Author: Jana Bouc

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

Categories
Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Lavender: Too Much Information?

Lavender

This is Spanish lavender from my backyard in a little lavender hand-blown glass vase (the vase is actually shaped like this–for once it’s not my drawing). I used my magnifying lamp to see the details and discovered teeny purple flowers with yellow centers on the bud-shaped thingee that the lavender petals come out of and that bud thingee is shaped like a mini pine cone. I tried looking up the actual names of these parts but the diagrams I found didn’t really apply to this flower.

While Googling for the plant parts I also uncovered the following “facts” about lavender on the web:

  • Lavender can be used to treat burns, rheumatism, muscular pains, neuralgia, cold sores, insect bites, head lice, halitosis, dandruff, vaginal discharge and anal fissure.
  • Pheramones cause people to be attracted to you and causes mother-baby bonding. Pheramones (like pretty much everything else except for weight) decrease as we age. That’s why men prefer younger women.
  • The same website also explains that too much washing causes divorce: “By the 1940’s, many Californians bathed or showered daily and washed away their personal pheromones, while most of the USA stuck to weekly bathing. California soon led the USA in divorce rates and family breakdown.”
  • The source of the name lavender is Latin lavare “wash.”
  • The combined odor of lavender and pumpkin (ewww!) were found to be a much stronger aphrodesiac than expensive perfume (they actually did scientific tests that get a bit x-rated so I’ll skip the details here).

Ink and watercolor in big watercolor Moleskine notebook.

Categories
Drawing Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

1 Cactus, 2 Cacti Sketches

Cacti-small
On-site sketch in 3.5 x 5.5″ watercolor Moleskine

Cacti-big
Studio sketch from photo in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook

It was a sunny day in the 70s today and the outdoors was calling. Instead of spending the day in the studio as planned, I took my sketchbook and little paintbox for a walk around the neighborhood, looking for something that would be fun to paint. A few blocks away I found an amazing cacti and succulent garden. I did the top sketch above while sitting on a convenient tree stump but I had problems. My pen had gone dry so I tried drawing in pencil but it just didn’t have the magic that drawing directly in ink has. I found myself repeatedly erasing and starting over which is the problem with pencils–the thrill of just going for it with ink is gone and pencils want to be ever so perfect. So I started over again, drawing directly with the watercolors and (continuing to resist stopping at 75%) added a little more paint when I got home.

I did the second sketch above in the studio tonight from the photo I took there. I think I’m going to try a larger painting also–all the overlapping shapes, shadows, and prickly things are really fun to paint.

IMGP3122 Photo of the cactus


Categories
Watercolor

When Kip was Bingo

Kip-new

This is a picture of a special dog named Kip when he was still a pup. He used to belong to my wonderful neighbors who named him Bingo. (They will sound not so wonderful here, but they really are the most loving family I’ve known–they’re just not pet people.) With three children under 5 and no experience with dogs, Bingo was soon relegated to a life alone in the backyard. He cried a lot and ran in circles, but relished every moment he had with the children when they visited him in the yard.

I took him for walks when I could, gave the family a book on housetraining, and tried to help them understand what it meant to care for a puppy. Then I helped them understand that they’d made a mistake getting a dog, since winter was coming and the dog would not be allowed inside. I couldn’t bear to see him alone all the time, with ants in his food, and no place to poop but the patio. They agreed, sadly, but knowing it was right.

That’s when my friend M. decided to adopt him. She renamed him Kip and they became best friends. She took him to puppy school, and she loved him even though he ate her socks and had to have one surgically removed from his stomach. She treated him like the special little prince he is and I got to join them on walks at the Pt. Isabelle dog park near my house. Then they moved to a small town in Oregon and I haven’t seen him for a long time. I’m trying to plan a visit to them next month.

I painted this from a photo I took of him when he was just six months old. It’s watercolor on 8 x 12 watercolor paper. I stopped before it was overworked (yay!) or even finished — something I’ve been trying to do for a while. The background in the photo was entirely green grass. I wasn’t sure that’s what I want for a background so I decided to just stop and think about it and maybe experiment in Photoshop with some possible background compositions and see what works or just decide to leave it white. I think it needs something–shadows at least–so that he’s grounded and not floating. Any suggestions would be welcomed. You can see a larger version by clicking on the image which will take you to FLickr and then clicking on All Sizes and then Large.

Categories
Colored pencil art Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Captured: Illustration Friday

Captured by TV

Little TV screens were recently installed in the elevators where I work. The company that programs them has their name proudly displayed: “Captivate TV”. I call it “Captive TV.” The programming includes snippets of news, bits of celebrity gossip, and advertising for stockbrokers and lawyers.

I always liked elevators as a place to have a few moments of peaceful empty time. I also enjoyed observing the interesting ways people behave socially (or anti-socially) on elevators. Sometimes I like to start a conversation and briefly get to know other humans who work in the giant hive called the Kaiser Building in Oakland. Now everyone stupidly stares at Captive TV.

What really irks me is that half the screen has the supposed news and the other half has advertising which always has something bouncing, moving, flashing. It’s almost impossible not to look at it. If you try to ionly read the news, it stays on the screen so long that you naturally continue to your right to read the blinking ad. So I try not to look at the screen at all. Now instead of peacefully taking a few quiet breaths as I transition from one part of my day to another, I spend my elevator time annoyed.

This was drawn on Canson Extra Heavy Vidalon tracing paper. I started with pencil first since I was composing an idea from my head and wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I inked it with a Micron Pigma and erased the pencil. Some of the ink came off and smeared so I decided to color it with colored pencil to hide the slight smears. My watercolor pencils were handy so I used those. Then I tried adding water. Ooops. This paper isn’t designed for water. When I was done I realized I should have scanned the drawing and colored it in Photoshop. Oh well. Still no sign of stopping at 75% finished. There’s always the next drawing.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Souvenirs…of Life

Tibetan-Bell

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to “draw a souvenir from a place you’ve been.” This is a Tibetan Bell. I’ve never been to Tibet. My father bought it for me at a street fair in Jack London Square in Oakland on one of his rare visits from the many places he lived in the U.S. and Canada. I loved the sound of the bell and he was happy to buy it for me.

I’ve been missing him lately–sometimes when I’m drawing I get glimpses of the amazing cartoons he used to be able to draw on command and wish I could talk to him about drawing and art. He and my mother both painted for a few years when I was a kid and both were talented photographers. I highlighted my mother’s paintings from the 50s here a few weeks ago, but all of my father’s paintings were thrown away by his second wife when he left her for his third wife.

Searching my house for souvenirs to draw, I discovered that my only keepsakes represent different periods of my life and the people and pets I’ve loved. And even those are few: my grandmother’s pearls and glass butterdish, a spice jar with hair from long gone cats and dogs, the books my father wrote, my wedding ring in a little box I painted blue, a folder with my sons’ grade school essays and drawings, earings given to me by friends and family.

Of course I have my journals, drawings, photos and paintings–those are keepers of my memories too. But I wonder what it means that I have no souvenirs or tchotchkes from places I’ve been. Maybe just that I don’t like to dust.

Ink and watercolor in WC Moleskine. I know I said that for a week I would stop painting when I was 75% done, but I was too tired again tonight to notice, and so put in the background when I should have stopped. It was a lot prettier with just a shadow and an all white background. I did stop painting the bell before I thought it was done so that’s a little progress. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A little lemon

Lemon on Quiche Cup

I had so many ideas of what to draw tonight but I was so sleepy that I had to pick something fairly simple. It was fun–so much fun that I kept at it longer than I should have so it got overworked. There’s always that question of “When is a painting done?” I’ve heard it said many times that one should stop when a painting feels 75% finished but I usually go to 125%. So for the next week, I’m going to try stopping at 75% and see how that feels.

I’m experimenting with uploading pictures to Flickr and then linking them as I did here. Flickr has options for posting a small image on the blog and a big one on Flickr that you are taken to by clicking on the image. If you have an opinion, I’d love to know whether you prefer seeing images this size on the blog or a smaller size with a click to enlarge option? Do you know any disadvantages to storing the image on Flickr?

Watercolor and Micron Pigma in WC Moleskine.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

As Seen on TV

TV2-web

Original pen and ink version below
60-minutes-web

When I finished telecommuting at about 8:00 tonight, I sat down to a microwaved Lean Cuisine and turned on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes which I’d TiVo’d. I watched for the few minutes it took to eat my yucky TV dinner and then decided to do my daily drawing from the TV.

Since I mostly just paused the TiVo on the pictures that interested me with no sound, I can’t tell you much about the show or the people I drew except that it was all scary–the first guy in the drawing is Abu Jandal, who used to be Bin Laden’s body guard. He wants his son to grow up to be a terrorist martyr just like his daddy. The rest of the show was about the rapidly increasing global warming and Bush trying to rewrite the science and play down the warnings. So two of the other guys are scientists who are speaking out and the third is supposed to be Clinton who tried to get the scientists to make the problem sound even worse than it is. The cutest guy of all is a penguin whose environment is slowly disappearing due to global warming.

I drew this with my Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink and my Aquabee sketchbook. The pen kept seeming like it was running out of ink. I think the pen does best on hard smooth paper, not on this. Or maybe it’s the angle I hold it–not upright enough perhaps. But it always seems like it’s not putting down enough ink or it’s putting down too much. Maybe it just takes more practice. The Micron Pigma is definitely easier to use but doesn’t give the variety in lines that the Lamy does.

Update: Next day I’ve added watercolor and deleted in Photoshop two lumps that were supposed to be seals. Which do you like better?

Categories
Drawing Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sunday in Barbara’s Garden

Barbara-garden-web2

Barbara and I took a great hike in the North Berkeley hills this morning near her house, and looked at people’s gardens and interesting (and bizarre) architecture. When we got back, her garden was so glorious in the noontime sun that I had to postpone lunch and sit down and draw.

It’s overflowing with beautiful flowers and healthy vegetables: spiky cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes (those funny little orange things on the left that look like pumpkins in my picture), corn (at the back), and in the foreground, a huge “volunteer” butternut squash that she didn’t plant.

The weather was perfect, with the bright sun taking breaks behind the clouds so it wasn’t too hot or cold. Compared to my house near the freeway, her garden is so quiet, with only the lovely Sunday sounds of birds, “beneficial” garden insects, breezes on the wind chimes, a neighbor playing lovely violin and her dog Gertie stretching and yawning in the sun.

With the abundance and variety of vegetation and her mosaics and ceramic sculptures, there’s another painting just waiting to be made every few steps. Drawing the amazing leaves and tendrils on the squash plant would have been enough to make me happy, but I decided to try to capture the whole garden today and then come back again and again to paint her garden over the summer.

Micron Pigma, watercolor in WC Moleskine.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Espresso Roma Berkeley

Espresso Roma Cafe Berkeley

I picked up my new chartreuse glasses at the optician’s yesterday, but when I put them on I felt a bit off-balance. I have a difficult prescription with lots of astigmatism and even a tiny error in the lens can really affect my vision. I decided to go next door to Espresso Roma before leaving the Elmwood district and try drawing a bit to test them out. I had a little trouble reading the menu on the wall when I ordered my latte and felt clumsy walking to the table and getting out my drawing stuff.

These guys sat there a long time drinking vino and resolving the fighting between Israel and Lebanon. Drawing seemed harder–it literally felt like I couldn’t see straight, I had to tilt my head to line things up. Fortunately these guys didn’t notice that I was repeatedly staring at them, trying to focus my eyes.

Instead of taking the glasses back to the optical shop, I decided to go home, wishfully thinking maybe they just took getting used to. My vision wasn’t any better today so I had my eye doctor check them out. Sure enough, they weren’t made right and need to go back to the lab, which means I have to drive all the way back to the optician’s. Grrrrrrr.

Even though I go through this almost every time I get new glasses, I always remember how lucky I am to have access to medical care and that I can (eventually) get exactly the right prescription.

Lamy pen, Noodlers ink and watercolor in WC Moleskine. Confession: I erased a couple ink lines in Photoshop before uploading. (My faulty vision gave the middle guy what looked like a giant feather coming out of his forehead from when I first started drawing him. He’s recovering nicely from his featherectomy.)

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Illustration Friday Watercolor

Clean & Cold (IF & EDM)

Cold-wet-dog

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is CLEAN and the Every Day Matters’ challenge is COLD. I wanted to tie the two concepts together to make one picture. It worked (I think) when I remembered how cold and wet I used to get when cleaning my old dog with the hose after she’d rolled in something nasty and smelly. No matter how cold it was outside, I wasn’t bringing that stinky pooch in the house for her bath. I cleaned her with the hose and she showered me right back.

My thinking went like this: dog’s nose (cold, but not necessarily clean), floating ice cubes in bath water (clean AND cold but a waste of water to fill the tub), a towel turbanned self-portrait after a shower (clean, but not too attractive), a root beer float (cold) and an emptied glass (clean but I’d have to go out and buy ice cream…and eat it!)…and on and on until I came up with getting cold cleaning a dog.

Ink and watercolor (a bit of opaque white on the hose spray) on Arches watercolor paper.