This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Skyline.”
Did you get it? Is it too silly? In case it only makes sense to me, the idea is:
Corny pickup LINE…in the SKY…ergo, SKYLINE.
Ink and watercolor in my sketchbook.
Author: Jana Bouc
I am an artist who loves (and lives) to sketch and paint in watercolor, gouache, oils and digitally.
I took a walk along Lake Merritt to the Oakland Public Library at lunch today to return some books and walked under this huge palm tree on the way. I snapped a quick picture and after dinner tonight, when I felt like plopping in front of the TV, I printed out the photo and did the drawing with a Pigma Brush Pen and then painted with watercolor. I had fun doing it while listening to a digital book from Audible.com. I’m glad I made the commitment to posting a drawing a day because this was a lot more fun than TV!
I also did these little sketches in less than 10 minutes on this morning’s commute to work. The guy sitting next to me on BART (SF version of subway) was watching me draw and halfway through said, “These are amazing!” as he saw the guy standing near the door take shape on my page. Usually nobody says anything when they see me drawing and I try to ignore them so I don’t get self-conscious. Since he spoke up, I asked if he drew or painted and he said no, but he does stained glass as a hobby. He said he was in the military and traveled a lot and liked that he could easily bring his stained glass work with him, which suprised me, as I’d think it’s fragile and heavy and would be hard to drag around. But then I was at my stop so I didn’t find out anything more.
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Back to work
A meeting: ink in small Moleskine notebook
Today was my first day back in the office after a 2 1/2 week vacation. The first thing on the agenda was a community meeting and anniversary celebration lunch, a very nice event, except for the 150 emails and voicemails awaiting my attention. This is a composite sketch I made during the meeting of people sitting at different tables. I drew directly in ink and was focused on drawing quickly and seeing shapes and angles and negative space and how it all fit together, rather than trying to get a perfect likeness of any one person, which is a good thing, because I didn’t.
I’m fortunate to work with a group of amazing, dedicated people who are doing really important work to improve adolescent literacy. I talked to my co-workers and my boss today about the idea of my working 3.5 days a week in order to focus more time on art. Everyone was supportive of my giving it a try. I’ll work from home half a day Monday and be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. I’m glad my workweek is only two days this week. I’m still a bit on vacation time and it seems absurd to spend all day in one spot working at the computer in an office, even if it’s a nice one.
Bottlebrush tree and flag. Ink and watercolor in large watercolor Moleskine.
This is the view out my dining room window this morning. It’s the 4th of July, a day to celebrate freedom, but it’s also the last day of my annual birthday vacation so it feels more like the end of freedom to me. Of course that’s so relative–I’m incredibly fortunate to have as much freedom as I do, and I know that. It’s just that it always seems to take until the end of vacation to unwind and figure out how to enjoy it.
I had a lot of questions about art and life that I was pondering as I began this vacation and I’m glad I’ve found some answers. The biggest questions I’m still working on are about time. I’m increasingly aware of how precious each day is. There are so many things I want to paint, do, explore, and learn. I’m trying to make choices that allow me to feel satisfied with the way I’ve spent each day, whether it’s in the studio, out in nature, with friends and family, at the computer, or at work.
One of the answers I’ve come to is that I want to reduce my day job from 4 days to 3 1/2 (and see if I can afford it) in order to have more time for painting. Another thing I’ve decided to do is to make an art plan, setting some goals for the things I want to explore in the next 12 months with my art, and how I’ll go about it. Since I tend to avoid art business and marketing in favor of making art which is a lot more fun, I’m also going to include time in the plan for framing, marketing and other art business in order to show and sell more. Now if only my vacation was just starting instead of ending…
I’d love to hear how you manage your life and time in order to make time for the things that give you pleasure and satisfaction.
Ink & watercolor pencil in large Moleskine watercolor book (above)
Watercolor pencil before adding water in large watercolor Moleskine (above)
First drawing: Ink in large watercolor Moleskine (above)
Today Michael and I went for a hike and picnic at the beach. As usual for the Bay Area in July, it was cold, windy and foggy. I wore two shirts, blue jeans, a bandana tied around my neck, a down vest, earmuffs and Goretex parka. I needed every single item for the beautiful one mile hike to the beach. We found a nice sheltered spot along the cliffs next to a tiny cave and were about to set up our picnic when I got a whiff of something that smelled more like a bathroom than a beach. It wasn’t going away so we did–we found another spot further down the little beach that smelled the way it was supposed to–like fresh sea air and seaweed.
While we were eating lunch we watched a young mother pushing a massive all-terrain stroller through the sand while carrying a baby in a front back with a toddler running along beside her. She set up camp, unpacking a folding lounge chair and deli sandwich for herself, and food for the little ones. After a few minutes her toddler, all dressed in pink, apparently needed to use the non-existent little girls’ room so the mom pulled out a white plastic, inflatable toilet seat which she carried over to the area we had so recently vacated. She laid it on the sand and held up a beach towel for privacy. When they were done, she folded up the seat and put it back in her bag and they returned to their lunch. We felt like we were watching a weird movie. Maybe all the regulars at the beach know that spot is the unofficial potty?
Once lunch was done, I got out my pens and watercolor pencils and enjoyed drawing the rock formations and sea in ink and watercolor pencils. I’d forgotten a brush so I added the water after I got home, but first scanned it to be able to show all three versions. These are Caran d’Ache Supracolor Soft pencils. I’d tried Faber-Castell first but they were too hard and unpleasant to draw with. These apply nicely, but I’m not happy with the colors they come in. I’d rather have colors more like my usual paint palette. Watercolor pencils are easy to carry and fun to use, and remind me of magic coloring books when I was a kid that had the color impregnated in the paper and you just painted with water. But they won’t replace my paints!
By the time we started the hike back to the parking lot, the fog was gone, the sun was shining, and I was down to an undershirt and jeans with all the other gear crammed into my backpack.
When I was taking a walk the other day I spotted these very nicely painted and landscaped pipes at the entrance to the driveway to the new two-story Target store in Albany. I sat on a fire hydrant alongside the road and drew them in my watercolor Moleskine notebook. I finally added watercolor tonight to the original drawing but wasn’t happy with it so did this second version in my notebook. I might do a half-sheet painting of it too…there’s something about the image that I really like. It’s all so nicely organized.
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Oakland Zoo sketchcrawl
Judith and I planned to go to the International Sketchcrawl in San Francisco today but realized we weren’t in the mood for the urban jungle and went to see real jungle animals instead. We spent a lot of time sketching the two baby giraffes playing together and being cared for by their families until we got too hot sitting in the sun so we looked for a cooler spot. That’s when we found the fruit bats. They look like fuzzy brown otters wrapped in black leather umbrellas. It was amazing watching them unfurl a huge wings in order to better block the sun from their eyes or adjust which of their many hooks they were hanging from as they slept. From what we could tell with them all wrapped up by their folded wings and hanging upsidedown, they have several long talons on each foot and then another convenient hook at the end of each wing. Their wings looked like the finest leather and their furry teddy bear bodies looked very cuddly. Ink and watercolor pencils in sketchbook.
I visited the Golden Gate Fields Racetrack again this morning. After freezing in the foggy wind for a couple of hours doing gesture sketches of quickly moving horses, sketching horses by peeking through a 1/4″ hole in the barn fence anda blah little painting of the bay (none worth posting), I warmed up in my car and drew this little parade of parked CalTrans trucks in front of the racetrack’s piles of hay bales. As soon as I finished the sketch the trucks all drove away. I plan to return to GG Fields and do some more drawing soon. Ink & watercolor in 6×9 sketchbook.
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Sticky” and I thought of lots of things less icky than this, but I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Ink and watercolor in sketchbook.
Everyday Matters’ challenge for this week is to draw or paint your mailbox. Below is a sketch of my front porch and mailbox (though I think I temporarily forgot everything I knew about drawing when I made it), plus photos of my actual painted mailboxes and a story about mailboxes and Art as Revenge:
Below is my current mailbox (my crazy cats and I with address slightly blurred to protect the innocent):
Below is my old mailbox: (Notice the required opening of the jaws to insert mail.)
Back in the freedom-loving Berkeley days of the 1970s, leash laws weren’t enforced and dogs could go anywhere with their owners. You never heard about people being attacked and bitten by pet dogs. Our friendly old dog Molly loved to bask in the sun in our front yard and would lazily greet people who parked on our street while shopping for produce at nearby Monterey Market.
We had been waiting for an important piece of mail–a much needed escrow check. After a week of not receiving ANY mail or notice as to why there was no mail, I spotted our mailman (who looked very much like R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural) at the end of the block. I caught up to him and asked why we had no mail.
He told me he wasn’t delivering it anymore if our dog was outside. He wasn’t impressed by my saying she was gentle and harmless. I demanded he give me our mail; he refused. I begged him to give it to me and said he could just put it on the ground and I’d pick it up; he refused. So I climbed onto the hood of his jeep holding my toddler, Cody in my arms, and insisted I wouldn’t get off until he gave me our mail. He threatened to call his supervisor (but couldn’t get to a pay phone unless I got off his jeep in this pre-cell phone era). We both threatened to call the police (he was stealing our mail, I said). We went back and forth like this for quite awhile, and we both refused to give in.
Finally, Cody announced he was hungry (and I’m sure confused by his mother’s very odd behavior) and then the postman announced that actually, he had no mail in his pouch for me. At this I realized I’d lost, got off his jeep, and from then on had to make sure Molly was indoors if I wanted to get mail.
But ART IS POWERFUL and I got my revenge. I kept Molly inside but painted my mailbox to look like her so he had to put his hand inside the dog’s mouth each time he delivered the mail!
Of course, I later came to understand how dangerous a mail carrier’s job can be and know how often they actually do get bitten…so Mr. Natural…er, Mr. Postman… if you’re reading this, I apologize.
Jana Bouc, Artist 
