Category: Drawing

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Paper Clips

Paperclips

Lamy Safari pen with Noodlers Ink wash in square HandBook Co. Journal
I know this isn’t a great drawing, but I’m soooooo tired so it’s good enough.

Tonight I watched the documentary Paper Clips. It’s about a middle school in a small rural town in Tennessee whose students were learning about the Holocaust. When one girl said she couldn’t conceive of such a big number as 6 million, they decided to start collecting paper clips in order to eventually be able to see 6 million of something. This transforms the town and becomes a huge, world-wide project. There are many profound moments in the movie which shows how teachers, journalists, and a caring community can be a force for good. After all the bad news and too many depressing movies about bad news, Paper Clips is refreshingly positive and deeply moving.

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Smitten

Watercolor version

Ink and watercolor in Raffine sketchbook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)

This week’s Illustration Friday word is “Smitten.” My original idea was to draw my Los Angeles sister’s rescued dove and parakeet that have formed a loving pair and live in a big cage in her little living room. I was going to ask her to try to send me a picture of them but remembered she doesn’t have a digital camera and I couldn’t really remember what they looked like. I guess it wouldn’t have really mattered since I just made this bird up anyway, without looking at any photos.

I started by drawing the idea this morning on a piece of scratch paper that had all sorts of other stuff on it so I couldn’t use it directly. I put the sketch on my Wacom tablet and drew over it, getting the drawing into Painter. Then I redrew it and experimented with trying to get the lines cleaner, but realized there were too many things I didn’t know about using the bezier curve tool and I was too tired to learn them today. I messed around with it in Painter way too long, trying out different backgrounds, trying to draw a cage, etc. I wasn’t happy with the way it looked painted in Painter (see below) so I printed out the line drawing layer on a piece of paper ripped out of my Raffine sketchbook. I painted that in watercolor (above) and stuck it back into the binding. I’m feeling less “smitten” by digital painting today and much more in love with watercolor.

Smitten-Digital version

Digital version done completely in Painter (blah)

Categories
Drawing Flower Art Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Westbrae Nursery Buddhas

Westbrae Nursery Buddha

Micron pigma ink pen, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)
(This was Monday’s post–I thought I’d clicked “Publish” but when there were no comments on it at all, I checked and discovered I had never actually put it on line….oops).

After working this morning I rode my bike into Berkeley this afternoon to do some errands. Last time I drove down Gilman I noticed that Westbrae Nursery had a bunch of Buddhas on display so after I finished my unshopping at REI (returning a clip-on umbrella that I thought would work for plein air painting but wouldn’t clip onto my easel) I rode over to the nursery.

I discovered that my new bike seat worked perfectly as a table for my teeny Winsor & Newton watercolor field kit. I stood with my bike just outside the nursery entrance to draw and paint this. One of the workers stopped by between delivery bags of manure and big plants to people’s cars. His comments: “Are you painting?” “Don’t you get tired standing?” “Wow you’re fast!”

Today was warm and sunny but by the time I started for home, the fog and wind had returned. Having not carried a jacket (a foolish mistake in the Bay Area), I had a chilly downhill ride home.

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Drawing Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sunflowers and Copper Pitcher

Sunflower4

This was the last of the four little paintings I did tonight.

Kremer Pigments watercolors painted loosely, without drawing; then Pentel Brushpen with black ink loosely drawn over the dry paint. In Handbook Journal Co. square 5.5 x 5.5 sketchbook (purchased from Wet Paint in Minnesota) .
To enlarge, click image, select all sizes)

Today was a gorgeous summery day in the Bay Area and I spent it with a migraine, covers pulled over my head, wearing a sweatshirt over my flannel pajamas, with my electric blanket turned on, waiting for the pain to subside and my cold body temperature to return to normal. Finally around 6:30 tonight I felt OK enough to do something enjoyable and headed to the studio. I decided to experiment with some new art toys and a copper pitcher filled with sunflowers that I’d used as a set up for my watercolor students on Saturday morning.

Sunflower1

First sketch: Ink (Pentel Brush Pen) in square Handbook Journal
(to enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

I did this ink sketch above as a gesture drawing to warm up. I’m loving the Pentel Brush Pen with black ink that I used in the two images above–basically a waterbrush with an ink cartridge. Unfortunately I was sent the wrong one–this one is not waterproof or lightfast, so I need to get the one Roz Stendahl recommended: Pentel Pocket Brush pen with the letters GFKP on it. That one IS waterproof and permanent.

The Handbook Journal Co. sketchbook was also recommended by Roz as an alternative to Moleskine watercolor notebooks. I give it a wholehearted thumbs up! It took ink and watercolor very well, and has all the other nice features of the Moleskine notebooks (elastic strap, hard black cover, back pocket, nice paper; however the pages are not perforated). They come in many different sizes and configurations and have more pages than Moleskines. I really like this square shape.

Sunflower3

Third sketch. (Click image, select All Sizes, to enlarge)

Above is the third version I did, first drawing with a Micron Pigma pen in square Handbook Journal and then painted with Kremer Pigments. I worked much more loosely than the second one I did. I like the way the leaves and pitcher turned out. (I decided not to post the second one since it’s icky and overworked–if you have to see it I’ll leave it on my Flickr as Sunflower2.)

Categories
Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Blind Contour Friday: Spooky (Cat)

SPOOKY (Cat)

Blind Contour Friday has issued the cue for October: “Spooky.” I thought my spooky cats would be suitable subjects, though they barely sat still long enough to draw them. In case you think I’ve forgotten how to draw, a “Blind Contour Drawing” means that you draw without looking at your paper and you do not lift your pen from the paper. You follow the contour of the subject with your eyes and your pen at the same time, and if you have to backtrack or cross over to get back to the beginning you do it, all without lifting the pen. Then when you’re done drawing, you can look at your paper while you splash a little paint on it, just for more fun.

SPOOKY (Cat 2)

The cat in the top drawing is Busby and the bottom is Fiona, also known as “that spooky little kittie,” since she’s quite odd.

They’re both drawn with ink in a Raffine sketchbook and then painted with Kremer Pigments watercolors.

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Red Pepper

Red Pepper

Watercolor in Raffine sketchbook (to enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”)

I hadn’t planned to paint this evening, being tired and over-stimulated from day one of our two day annual staff meeting/retreat combined with a little too much urban grit. But I realized that painting was exactly what I needed to calm and center myself.

We used to hold our staff retreats at a lovely Sonoma wine country retreat center where we stayed overnight and relaxed while doing the learning, reflecting on the past year, and planning for the next year. But it became increasingly more difficult for people to leave growing families and other parts of their lives for work retreats so we started having them in Preservation Park, a charmingly restored group of Victorian buildings in downtown Oakland.

Walking back to our office at lunch time, about a mile away from the meeting, the things I saw made me wish that there was such a thing as iPods for the eyes; sort of like rose-colored glasses, I suppose. Just like listening to an iPod can tune out the sounds of traffic and annoying people talking on cell phones, putting on these glasses would allow you to see lovely gardens, the ocean, sunsets…like music for the eyes. Much better than what I saw today: various mentally ill or drug-crazed people ranting; a man peeing on the sidewalk as we passed by, requiring us to step out of the path of the urine heading towards us; an old woman lying on the sidewalk screaming in pain surrounded by paramedics; the many empty, shuttered storefronts. Even in our nice meeting room we couldn’t get away from the grit–a homeless guy in a bright blue wig wandered into our meeting room but fortunately turned around and left.

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Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages

Dad’s drawings: A tiny treasure found

In a recent post I mentioned that sometimes when I’m drawing I’m wistfully reminded of the wonderful cartoony sketches my dad used to do. I remember one time he drew me, all knobby knees and elbows and I loved seeing my image appear–it was like magic! I thought none of his drawings or paintings remained, having been angrily disposed of by his second to last wife (all right, his second wife, but it was all so dramatic and scandalous at a time when divorce was rare and he was moving on to his third and last wife.)

When I was helping my mom try to find an old photo album in her garage yesterday, we found a tiny greeting card-sized album containing mementos of her marriage to my dad–a few wedding photos and some cards and sketches he’d made for her when she was pregnant with me. I felt like I’d found an absolute treasure and was so pleased that she allowed me to take his sketches with me.

My dad died a few years ago around this time of the year so it’s really nice to be able to remember him now through his drawings and to share them with you on my blog.

(All of the following images by my dad, Howard Goldstein, can be enlarged by clicking on the image and then on “All Sizes”)

Below: Charting the labor pains “June 17, June 18” (I was born on June 19th.)
dad 2

Below: “RivaLee Enters A Room”
dad 3

Below: Talking to the doctor: “And then at 2:16 she had a harder pain but at 2:27 she…”

dad 1

These were all drawn in pencil on the back of paper that said “Enrollment Blank for the California School of Screen Process,” a mail-order art school business my father and two uncles ran for a while in the late 1940s. I guess by the time of my birth the forms had become scratch paper and the school was no more. According to the Enrollment Blanks, their school offered a diploma, a 10 page booklet on how to conduct a profitable business and “10 individual, easy to read, simple to understand lessons that will give practical experience” along with a “Complete Kit of Supplies: Paints, silk, materials, photographic supplies, frame, squeegee, stencil knife, tacks, hinges…in fact, all the materials necessary to complete the course.” Fortunately they all went on to have very successful careers in their chosen professions.

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Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Dining with Mom

Dining with Mom

Ink drawing in 6×8 Strathmore sketchbook. Drawn at the airport waiting for the plane home.

I made a one-day trip to Santa Monica to visit my mom and sister today. She took us out to lunch (my L.A. sister and her son are across the table from my mom and I–that’s me with my hand on my head trying to get small and hide) at Izzy’s, a nice Jewish deli.

While we were looking at our menus, there was a fly buzzing around our table. Now those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while know that my mom is a bit of a character–the sort who has lots of nerve (or chutzpah as it’s known in Yiddish) to demand extra this, special that, and then takes home most of the stuff on the table (or who, when hospitalized, demands a new mattress and a room with a better view…and gets it).

So we’re all sitting there, trying to decide what to order, when my mom starts waving her menu at the fly, trying to make it go away. It doesn’t. So she takes her hefty menu and swats the fly against the window and SPLAT! She kills the fly, leaving a nasty splotch on the window and the quite large and chunky, dead fly, stuck to the back of her menu.

My mom and I turn to each other and start laughing, realizing what she’s done and what a mistake it was. My sister and her son are totally grossed out, she being a vegan animal rights activist who would never kill a fly–she’d probably make a little nest in a box for it, and keep it with all the other rescued creatures in her apartment.

Just then the nice limited-English proficiency waiter arrives to take our order and reaches for Mom’s menu which she’s propped up against the window, fly side in, trying to hide the mess. I felt bad for the waiter and spoke up–“She killed a fly with the menu…see…it’s right there.” So, embrazened, she says, “Yes, and there’s a mess on the window that needs to get cleaned” and pointed to the splot on the window. He says “No problemo, I’ll clean it.” But I think he meant the menu. After he took our orders and the menus, that was the last we saw of him.

Our food was delivered by a grumpy waitress, only made more grumpy, I’m sure, by mother’s requests for extra slices of bread (to turn one sandwich into two), 3 takeout boxes, 2 bags and her paltry 10% tip.

We actually had a fun day together, walking on the beach, driving around looking at historic mansions in Santa Monica near Malibu, and doing a bit of organizing in her garage and closet. It was great seeing her feeling so much better and being realtively active again at 83.

Categories
Drawing Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Quiet

Quiet
Drawn and painted using Painter & Wacom tablet (click image and select “all sizes” to enlarge)

I had a few ideas for this week’s Illustration Friday challenge and this one seemed the more upbeat–the other two involved coffins and dead people (they are very quiet, though maybe not too attractive).

I love libraries and anything having to do with books. My “day job” is for a literacy organization and all of my co-workers are also book lovers. I have fond memories of family trips to the library when I was a kid, and also with my sons when I became a parent (and now with my little next-door-neighbor kids).

I really like drawing with the Wacom tablet and Painter when I’m trying to make a picture up from my imagination rather than drawing from life or a reference photo. I can keep sketching and just let images appear–not being exactly sure where I’m going. It’s fun to see who and what appears on the screen. Because I can keep erasing and trying new things on new layers and move things around, I can keep sketching a scene without throwing away tons of paper or sitting in a pile of eraser stubble. It seems a little like sculpting–carving an image out of a bunch of scribbles.

Technical stuff that probably nobody is interested in:
I’m still having trouble with converting Painter files to Photoshop — even if I convert to TIFF as the Painter tech support guy told me to do (because Painter converts it’s files to CMYK instead of RGB when it creates a Photoshop-compatible file), golden yellows look lemon colored. But I have determined that it’s not a problem between to my two computer screens. I opened the Painter file side by side with the Photoshop file on my desktop PC and could see that it was Painter/Photoshop problem not Desktop monitor/Laptop screen. The good news is I’ve learned how to use yet another function in Photoshop: Using Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation and tweaking the hue of the yellow channel solves the problem, without having to buy a new screen or anything else. This is also helpful when correcting scan color problems.

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Figure drawing in the dark

Figure2

figure3 Figure1

Wash pencil, ink, watercolor in Aquabee 9×12 sketchbook (Click images to enlarge, select “all sizes”)

After a break of over 20 years, I returned to the figure drawing group that has been going on for much, much longer than that at U. C. Berkeley. The group is still open to the public, there is no teacher or instruction, and the fee has only gone up from $3.00 a session to $4.00. It is now on Friday nights (6:30-9:30) and Saturday mornings (10-1) in Krober Hall.

Barbara and I went tonight and had a good time drawing the handsome and muscular African-American model with long braids/dreads. Aside from the usual difficulties of doing figure drawing, the large room was poorly lit. There were a few clip-on floodlights reflecting off the walls for artists to see their work and a photo lamp bounced into a black umbrella lighting the model. It provided nice shadows and highlights on the model but it was very hard to see details like what was foot and what was fabric. I was far from the wall lights so had trouble seeing what I was drawing (excuses, excuses, I know).

I’m really happy to get back to figure drawing and to spending time with my good friend Barbara, after many years of work and family responsibilities intervening. Through all those years we kept saying that one day we’d get back to the days of meeting for tea during the day and doing art together again. And at last we’re doing it! We had tea and pancakes after walking to La Note (a “French” cafe with snobby, French-accented waitstaff but delicious food) for her birthday breakfast and then tonight went out to draw. Life has made a nice circle!