Author: Jana Bouc

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

Categories
Drawing Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Wildflowers

Wildflowers

I needed to slow down a bit today so after telecommuting this morning, I took a sandwich out to my backyard, read for a while and had a lovely half hour nap in the perfect high-70s breezy sunshine. In one corner of my yard I have a small patch of pretty wildflowers that my friend Barbara gave me in May as little unidentified seedlings. I think the bell-shaped flowers with the thicker green stems in the back are penstemons, but I have no idea what the red-stemmed more delicate ones are in front.

I did the drawing with a new brown Micron Pigma in my watercolor Moleskine and then added watercolor. I really like the way the brown pen lines look. When I started drawing I saw flowers, leaves, and stems. But with each minute of drawing I started noticing more–funny little buds, squigglies, sprouties, spirals, tiny fuzzy bean-like thingees, open mouths, pointy things, rough things, shiny things.

My favorite thing about drawing is when the words go away and it’s all about shapes and colors and light. Then whole worlds of detail and specificity open up where at first there was just one named thing, like “a plant.” Here’s a little close up detail view of the same picture (click to enlarge).

Wildrlowers-detail

Categories
Colored pencil art Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A bike ride for ink and coffee

Peets Coffee 4th Street

I took a Sunday afternoon bike ride to Berkeley’s 4th Street, an upscale little shopping street in a formerly industrial zone by the railroad tracks, about 4 miles from my house. People come there to do some recreational shopping and to dine, and many dress up in show-offy clothes. I felt a bit dorky arriving in my hand-me-down, shiny black bicycling shorts partially covered by a big, old white t-shirt with a B. Kliban picture of a cat painting a messy picture on the front, a bike helmet and bike shoes.

I found the shop, Castle in the Air, that carries Noodler’s Ink (highly touted by artists in the Every Day Matters group as the only waterproof ink that won’t clog fountain pens and great for use in the Lamy Safari pen). The gentleman working there insisted that Noodlers is not waterproof and showed me his smeared sample of the ink that he’d brushed with water (in a cool little handmade book with samples of all their many, many inks). While he was persuasive and fun to talk to (being another art supply lover and an artist) I decided to buy the ink and try it for myself. My Lamy is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I’ll see whether the combination is as great as people say it is (and if it magically makes my drawings as good as theirs!)

Then I crossed the street to Peets Coffee, got an iced latte, and found a table in a hidden corner on their little patio. I drew this with my Micron Pigma (which IS waterproof) in my large watercolor Moleskine. I added some watercolor pencil and water with my water brush but decided to finish it at home with real paint since I didn’t have the right colors.

I also experimented with adding some overheard conversation fragments into the drawing. The guy in the middle with the sun glasses didn’t stop talking the whole time I was there, so many of my scribbles are from his stories about his herniated disk, learning to drive, rude New Yorkers (he’s one), Oprah’s show about women being embarassed to talk to their gynecologists, Italians, and on and on. Instead of being annoyed, as I might have been, it was fun being a spy and writing down bits of his blathering.

As I got up to leave I noticed an attractive man sitting at a table in the sun who was watching me and smiling. I smiled back and felt flattered for a moment until I saw him moving to my table out of the sun as I walked away.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Watercolor

Draw a Recipe (not): EDM Challenge #75

Non-Recipe

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge was to write and illustrate a favorite recipe. I felt guilty that I haven’t been putting any effort into cooking in order to spend more time in the studio and couldn’t think of a favorite recipe it had been so long since I’d looked at one. Then Anita, an amazing botanical and nature artist on the Botanical Arts group on Yahoo wrote that she has a little plaque in her kitchen with these words and then I knew what to do with this challenge! Now I can hang this in MY kitchen and stop feeling guilty for my lackluster meals.

I already had the vegetables out for the watercolor class I’m teaching that started this morning. Often students find drawing and painting vegetables to be an easy way to get started in watercolor. But this group ignored the easy veges and jumped right into complex paintings. They’re such a talented group. I think I’m going to learn as much from them as they will (hopefully) learn from me.

This is watercolor on Arches hot press paper. I dragged out my old caligraphy fountain and dip pens, but they wouldn’t work right on cold press paper so I switched to hot press paper but they didn’t work on it either. And the ink wasn’t really waterproof (though it was waterproof enough to thoroughly stain 4 fingers). So I gave up on the caligraphy pens and just used a marker, which I’m not liking much, but, as my wonderful boss Ruth often says, “Good enough is good enough” or “It’s close enough for jazz!”

Categories
Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Sacrifice

Sacrifice Sheep Lambs

Who understands sacrifice better than mothers? Or lambs?

But No, No, No, the mom is NOT about to sacrifice the baby for the stew pot! I hope nobody thinks I meant that. It’s supposed to be a scene of motherly love and sacrifice but I guess it could look like one of those Britney Spears or Michael Jackson child-endangerment moments. But really, Mom’s not endangering her baby–she’s just trying to cook while holding it. Really, moms are always standing at stoves holding their babies on one hip. I think that’s why my hips are a little crooked. Too many years of holding tots on my hip while I cooked, vacuumed, did laundry, etc.

Ink & watercolor on Arches watercolor paper.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bedtime snack

Cookies and milk

Trader Joes ginger cat cookies and a glass of milk–a yummy little bedtime snack drawn quickly with ink and watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine–now I get to eat them and go to bed!

When Cody was here the other day he saw the big round plastic bin of cookies on the kitchen counter so he popped a handful in his mouth and ate them. Then he saw the label which said, “Cat Cookies.” Knowing I’m a sucker for every kind of kittie treat, he was sure he’d just eaten cat food. He was relieved when I told him they were just animal cookies in the shape of cats, and weren’t cat food. I’m convinced that the expensive stuff my cats eat is probably better than half the stuff I cook, anyway!

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

BART Commuters & Matisse

BART riders
Here’s the sketches I did on my 13 minute commute this morning and yesterday. I’m discovering that if I draw really slowly, even though the train car jiggles a lot, I’m able to do a better job of capturing a likeness.

Yesterday on the trip home, a young African-American man, slightly scented with marijuana, sat down facing me, our knees nearly touching. He had tightly braided cornrows and large, gentle but glassy eyes which he promptly soothed with eye drops. I really wanted to draw him and asked his permission–there was no way I could do it unnoticed. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

Then he reached over and took my Moleskine sketchbook from my hand, opened it to the first page, and carefully studied every page. A minute before we reached my stop he handed it back, still shaking his head slowly, saying “My life is all bad and….no, no….not drawing me…no.” (I couldn’t hear everything he said because of the rumble of the train). I don’t think he heard me either when I tried to say something encouraging. He was so young and already felt so hopeless about his life.

On a more positive note, when I opened my new biography of Matisse the first thing I saw was this drawing (click on it to enlarge):
Matisse
With the tilted head and closed eyes, I thought “sleepy commuter!” and was excited becase it is so much like the kind of drawing I’m enjoying doing right now. I’m only on the second chapter of the first huge volume and I’m already captivated.
Matisse2
As a young man Matisse worked as a clerk in a law office and “treated the job as no more than a minor inconvenience, enrolling without his father’s knowledge in classes at the free art school installed a two minutes’ walk away in the attics of the ancient, crumbling Palais de Fervaques. Classes were held before and after work, from 6 to 8 in the morning and 7:30 to 10 at night.” He made the above sketch 50 years later of that law office’s front door. It reminded me of Danny Gregory’s drawings. I bet there are no art schools offering classes from 6 to 8 in the morning any more, and certainly no free ones!

Categories
Drawing Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Busby, Fiona and the bird

Fiona-Busby-Bird

I walked into the studio to decide whether to draw something new tonight or just post the little sketches I did this morning on public transit. The kitties ran ahead, leapt onto my drawing table and chair, looked out the window and started making little chuffing noises at the birds in the tree outside my window. We all watched the birds gathering nesting materials from the ground and popping back into the foliage for a few minutes. Then I snuck away, grabbed my sketchbook and a Sharpie, and standing behind them, quickly sketched them with lots of redrawing lines and scribbles. The perspective and proportions aren’t quite right but I got the scene down before their short attention spans led them on to other mischief. With Busby (the big tabby) practically sitting on my sketchbook watching the brush as I painted (but without swatting it, like he often does), I quickly added watercolor.

Now I can get in bed and start reading the two-volume biography of Matisse that arrived from Amazon today.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Almost a portrait

Cody

My son was here doing his laundry so I got him to sit and watch a Dave Chappelle rerun while I drew him. It’s a typical portrait–a picture of someone where there’s something wrong with the mouth (and the nose, and the chin). It’s close, and I might have been able to get it closer but time ran out when the dryer buzzer sounded and he was out the door.

Today was my first half-day Monday in my new 3 1/2 day work week. It was great to be able to make a big salad and then get in the studio right after lunch. I was organizing colors in palettes and finishing a plein air panting so didn’t get to start anything new but still really enjoyed the freedom!

Pencil in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Where the mortuary used to be

tractor
I was entranced by the fact that someone decided to park his tractor (or whatever this thing is called) on TOP of this dirt pile instead of in the quarter acre of space around it. I could just see this guy at the end of a long workweek deciding to have some fun and see if he could get his monster on top. The pile is about as tall as a one story building. There were three other tractors parked on level ground. Maybe he’s watched too many of those SUV and truck commercials on TV?

This pile is on San Pablo Avenue in Albany where there used to be a mortuary that had been for sale for ages. I guess nobody wanted to move in to a mortuary so they finally tore it down.

Ink and watercolor in my Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook, drawn and painted sitting in my car across the street.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bay Trail Art

Today I rode my old bike (never did buy a new one) down to the Bay Trail and explored the Albany Bulb waterfront park where artists create sculptures from the driftwood and drift-trash that comes in from the Bay or was dumped there before it was a park. Oakland artist and author of a book about the art at the Bulb, Jason De Antonis and his friend Osha Neumann (a civil rights lawyer involved in preserving the park) were just putting the finishing touches on this dog sculpture and arbor (if you click to enlarge and look closely you’ll see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background). He also made this huge sculpture of a woman that greets you as you come over the hill on the path down to the water. It’s enormous–at least 3 times the height of a person.
Dog sculpure woman and dog Woman sculpture
I made several stops along the way to paint a bit of a huge fennel plant,

Fennel

a view of the bay with San Francisco in the distance,

Bay

and a view of the wetlands from a bridge along the trail.

Wetlands

They’re all quick watercolors (less than 10 minutes) done in my small watercolor Moleskine.