Various locations in Santa Cruz county. Notable locations are West Cliff, the UCSC campus during a labor strike, and businesses along the Pacific avenue strip. Dates: 2019 to present.
Santa Cruz is extremely bright. Most of the year, at least. But it is not a tropical kind of bright. The sky is a deep, deep blue and there are always a lot of people around. Painting from life around this area, I feel you can only really hope to capture the present moment; although the light of the cloudless sky is steady enough to aid landscapes.
There are many public places where you can sit and draw, so long as you are comfortable drawing in public. I deliberately practiced becoming comfortable with drawing in public here. While I have improved, I am still somewhat shy about drawing strangers for any length of time because it implies staring at them. But using the digital screen in such bright sun will hurt your eyes… really, the ideal way to draw in Santa Cruz is to sit facing the outdoors in a building with large windows.