching illustrated journaling in 1996. Now I combine my graphic design background with my new drawing skills to create wayside panels for State Parks in my interpretive design firm Wildways illustrated.

A hike in Death Valley

Thanks for the invitation to participate. I am very excited to be a part of this blog.
This page in my journal happened because I was too nervous to hike all the way to the top of Telescope Peak in Death Valley. My adventure loving husband and my sister went on to the top and I had a rare opportunity to sit in a beautiful place and take the time to really observe what was around me. It took about an hour and a half for the sister and husband to get to the top and come back and pick me up. Normally I don't have time to sit outside and draw. I usually draw from reference materials and then spend a lot of time in front of my computer manipulating my images, so it was great to be a part of such a beautiful place for a short time.