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About

Jana Bouc is a San Francisco Bay Area artist and art teacher who works in watercolor, oils, gouache and digital art. Her award-winning paintings have been published in books, shown locally, and are in private collections internationally.

She enjoys painting still life, portraits, animals, and landscapes. Her sketchbook is always close at hand for her ink and watercolor sketches. Jana is available for commissioned artwork.

Jana’s work is published in books and magazines including:

To commission a painting, inquire about available artwork, comment or ask a question, please complete the contact form below.

Contact

40 replies on “About”

Hello, I was reading your recent blog and looking at your paintings. I love cruising around at different painter’s sites. It’s funny how other artists comments resonate when I read them….perhaps because have experienced the same thoughts myself from time to time. Anyhow, nice watercolours!

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I love your pen & ink drawings and watercolors. Where do you teach? I live in Half Moon Bay. Thanks Stephanie

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Hi Jana,
I love your drawings and the colors you use are wonderful. The seagull with the blue sky behind is beautiful. I don’t know what I liked most: your paintings or your sense of humor in the descriptions.
Judi Gould

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Hey…I just discovered your blog and I love it.

I used to paint a lot in high school–mostly watercolor and pen and ink–so your blog greatly appeals to me.

Looking forward to following it.

Tom

PS–I added a link to your blog from my blog.

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just came by yoursite because it was listed as one of the best in wordpress.com
love your work! it’s fantastic.
i used to paint and draw too. But seeing your stuff online in a blog makes me want to have a site like this now. Thanks for being inspring.

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Hi Jan:

We really enjoyed your great website. Keep up the good work. Now I’m going to write your mom and let her know your art work was every bit as delightful as she said it would be.
Fondly, Cynthia and Bob

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Hi there,

Just thought that I’d let you know that I’ve used you as my artist for my Unit 1 A-Level Coursework! Your work is beautiful and eye-catching and I think you’ve done a brilliant job!

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Jana, I am a retired (from UC Berkeley) illustrator and in retirement have found gouache to be the medium for me. Nearly all my work as a professional illistrator was done in black & whiite and I used to paint in oils but gave them up in consideation of landlord concerns.

I bought one of Cathy Johnson’s books, “Watercolor Pencil Magic,” when looking for some way to get color without the fumes, and gouache was a happy discovery.

Do you have a postal address that you are willing to share?I would like to send you paper prints of artwork 0n occasion, but have decided I am too much of a technophobe to deal with computers. I can do e-mail but am not happy about it, preferring to paint. At 75 it is still a great hobby for me.
Nick

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Hey Jana! Did you know that this URL popped up on one of my favorite blogs, Cafecrem.wordpress.com? Automatically generated. . . not bad. Reminds me I should get back to visiting again.

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I just started watercoloring this summer, and it’s very rewarding. One of the (several) good things about your blog is that you’ve shown me a lot about the process of art…reworking paintings (or not), being ok with incomplete sketches, trying different media, and how to set up a studio. I’ve also learned a lot about the thought processes of other artists through your site. Thanks!

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Hi Jana,

Love your blog. Who could resist it? I see CM is a real turn in the road for you, but I’m enjoying seeing how your first CM is really from the same artist who did these wonderful sketches and watercolors. I see the connection–very fresh feel and atmosphere to everything, but partial to CM SLs these days, so am very happy you are doing more, an a lemon to boot!!! I continue with lemons this evening.

Susan

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Do you teach water color painting? Could you please send me your schedule. I live in Sacramento, but would love to take a class from you. I have been receiving your blog for over a year. Love your work.

Thank you,

Jana Cortez Sacramento

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Hi Jana,

I’m so honored that you would drive all the way from Sacramento to take a class with me. I will indeed be offering watercolor classes again in the future, but do not currently have any scheduled. I’ll add you to my list and let you know as soon as I do.

I’m planning a trip to Sacramento later this month to go sketch at the State Fair. I’ve never been but it seems like a fun opportunity for a great sketchcrawl. Have you been?

Jana

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By Post Author

Hi Jana, just got your link from another site, and was very interested in your comment about being able to reboot from work life to painting life. I go through the same thing all the time–as a graphic designer all day and trying to paint freely on the weekends. Anyways, thanks for the inspiration and I really enjoy your paintings and colors. I especially love the smurf house. Hoping to start a similar blog too!

Cathy

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Thanks for writing, Cathy. I wonder if it’s easier or harder to make that transition when your day job is also in the visual arts. Mine has a bit of that, but mostly is more left-brained. Jana

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By Post Author

that’s a good question. In some ways easier, because we are surrounded with creativity and I am always thinking about it, but graphics is so OTHERS driven, where I am trying to make my paintings MYSELF driven, and forget about anyone else’s input! But I do like the way you just kind of stop and paint what is going on in your regular life and have that integration. I would like to work towards that.

Here is some of my work (unsolicited, but oh well!)

http://assets0.artslant.com/la/artists/show/106994-cathy-cervantes

Cathy

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WOW! I love it! I wish I could work with such liveliness and vibrancy in a large scale. Great work. And clearly very much personal expression, although your graphic design talent shows through it as well. Thanks for sharing it with me. Wonderful wonderful! I noticed it is all the same size and dimension 3×3. Do you always work on a square format. I’m so attracted to the square but haven’t done a lot in my own work with it. Do you work mostly with acrylic? I noticed they all say mixed media, which I assume to be acrylic and other stuff. Jana

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By Post Author

thank you so much! I really appreciate it. That is why I like your work too–I think we like similar color palettes and imagery.

I keep trying to paint in something other than a square, but it doesn’t feel right. Plus it fits in my car nicely, hee hee. I first do a large digital output of my found objects, photos and art that I arrange in photoshop, then paint on top of it and add stuff. Yes, acrylics, I am too impatient…

thanks again for the kind words,
Cathy

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and you know what I just thought about (sorry I am new to blogging) I think I may have spammed your blog without asking permission, and I am sorry about that. I shouldn’t have put my web address on.

Cathy

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Oh no worries about that! It’s not spam at all. In the comment form it actually asks for people’s urls as part of leaving a comment and I love it when people do so I can see their work too.

Thanks for the info about your work too. That’s an interesting approach. So you design it in Photoshop and then you print on a large format printer at 3×3′? And then you paint on the paper? Do you mount it first to a panel or canvas or just work on paper?

I’ve got a very personal imagery series (Lovers, Mongrels, Currs…about all the men who were in my life) started in acrylic on bigger canvases (smaller than yours!) but I only have a standard sized printer, so when I want to enlarge something I’ve created from sketches/photos/photoshop, I usually put it in InDesign to print it tiled and then assemble it manually. It’s no good for painting on of course, but I can trace it. Or I just redraw or grid up, depending on how much I’ve pre-designed what I’m going to do.

Jana

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By Post Author

oh good. I actually print it out on canvas at full size and then mount it on stretcher bars. I hope to try some other mediums too, that will go through my printer. I guess that is where my graphics background comes in handy. If you want to do a large output but don’t have a big printer, you can usually use a sign company that does digital printing. It’s not cheap, but comes out nice. So, is the Lovers, Mongrels and Currs on your site? That sounds VERY interesting!

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