Author: Jana Bouc

I am an artist who loves (and lives) to sketch and paint in watercolor, gouache, oils and digitally.

Categories
Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

Just me

Just-me

Graphite (6B) in Aquabee 9×12 Sketchbook

Tonight was painting group and we couldn’t decide whether to pose for each other or just work on individual projects. I was tired and felt like sitting in one spot so I decided to try using a soft pencil and just draw myself. Like most self-portraits I’ve drawn, it’s not quite me, but almost.

Just for fun, after I thought I was all done, I decided to try adding watercolor. I printed the scanned drawing onto the same Aquabee sketchbook paper and then applied watercolor. The inkjet ink and paper seemed to resist the watercolor. It’s a little weird, but it was a fun experiment.
Just Me, color
Watercolor over printed, scanned pencil drawing.

I was inspired to try the soft pencil sketching by France Belleville’s pencil drawings of Gunter Grass and her stepfather on her blog, Wagonized and Laura’s sketch of her father on Laurelines when I visited their blogs today. Laura has such a free, loose, but right-on stroke and France makes every little squiggley line shape and form the person’s features and personality.

I love knowing how much more there is to learn, since learning is my favorite thing in the whole world (when it’s something I want to learn–there are many lessons I would happily forego)! And it’s great knowing how much I’ve already learned, and how every bit of practice has helped my drawing and painting improve.

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sketchy day

buddha2_001
Sketched with Wacom table in Painter (digitally)

Tonight I practiced digitally sketching using Painter. I was so tired this afternoon, I didn’t think I’d be able to muster up anything to post, but my little Buddha statue inspired me. Before dinner I tried experimenting with my new Kremer Pigments watercolor set, but after not enough sleep last night I was too tired to try anything requiring brains. So I just messed around with sunsets over the bay, doing about 5 of them in my Raffine sketchbook (which I still don’t like, so didn’t mind “wasting” pages). The Kremer pigments are definitely more opaque than I’m used to, and in this set there’s nothing I could use to make a nice pinky purple. Instead of using my regular palette too, I just goofed around with the Kremers. They’re such gorgeous paints, but I can see how they need to be selected judiciously, depending on what I’m painting. I think they’d be great for landscape painting.

I’m posting this since it’s what’s in the sketchbook for today, but I think it’s icky. Both images can be clicked for larger versions.
Icky-sunset

Watercolor in Raffine 5.5×8.5 sketchbook

I worked from home this morning but my internet connection had slowed way down, requiring much crawling around under my desk connecting and disconnecting things to test it. Comcast is going to send someone out on Friday, though now it seems back to normal. When my day job work was done, it was so sunny and warm outside I couldn’t resist the call of the backyard chaise lounge. I took a lovely nap out there, dreaming I was painting somewhere really warm (previews of my February painting trip to Puerto Vallarta, perhaps?).

Then my son drove up and woke me so I got him to help me earthquake strap my new 6′ high white bookshelf to the wall. It’s a great bookcase that someone had put out on the street with a “free” sign on it. I loaded it into my trusty Toyota RAV-4, cleaned it up a bit and now it’s all ready to be filled with all the journals, sketchbooks and artbooks that don’t fit in the studio bookshelf.

Categories
Flower Art Watercolor

Morning Walk Tidbits

Walk tidbits

To see larger size, click image, then click “All Sizes”
Ink & Kremer Pigments Watercolor on 1/4 sheet Arches 140 lb cold press (didn’t quite fit in scanner so a bit of top and bottom got cut off).

This morning I met my friend Barbara for a wonderful walk from her house near Berkeley’s Live Oak Park up through the hills to Tilden Park and back. It was a great walk and talk and I collected these bits and pieces of plant life along the way to paint when I got home. We’ve been friends since we were roommates before we had kids (and our kids are now older than we were when first met at the old Berkeley Co-op bulletin board where I was posting a “roommate wanted” sign). Barbara is an amazing artist and it was so exciting seeing her new work in clay and mosaic, which I’m looking forward to posting here when it’s finished.

I decided to paint on “real” watercolor paper today, rather than in my sketchbook, and to finally try out my Kremer Pigments watercolor set that I learned about from Carol of Paris Breakfasts blog. These paints are amazing! They are so responsive and juicy and rich–unlike anything I’ve used before. Many of the colors included in the 14 pan set are different than my usual palette but seem to be a very astute selection of colors. I can’t wait to play with them some more on a larger scale. I actually started the top twig with my usual palette of mostly Winsor Newton colors and then painted the rest with the Kremer set.

Looking at the picture in this smaller view, I feel compelled to note that the dark brown item on the right is not a piece of cat pooh with litter stuck to it, despite the resemblance. I didn’t pay much attention to the relative size of objects, so things are not quite to scale.

I’d like to find out what each item is and write that on the painting but the only one I know is the Magnolia seedpod. Any identifications are welcome–you might be able to tell better from the scan of the actual objects in the image below. The leaf at the bottom of the painting is fuzzy and soft and gray green but isn’t in the picture below, since I’d already tossed it.
(Click image and select All Sizes to enlarge)

walk-tidbits-photo

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Solano Ave Storefronts (EDM #85)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts

Please click image and select “All Sizes” to enlarge
Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook

Today was the 11th International Sketchcrawl and I’d planned to attend. But this morning I decided I really wanted to take a bike ride instead. I believe there are no shoulds when it comes to my art life– I’m the only one I need to please. I feel so fortunate that so much of my time is my own and that, at least for today, the decisions I have to make are about such happy things. So I nixed the official sketchcrawl, packed my sketching kit in my bike bag and took off.

I rode over to Solano Avenue, planning to draw the storefront of Solano Cyclery after getting them to fix my kickstand. But their storefront was boring so I took a little stroll and saw this Chinese restaurant and it’s next-door neighbor, Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts. (This week’s Everyday Matters Challenge is to draw a storefront.)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts is crammed with Made in China chotzkes. I’m not sure what kind of Lifestyle they had in mind when they named the store but I don’t think it would be a good one if you owned all that cheap, shiny junk. The name always makes me think of Lifestyle brand condoms which makes me think the store should be selling vibrators and sex toys. I’ve never gone inside, so who knows, maybe they do, way in the back.

I sat on the ground in front of a wine shop to do the drawing. Then I noticed a conveniently placed wine barrel advertising the wine shop which was just the right height to stand beside and use as a table for my paints and notebook. While I was working several different people came over to see what I was doing and said nice things. I know many people feel uncomfortable having someone watch when they draw in public. For some reason I think it’s fun–people are always so nice and seem to be surprised and excited to see their own little world put down on paper.

When I finished after about an hour and a half, I realized I’d missed lunch. I picked up a California Roll from Kyoto To Go, the local sushi bento box store right across the street and sat in a little corner park and with my yummy lunch. Though I planned to make another stop to sketch on the way home, I decided to skip it. It was a fun bike ride home and then I had a little nap. A perfectly enjoyable day!

Categories
Animals Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Phobia (Acrophobia)

Phobia (Acrophobia)

UPDATE: This illustration was sold to and published in Cedar Wings, the inflight magazine of Middle East Airlines, AirLiban, Issue #99.

This week’s prompt for Illustration Friday is the word “Phobia.” I have a pretty bad fear of heights, though I wouldn’t call it a phobia since it doesn’t prevent me from being in high places. It just makes me feel a little sick. Standing on the edge of cliffs always makes me feel like there is a powerful gravitational force pulling me off the edge (my stomach starts churning just thinking about it). Driving up steep hills I feel afraid the car is going to fall off backwards–I have nightmares about this occasionally–and it too makes my stomach churn. Maybe it has to do with my being tall–which always makes the ground seem far away?

I did this entirely in Painter, first sketching on the Wacom tablet using a digital pencil and then drawing with digital ink on another layer, then painting with the the digital airbrush because I haven’t learned how to use the other brushes yet. When I saved the file as a Photoshop file and looked at it on my other computer that is color callibrated, the colors were way off again. So I resaved the file in Painter as a jpg and the colors saved OK (not perfect though–the white clouds are pink and I had to adjust the color of the green land because it was too lime green). But little by little I’m learning how to work with this fun new art tool.

Tomorrow, Saturday, September 22 is the 10th International Sketchcrawl. I’m planning to go to the SF crawl and should have some sketches from SF and Sausalito to post tomorrow (if I’m not too tired tomorrow night!)

 

Categories
Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Meeting People

Meeting-People

Ink in Moleskine

I spent the entire work day in a meeting today that was all about numbers, numbers and more numbers. I filled a dozen pages in my little Moleskine sketchbook with drawings of people looking bored. They fed us a nice lunch and it was good to meet some of my work colleagues from other offices. The meeting was supposed to end at 3:00 but somehow the guy leading the meeting missed that memo.

At 3:20 he handed out a 50 page Federal RFP (Request for proposal) and said it would be a fun little “activity” for us to read through it and decide whether there was anything in the RFP that would make us think we would or would not want to submit a proposal. This was just an exercise–it wasn’t a current RFP–just practice. This was after we’d studied 16 pages of budget reports looking for errors, with the error finders winning $5 worth of Carl’s Junior gift certificates (woo-hoo!). We could win more trips to Carl Juniors for playing this little game.

None of us in the meeting are really numbers people and we were tired and grouchy and wanted to leave. The other people at my table revolted. One woman whispered, “They don’t pay me enough to do this!” and the other replied, “This isn’t in my job description.” We all just sat there belligerently.

The meeting leader looked over at our table and asked why were weren’t reading and I blurted out “We don’t want to, it’s too much!” (So very professional of me.) That gave another table courage to tell him we were supposed to have ended the meeting 20 minutes ago. He said that explained why half the room had already left and he ended the meeting. Unfortunately my boss and I still had an after-meeting meeting with him and his boss.

Finally we got to leave and since I was in downtown San Francisco for the first time in ages, I decided to go to Nordstrom and buy a little new makeup. Mine was so old that it was probably carrying botulism (actually that might not be so bad–isn’t that what they make Botox from?). Hopefully I’ll be able to convince myself to take the time to actually put on the new makeup. I figure I owe it to the people who have to look at me!

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters

Bread: Everyday Matters Challenge #84

Sourdough 2
Sourdough 1

Last week’s challenge for the Everyday Matters group was “Draw bread.” This delicious sourdough loaf (a specialty of the San Francisco Bay Area) was sketched from life using Painter’s digital pencil and paint tools.

My cats were very confused finding bread on my drawing table and my little calico, Fiona, tried to snatch a slice and make a run for it when I wasn’t looking. She has a thing for grains–I left a plastic bag of granola on the counter while I was drawing the bread and when I brought the bread back to the kitchen the granola bag was ripped open on the floor and piles of granola were everywhere. She also opens the cereal cabinet door, climbs in and shreds open the Cheerios box (doesn’t touch the Special K low-carb cereal though). She also steals my socks if I put them down when I take them off but I don’t think that’s related.

Even though this came out looking more like a marker drawing than pencil (I’ve since solved that problem and now pencil draws like pencil), I had great fun doing it. It’s exactly like drawing in a sketchbook, but somehow more freeing in a funny way. I’m going to make a “sketchbook” to hold my digital sketches too.

I used to feel judgmental about digital art, thinking it was somehow not “real” art–and maybe easier. It’s definitely not easier, or better or worse, just another art tool to explore and play with. I hope you don’t feel disappointed to find digital art here from time to time, not just watercolor. Watercolor is my true love, but an occasional dalliance with digital is fun too.

Categories
Outdoors/Landscape Plein Air Watercolor

Blake Gardens – Trees & Yuppies

Blake Garden Trees

Watercolor painted en plein air at Blake Gardens on Arches 9×12 watercolor block

This afternoon the weather was gorgeous and knowing that plein air painting time will soon be over (at least for wimps like me who hate being cold) I grabbed the opportunity to go paint at Blake Gardens. I love this area of the garden, with the rows of trees and reflecting pond. Unfortunately a professional photographer and a perfect little yuppie family were also using the area to take family portraits.

For the entire two hours I was there painting they were alternately posing for pictures and trying to keep their little son from falling apart as he became increasingly bored and tired of all the phoney posing together. They were all perfectly groomed, in matching blond hair, white shirts, khaki pants (father and son) and khaki skirt (mom). They enthusiastically worked on keeping little Griffin engaged (Dictionary: “Griffin: a fabulous beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion”) in silly songs, teddy bears, slinkies, hugs and tickles, snacks, bribes of lollipops later, and discussion about his favorite tools (he’s got a hardware fixation and prefers monkey wrenches to screwdrivers). They were a really nice, loving family but I had really been hoping for serene communing with nature, not yuppies.

By the time we all left when Blake Gardens closed at 4:30, I had a headache and they were moving on to another park for more pictures. I was happy with how the painting went today–there were many moments of enjoyment as I became more closely aquainted with these grand old trees and as the paint appeared on the paper in ways I liked.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Outdoors/Landscape People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

It’s About Time: What I learned today

Old Teeth

“Old Teeth” (study for a large painting I’m going to make, drawn today from a combination of photos I took on Broadway in Oakland). Ink, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook. If you wonder why those hip-hop people want to have gold teeth, you might also enjoy a previous post here about a new invention I came up with in a dream for those baggy-pants boys.

 * * *

I spend a lot of time being frustrated because there isn’t enough time to do all of the things I want to do. Every weekend I start off being optimistic, with exciting ideas to explore for painting, drawing, teaching, learning; things that need to be done to care for myself and others; gardening projects, housework, paperwork, etc. But weekends (and most days) always end the same way: feeling disappointed because I didn’t accomplish half of what I thought I could do.

They say (whoever “they” is) that with age comes wisdom. Well I got a huge chunk of wisdom today, and this is what I learned:

There will NEVER be enough time to do everything. Not only that, there will never be enough time to do HALF of what my busy mind comes up with on any given day, week, month, year.

So all I have to do is accept the reality that time is finite and that my little brain, full of ideas, is not. Instead of fooling myself into thinking I can do it all, I need to reassure myself that I probably can’t do half of it, and just pick what I most want to do that day, do it, and rejoice.

When I told Michael about this discovery, he asked if that meant I’d no longer be living in what we call “Jana’s World” where time is this fluffy substance that is mostly ignored until it suddenly surprises me to discover I’m late, yet again. But I like living in Jana’s World and I’m not looking to relocate; it’s (Jana’s) World peace I’m after.

Categories
Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Farmers Market, El Cerrito Plaza

El Cerrito Farmers Market

Please click here to enlarge.

I packed my little painting kit in my backpack and walked the mile up to El Cerrito Plaza after lunch to sketch at the Saturday farmers market. It was a rare sunny, warm day in this usually foggy, windy neighborhood. Unfortunately when I arrived I learned they would be closing in only 20 minutes. That was just long enough to stand and do most of the drawing, but not to paint. Time was cut even shorter by the various people who came over to see what I was doing and wanted to chat a bit. At 1:00 I took a few photos and headed back home with a pound of Peets Coffee Special Decaf beans.

I wish I could have painted at the Plaza because I knew exactly how I wanted to do it–very quick and fresh, with a light touch. But instead, sitting at my drawing table painting from the photos, I overworked it, eventually making one grand mistake (painting the background red since everything in the fruit stand had a red glow to it from the red shade structure–that is everything except the background which was NOT UNDER the structure–and clearly obvious in the photo!)

The red background looked awful, which gave me the chance to try out my bottle of Aquacover, which is like liquid paper but designed to work with and match different brands of watercolor paper. Supposedly you can use it to reclaim white areas in a watercolor painting without it being noticeable AND you can paint back over them. I used it to hide the red background and then, before it was quite dry, painted some green on top of it, which sort of blended in a bit instead of sitting on top. I think if I’d waited until it was dry, and had used it a little more thickly (I diluted it) it might just have worked better. I can tell that it would definitely work well for small areas without any problem. The Arches Bright White Aquacover matches the Moleskine watercolor notebook well.

Ink, watercolor and Creative Mark Aquacover in “Arches Bright White” in large watercolor Moleskine notebook.