Category: Drawing

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Drawing Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

An Art Lesson on BART

BART15

Ink in small Moleskine

This morning I got on BART and spotted the guy on the left at the end of the car in his knitted Cat-in-the-Hat hat, except that he looked more like Mr. Natural from R. Crumb Comics than the Cat. I only had a couple minutes to draw him and then a bunch of people got on and I couldn’t see him anymore so I started drawing the hand of the guy sitting beside me holding a tiny iPod.

After a few minutes he smiled at me and then started helping me, pointing out where lines that I was drawing as curved were really straight and where I needed to add shading. My stupid pen ran out of ink so I pulled out another, with brown ink. He recommended I try UniBall pens (which I like but hadn’t used for sketching). He was clearly a talented artist and a wonderful teacher — his recommendations were right on and offered with great gentleness, kindness and caring. I asked about his art and he told me was formerly a graphic designer but now worked for Apple in “technology not art” and only rarely does his own art anymore and then only digitally with a Wacom tablet and Painter.

I’d been surprised by how crowded the San Francisco BART train was since I’d been quite late leaving for work. It was already around 9:45 but many more people than usual were getting on at each station. My “art teacher” turned to his friends behind us and as they chatted about Apple products I realized that all these people were on their way to MacWorld, which was opening today in San Francisco. I was sad to bid him farewell when I got to my stop. He was the kind of person I would love to have as a friend or a teacher and I’m sad I never even found out his name.

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Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Fridge sitter

Busby on Fridge

Ink & watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook

This is Busby’s favorite perch. He sits on top of the stereo speakers that are on top of the fridge, somehow flying up there via a leap onto the counter, then the microwave then the fridge, then the speakers. The speakers are separated so some of his belly is suspended between them. I tried to teach him not to jump on the counter, but teaching cats anything has always seemed pretty hopeless.

Today was another cat fun day. Sometime last night while I was sleeping Fiona (not pictured…this is Busby) stole a package of dried split peas off the kitchen counter, carried them under my bed (where she also stores other booty such as Q-tips and pushpins and my favorite Smart Wool socks) and ripped open the package, scattering piles of those fun little pea pellets everywhere. I vacuumed them up (have to remember to empty the vacuum bag) and the rat-a-tat-bam-bam-bam sound of them being sucked up scared Busby so much he went and hid most of the morning. He’s found a really good new hiding place — I searched the whole house three times and never found him.

I was working on finishing an oil painting today. I don’t know why I force myself to finish things that have no chance of being successful, but I do learn from the process and every now and then I manage to rescue a painting and make it work. In this case I’m getting the chance to learn how to exploit the brushstrokes and thick rich paint that show in oils instead of trying to make oil paintings flat and smooth and detailed like watercolor. It’s amost as hard a transition as starting to use white paint. It’s just really foreign after years of painting with watercolor.

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Drawing Flower Art Photos Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Starting Over

Roses in bottle - value sketch

Graphite in 6×9 Aquabee sketchbook
(To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes)

I’ve been struggling with an oil painting of this image …

Roses in bottle

and finally realized that it wasn’t working because I hadn’t first done a value study and compositional sketches. So tonight I set aside the painting and started over with this sketch to simplify the image and study the values. I took the photo on a rainy day in December when the sun suddenly broke through and lit up these roses I’d just clipped from the garden that were still blooming despite the December storm.

As much as I love to draw, sometimes I’m impatient to get to the fun, juicy painting and so I skip the preliminary studies. Once in a while that approach works, but more often it ends up feeling like I’m wandering and lost in a maze, with no end in sight.

But if I start with a study or two first to determine what really interests me about the image, how I can simplify it, where I want the focus to be, where the lights and darks are, what I want to exaggerate or de-emphasize, and what colors I’m REALLY seeing,  then I have a much better chance of success and hence a lot more fun with the paint. I might still get lost along the way, but I know my destination and how to get there.

I wonder if I should have one leaf overlapping the front of the bottle. If you see any compositional problems or have suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them. Sometimes I find it so hard to see the problems in my own work. Just looking at now in the post I can see I need to lengthen the stem on the top left rose as it looks a little too short to me.

I’m going to start over, using my new sketch as a reference so I can focus on the light, and the colors in the bottle which was what interested me in the first place. If I don’t get tired of it, I might try it in oil, acrylic (bought some acrylics today) and watercolor, just for fun.

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Busby “Buzz” Berkeley – Illustration Friday

Buzz

Pencil sketch/study for monotype. Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook.
(To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

I’d been planning to work on sketching my cat Busby, also known as Buzz, to prepare for doing a monoprint of him today so it was convenient that today’s Illustration Friday cue is “Buzz.” Here he is! My next step is to do the drawing again with brushpen and ink, trying to work out making it just black and white. I want to see how extreme I can take it — how few lines and shapes are needed. But that will be tomorrow because…

Tonight is the opening party for my brother-in-law Tim’s show of his photos about building (and burning) the temple at Burning Man (photos) last year. So it’s off to the Lucky JuJu Pinball Art Gallery in Alameda, CA to party instead of painting. Here’s one of Tim’s temple photos:

dscn2812.JPG

Photo by Tim Englert 

More on Buzz tomorrow…

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Drawing People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Subway and Cafe Sketches

BART14

Today was back to work and back on BART. These folks (above) were my entertainment on my morning ride. These sketches are all in my little Moleskine.

Sauls

I sketched these people (above) at Saul’s Deli after dinner while waiting for Michael to return from the men’s room.

Peets

These folks were at Peets. I like walking up there from my house, getting a latte, doing a quick drawing and walking back home. It’s a one-mile walk and a pleasant destination. I had trouble with the guy’s wife because she kept talking and moving. He just sat there without moving anything except for his wonderful bushy eyebrows.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sorry Cody

(not) Cody's Car

Ink & watercolor in Raffine 6×9 sketchbook
(To enlarge, click image, select “all sizes”)

My son Cody is an excellent car mechanic, specializing in customizing 60s and 70s muscle cars like his 1970 Firebird. He wanted to put a drawing of his car on his new business cards. I said I’d give it a try but somehow managed to take his beautiful Firebird and turn it into a jalopy. I knew the proper way to do this would be to start with some pencil sketches, or work from a photo of the car in Illustrator or Painter, but I had a stressful day and just felt like drawing directly in ink for fun. (Sorry Cody, maybe you do need to contact that guy who does car illustrations or my blogger friend France at Wagonized who can really draw cars.)

In case you’re interested in “muscle” cars and want to see pictures and video of his handiwork, you can visit Cody’s website. There’s even a video of his car in my driveway with the engine running with full sound effects. I guess he made that video on the day that he put the car all back together and it worked! That must be a thrilling experience to take a car apart until it’s just a shell and then spend a year designing, building and reassembling every part of it. He replaced the engine with one he built, starting from scratch with the biggest Chevy engine block ever made. Many parts had to be specially custom-designed and built for the car. Cody used to be a wonderful artist himself, doing amazing drawings and spray-painted murals (also known as graffiti) and is still my best art critic, always knowing exactly what a painting needs. Now I guess he’s more of a sculptor, making cars into moving pieces of art. He’s a great problem-solver, incredibly determined and persistent (wonder where he gets that?) and a terrific mechanic. If you need work done on your car in the East Bay, you can reach him by email:  CodyBouc@yahoo.com

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Drawing Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages

Roofers & Baghdad Journal

Roofers

Pigma Brush Pen in 9×12 Aquabee Sketchbook
(To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”)

Sorry for the slim pickins’ today. Yesterday evening I was starting to come down with a migraine which hit in full force early this morning, wiping out all chances of spending time in the studio today. I did this sketch of my next door neighbor’s roofers yesterday morning before work, looking out my kitchen window. They never stopped moving and were wearing very baggy clothes. I tried to pretend I was doing one-minute gesture sketches in a figure-drawing group but it was more like five-second gesture drawings with the figures hidden behind sweatshirts and droopy pants. That’s not a missile the guy’s holding at the bottom right of the drawing, pointing to the guy loosing his pants, it’s a long piece of aluminum.

Since I don’t have anymore of my own art to share tonight (and am amazed I’m even up standing at the computer after a day flat on my back with my eyes covered), I thought I’d mention a truly amazing book I just got at the library. It’s the artwork of Steve Mumford and is called Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq. You can also see some of his online journal and images here. Anyone who’s enjoyed the work of any of the Everyday Matters journal artists including many of the people listed in my links must see Mr. Mumford’s work. As the liner notes say, “His everyday scenes of Iraq in bold, breathtaking watercolors and drawings…paint a human side of the war…from all sides of the conflict.”

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Cartoon art Drawing People

No paper: what’s an artist to do?

In Line at Trader Joes
Ink on Biscotti package 4.5″ x 5
(Click image to enlarge, select “All Sizes”)

So there I was standing in a checkout line at Trader Joes that wasn’t moving, with the store crammed full of pre-Thanksgiving shoppers who like me, put off doing their week’s grocery shopping until Sunday evening. I was already feeling kind of down and grumpy because of the end of the weekend and lack of progress/success in the studio today.

After a few minutes I was also bored and started trying to think of what I could do to pass the long wait. Naturally I thought of sketching but I’d left my sketchbook in the car. I searched my pockets and bag for paper to no avail. I looked around at the display in front of me, and considered ripping off a piece of the cardboard and drawing on it but figured that might be frowned upon.

I looked in my cart and found the perfect canvas — the back of my bag of Trader Joes Biscotti (to be exact, “Trader Giotto’s Chocolate Almond Biscotti”). So I grabbed my pen and drew the people in line in front of me and the checker and bagger. By the time I got up to the checkout stand, I was in a much better mood and would have been happy to stand in line even longer, drawing more people.

The checker apologized for the long lines and I told him I’d amused myself by drawing on the package he’d just scanned. He looked at it again and said he thought it came that way. Then he started chatting with me about his lack of skill at drawing and how his father won’t shop there because of the long lines, while the people behind me stood there waiting. To hurry things along I asked for my $20 cash back and he apologized again, saying he forgot about it because he got so interested in my drawing.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

My messy coat rack

coatrack

Ink in small Moleskine sketchbook
(To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”)

I was debating whether to draw something, go to bed, or watch TV. I drew something AND watched TV:  last night’s America’s Next Top Model that I’d TiVo’d (a bit of mental junk food is an important part of a healthy diet).

This messy coat rack was hanging in my living room by the front door when I bought my house and it’s always been handy, so it’s still there, five years later. It’s not something I would have intentionally bought or hung in my living room though. It always looks messy, whether it’s summer and hanging with hoodies, (when did sweatshirts become “hoodies”?) hats and visors, or in the winter, laden with raincoat, fleece jacket, down vest, umbrella and knit scarves. These things belong in the closet, not by the front door, the first thing visitors see.

Of course the people who come to my house are not “visitors.” They’re people who know me and won’t judge me for my housekeeping or home decor. They know I care more for function than appearances. It’s very functional to have my jacket by the door and makes it easy to grab or put away.

And most importantly, a messy coat rack is fun to draw. If it wasn’t there, the blank wall wouldn’t have inspired me to draw, and then I wouldn’t have had something to post today.

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Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

What I should have done first

Value study of M.

Pentel GFKP Pocket Brush Pen and Pentel #101 Brush Pen in Raffine 6×9″ Sketchbook
(To enlarge click image, select “All Sizes”)

More about the drawing in a minute, but first…

Tonight my painting group met to celebrate Susie’s birthday at Saul’s Jewish Deli in Berkeley. It was pretty funny that all five of us ordered exactly the same thing and thoroughly enjoyed it: grilled trout, veges and a big crispy potato latke with applesauce. Then we talked about getting older, aging parents, Susie’s adventures last week going to see the aging Rolling Stones, the pros and cons of dementia, and of course, art.

There’s a wonderful used bookstore, Black Oak Books, next door to the restaurant so after chocolate birthday cake, complete with candle, singing waiters and applauding restaurant patrons, we went to the bookstore where I was excited to find a book on Janet Fish. Her watercolors and oils of glass and other transparent objects have always been a huge inspiration to me. I bought that one and put an amazing book on Viennese Watercolors of the 19th century on hold until I can bring in a couple boxes of books I’m ready to part with in trade.

Now back to the drawing/painting:

Before I started the oil painting yesterday I should have taken some time to do thumbnail sketches to develop the composition, done a value study, and some drawings to become more familiar with the structure and characteristics of the face and torso. In watercolor it’s pretty important to do this first. But I was so antsy to get my brush in the slippery oil paint that I just went for it. Now while I’m waiting for the paint to dry I’ll work backwards, doing the preliminary sketches.

I thoroughly enjoyed doing this drawing with the very sensual and expressive Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (waterproof ink) and the Pentel Brush Pen (not waterproof). I added a little water with a regular brush to get a light ink wash for the gray areas from the non-waterproof ink that I’d applied.

Meanwhile I’m reading lots of library books on oil painting to refresh my feeble memory in oil painting technique. What’s interesting is that there seems to be about 26 watercolor how-to books published for every 1 oil painting book and most of the oil painting books were published a long time ago. There isn’t even an “oil painting” category in the library’s card catalogue (but there is for watercolor and acrylic painting). Is it because oils simply don’t require so many technical skills? Or are watercolor painters a better market, more likely to buy books?