Author: Jana Bouc

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

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Poor little spoon

Spoon bigger

I did this spoon tonight in my WC Moleskine but I’m not crazy about it. I wanted to vege out and go to bed early, but convinced myself to just quickly paint one little serving spoon in order to have something to post today. But I was too tired and so is the picture I produced. It’s overworked, which is just how I feel too tonight, at the end of my work week.

I did a drawing this morning on the subway but felt it was too sketchy and experimental to post. I’m going to continue with my commitment to draw or paint daily, but I think I’m going to give myself one day a week to not post when I’m too tired or don’t think what I’ve done that day is ready for primetime.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Richard and Florio

Richard & Florio the Parrot

My good friends Judith and Richard have a wonderful parrot named Florio (formerly known as Flora until they discovered she was a he). Florio’s a great bird. When I visit and talk nicely to him he blinks his eyes and dilates his pupils, looking so pleased to be told he’s a good bird. If we ignore him he squawks loudly until we include him in the conversation. Judith prepares lovely meals for him with lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. Judith and Richard are both great cooks. I wish I was lucky like Florio to have them preparing my meals every day, too.

I got the photo I painted from by accident. I borrowed Judith’s camera when we went to the zoo last month (I stupidly brought mine without its memory card) and when I downloaded her card to my computer, this picture of Richard and Florio was on there. The photo is strange and blurry with a weird glow from low light, but as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to paint it.

I did this in my 5 x 7.5″ watercolor Moleskine, first drawing with a Micron Pigma then adding watercolor, during my painting group’s weekly session at my studio to paint and talk art (and life). While it doesn’t exactly look like Richard, I think I captured a little something of him, and had a lot of fun doing it.

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Tired feet and sleepy brain

Tired feet
I stayed up way too late last night working on yesterday’s pretty bowls of fruit so today all I could muster was a not-so-pretty drawing of my big feet. I was drawing laying down in my recliner with my feet up on a pillow on top of the foot rest using a Lamy Safari in my Aquabee Deluxe sketchbook. It wasn’t working very well because the pen was tilted in the wrong direction so gravity wasn’t helping the ink come down and the paper was too coarse for the pen to write smoothly. But I was too tired to get up and get different paper or pen, so there you have it. Tired feet, tired brain, off to bed.

P.S. Those are sweatpants I’m wearing–the fog’s back and so is the sea breeze so it’s comfortably cool in my neighborhood tonight.

Categories
Colored pencil art Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Summer Fruit in Watercolor & Inktense Pencils

fruit-wc-webOne hour sketch of a little bowl of summer fruit in watercolor (above)

Fruit-Inktense-web

Same sketch in Inktense watercolor pencils (above)

I finally tried out the Inktense pencils I got last week. They remind me of the really special coloring books I treasured when I was a kid that look normal until you paint on them with water and then color magically appears. With the Inktense pencils, the drawing is about 50% lighter before you add the water. First I tried doing self portraits with them and they came out ghoulish and awful–more like clowns or wanted posters. So I decided to try the Inktense with some bright summer fruit–a more appropriate application.

Once I’d done the ink drawing in my large watercolor Moleskine, I liked it so much I decided to paint it both in watercolor and the Inktense colored pencils. It’s so much fun to draw directly in ink this way– it teaches me about acceptance, I think, in just taking what I get and not fretting if it’s not perfect (a favorite mantra: You don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful and neither does your drawing!).

Since I wanted to use the same drawing twice, I scanned it and then painted the 1st drawing in my Moleskine with watercolor. Then I printed out the scanned drawing, and using a lightbox, traced it onto the next page of the Moleskine. I colored the second drawing in with the Inktense pencils and then brushed on water. One trick to controlling the Inktense pencils with water is to not use too much water and to frequently rinse the brush and slightly dry it. Otherwise you pick up too much pigment and smear it around where you don’t need or want it. Also, even though the pencil looks pale, apply it lightly or you end up with way too much pigment.

Inktense are fun, but they won’t replace my trusty watercolors. I know the Inktense drawing looks brighter and more vibrant, but it seems all tarted up to me somehow.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)

Hydrangeas

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to sketch fresh flowers. These hydrangeas are from my hairdresser’s shop, Circle Salon in Kensington, CA. The shop is always filled with multiple bouquets of her stunning home-grown flowers–all of them more interesting than anything you’d find at the florists. Julie’s an amazing gardner and a great hairstylist too. For the series of Saturday watercolor classes I’m teaching, she’s letting me visit the shop on Fridays and take home some nice specimens for the class.

I wish my garden produced such beautiful flowers, but it takes more than wishing and I don’t seem to have the time, energy, or willingness to use chemicals required here in the fog belt of the San Francisco Bay Area, to do more than wish and water.

I drew directly from the flower with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine.

Categories
Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Happy Birthday Robin

Robin bike

Today’s Robin’s 31st birthday. Lately his life’s been an uphill climb, working very long hours for a good cause. But as long as you’re still climbing, you’re not over the hill… so there’s still lots more to look forward to. I’m so proud of all he’s accomplished. He’s really quite amazing.

I can’t help thinking back to his birth and my life as his mother. I’ve grown along with him, starting with the discovery upon his birth that I had to quickly become a grownup. I could no longer be the free-spirited, hippie artist, selling my batiks and ceramics in the daily street fair on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue (much like San Francisco’s more famous Haight-Ashbury), hitch-hiking here and there, following my whims.

Before he was born my silly idea was that I’d strap him onto my back like a papoose and continue making pottery, up to my elbows in wet clay. Instead I was up to my elbows in mashed carrots, baby spit-up, poopy diapers, and piiles of laundry…and then it was time for another feeding…another diaper… He slept little and neither did I. But we survived and he thrived and 31 years have flown by. Motherhood…wouldn’t trade it for anything!

(Ink & watercolor in Moleskine watercolor notebook)

Categories
Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

IF: Opposites – Heads and Tails

Cats Head Tail Opposite

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is “Opposites” so here are the opposite ends of Busby and Fiona. I was teasing them with a kitty treat to get them to pose for photos in the first picture, and they were standing up to look out an open window in the second. I wonder if I need to put in a background so you can tell they’re standing on their hind legs.

I started with pencil on 8 x 11 Arches watercolor paper, then added a little ink with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Hot Seat Quick Draw

Quick draw

These are some of the people riding BART with me this week. The guy above was great–he stayed in one position for several stops so I had the chance to draw more than just a face.

The sketches below from the previous day were a practice in drawing quickly. The flashing sign on the elevated, outdoor BART platform said “San Francisco Train in 3 Minutes” when I arrived. For fun, I did a quick contour drawing of two nearby trees and then began to fill in some of the tree’s interior shapes. The train came before I could finish.

I got on the train, looked around, and picked my first subject (I was going to say “victim”), a Latino man in a seat by the door. I captured his face but two minutes later he got off at the next stop and an Indian man got on and took his seat. I drew that guy, but he too got off at the next stop two minutes later. Next in the hot seat was an elderly, grizzled, African-American man. I drew his face and hair and same story, off at the next stop. He was replaced by a nice, apple pie sort of lady….who got off at the next stop. And so did I. It was time to start the work day and I was in a good mood and feeling perky after a fun session of 2-Minute Hot Seat Quick Draw.
Hot Seat

Everything was drawn with a Lamy Safari fountain pen and Noodlers Ink. The top sketch was in a Moleskine sketchbook, the bottom in a Strathmore Drawing sketchbook. I seem to have five or six sketchbooks going at once these days.

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Desk Junk (Testing Noodlers Ink)

Desk junk

My painting group came over tonight, as they do most Wednesday nights. We were all sitting around the living room while I finished my awful Healthy Choice TV dinner (I’d barely gotten home before they arrived). Everyone was tired from working all day, and we were trying to get motivated to move to the studio. Finally Judith got up, singing loudly (and beautifully), and marched off to the studio so we all followed.

That lumpy brown thing is a sea-sponge that my quirky little calico cat, Fiona, likes to snatch off the table and wrestle with. Her favorite torture victims though, are my wonderful Smartwool Socks—which I have to hide from her or she’ll nab them, jump into the (empty) bathtub and wrestle them until they’re full of holes.

Yesterday I was bragging about how confident I am in my drawing skills now, so of course tonight I felt like I couldn’t draw well if my life depended on it, and nothing came out right. But in the interest of daily drawing and posting, here it is anyway.

I started this sketch to test whether Noodlers Ink would bleed when painted over with watercolor. First I drew the top left box and then I painted the yellow border over it. When I rubbed it with the brush the ink bled and washed off. The arrow points to that spot. I didn’t have the problem anywhere else on the page because I applied the paint with a light touch, letting the paint, not the brush touch the paper.

I used my new Lamy Safari fine-point fountain pen, which I’m liking a lot because it can do thick and light fine lines. What I don’t like about it compared to the Micron Pigma pens I usually draw with, is that it takes a while for the ink to dry so it’s easy to smudge if I’m impatient and it beads up a bit in the Moleskine sketchbook (this was in an Aquabee).

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor Wet Canvas

Wet Canvas WDE: Peacock

Peacock

This was my contribution to the Wet Canvas Weekend Drawing Event this week. He was drawn in ink and then watercolored in my sketchbook. There’s always great photos to work from there, but I’ve gotten so interested in drawing from life that I hadn’t been doing the WDE lately. Couldn’t resist trying the peacock though.

I used to think that getting a drawing right would take too long so I used to trace my subjects from enlargements of my photos onto watercolor paper. My time was limited and I just wanted to PAINT–I thought that was the fun part–and I had no faith in my drawing ability. Now, after only a few months of daily drawing, I feel confident enough in my drawing to start drawing directly in ink most of the time.

And I’ve come to value and enjoy pictures that are drawn, not perfectly, but with personality and feeling and verve. Of course it’s nice to be able to get it right, too, but the most important thing is the pleasure I get from the drawing and the understanding that comes from really seeing deeply the things I’m drawing.