Castro Valley Kids

I found some old photographs of the kids in my neighborhood of Castro Valley, California, and was happy that I remembered all their names.  My dad, who was working at turning our backyard into a grand garden, took this picture and several others at our house on Upper A street.  The photos were black and white, with half-inch white borders and a rick-rack edge.  I decided to make some paintings from them, but I didn't want to just "colorize" the black and white; I wanted something that respected the age of the photographs.  So I found a chart of sepia tones and experimented, though I gave each of the paintings a bright blue sky.  Somehow that seemed just right for California, a bright blue sky.