Category: Drawing

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Drawing People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Subway Drawings

Subway-Drawings-Sept-06

Pen & Ink in small Moleskine notebook (click image & select “All Sizes” to enlarge)

Here’s a little collection of fellow riders on our subway known as BART this week. The bicyclist with his clip-on rearview mirror (bottom right) was sitting just a few feet from me and never noticed me drawing him. Ditto with the woman at the top left who replaced him when he got off–she stared straight ahead and didn’t notice me either, even though I was facing her two seats away.

The lady with the amazing hat at the bottom left was further away and sleeping, although she did wake up and see me staring right at her once. The guy at the top right never woke up. I was sitting in the seat across the aisle and turned to face him, which would have been rude if he were awake but he was clearly out for the long haul.

My BART ride twice a day is exactly 13 minutes so I don’t have a lot of time to capture people. It’s also bumpy, jiggly and jerky which can make it tricky when drawing things like noses.

Feline Resolution: After too many sleep-poor nights, I resolve that I am not going to not sleep with my cats anymore. Night after night they keep me awake. They lay down with me when I go to bed and as soon as I fall asleep they want to play, dropping toys on my head for me to throw (I have the only two cats in the world who play fetch, bringing me plastic squiggle toys (Fiona) or felt mousies (Busby), which I’m to throw and which they promptly fetch and return for another throw). They attack me and each other. Eventually I half sleep through their romping and chasing each other back and forth through the house. I guess they eventually go to sleep, but at 6:00 a.m. they’re attacking me again, ready for more play. Starting tonight, it’s exile for these two naughty kitties. I’m tired of being tired!

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Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

Just me

Just-me

Graphite (6B) in Aquabee 9×12 Sketchbook

Tonight was painting group and we couldn’t decide whether to pose for each other or just work on individual projects. I was tired and felt like sitting in one spot so I decided to try using a soft pencil and just draw myself. Like most self-portraits I’ve drawn, it’s not quite me, but almost.

Just for fun, after I thought I was all done, I decided to try adding watercolor. I printed the scanned drawing onto the same Aquabee sketchbook paper and then applied watercolor. The inkjet ink and paper seemed to resist the watercolor. It’s a little weird, but it was a fun experiment.
Just Me, color
Watercolor over printed, scanned pencil drawing.

I was inspired to try the soft pencil sketching by France Belleville’s pencil drawings of Gunter Grass and her stepfather on her blog, Wagonized and Laura’s sketch of her father on Laurelines when I visited their blogs today. Laura has such a free, loose, but right-on stroke and France makes every little squiggley line shape and form the person’s features and personality.

I love knowing how much more there is to learn, since learning is my favorite thing in the whole world (when it’s something I want to learn–there are many lessons I would happily forego)! And it’s great knowing how much I’ve already learned, and how every bit of practice has helped my drawing and painting improve.

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sketchy day

buddha2_001
Sketched with Wacom table in Painter (digitally)

Tonight I practiced digitally sketching using Painter. I was so tired this afternoon, I didn’t think I’d be able to muster up anything to post, but my little Buddha statue inspired me. Before dinner I tried experimenting with my new Kremer Pigments watercolor set, but after not enough sleep last night I was too tired to try anything requiring brains. So I just messed around with sunsets over the bay, doing about 5 of them in my Raffine sketchbook (which I still don’t like, so didn’t mind “wasting” pages). The Kremer pigments are definitely more opaque than I’m used to, and in this set there’s nothing I could use to make a nice pinky purple. Instead of using my regular palette too, I just goofed around with the Kremers. They’re such gorgeous paints, but I can see how they need to be selected judiciously, depending on what I’m painting. I think they’d be great for landscape painting.

I’m posting this since it’s what’s in the sketchbook for today, but I think it’s icky. Both images can be clicked for larger versions.
Icky-sunset

Watercolor in Raffine 5.5×8.5 sketchbook

I worked from home this morning but my internet connection had slowed way down, requiring much crawling around under my desk connecting and disconnecting things to test it. Comcast is going to send someone out on Friday, though now it seems back to normal. When my day job work was done, it was so sunny and warm outside I couldn’t resist the call of the backyard chaise lounge. I took a lovely nap out there, dreaming I was painting somewhere really warm (previews of my February painting trip to Puerto Vallarta, perhaps?).

Then my son drove up and woke me so I got him to help me earthquake strap my new 6′ high white bookshelf to the wall. It’s a great bookcase that someone had put out on the street with a “free” sign on it. I loaded it into my trusty Toyota RAV-4, cleaned it up a bit and now it’s all ready to be filled with all the journals, sketchbooks and artbooks that don’t fit in the studio bookshelf.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Solano Ave Storefronts (EDM #85)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts

Please click image and select “All Sizes” to enlarge
Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook

Today was the 11th International Sketchcrawl and I’d planned to attend. But this morning I decided I really wanted to take a bike ride instead. I believe there are no shoulds when it comes to my art life– I’m the only one I need to please. I feel so fortunate that so much of my time is my own and that, at least for today, the decisions I have to make are about such happy things. So I nixed the official sketchcrawl, packed my sketching kit in my bike bag and took off.

I rode over to Solano Avenue, planning to draw the storefront of Solano Cyclery after getting them to fix my kickstand. But their storefront was boring so I took a little stroll and saw this Chinese restaurant and it’s next-door neighbor, Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts. (This week’s Everyday Matters Challenge is to draw a storefront.)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts is crammed with Made in China chotzkes. I’m not sure what kind of Lifestyle they had in mind when they named the store but I don’t think it would be a good one if you owned all that cheap, shiny junk. The name always makes me think of Lifestyle brand condoms which makes me think the store should be selling vibrators and sex toys. I’ve never gone inside, so who knows, maybe they do, way in the back.

I sat on the ground in front of a wine shop to do the drawing. Then I noticed a conveniently placed wine barrel advertising the wine shop which was just the right height to stand beside and use as a table for my paints and notebook. While I was working several different people came over to see what I was doing and said nice things. I know many people feel uncomfortable having someone watch when they draw in public. For some reason I think it’s fun–people are always so nice and seem to be surprised and excited to see their own little world put down on paper.

When I finished after about an hour and a half, I realized I’d missed lunch. I picked up a California Roll from Kyoto To Go, the local sushi bento box store right across the street and sat in a little corner park and with my yummy lunch. Though I planned to make another stop to sketch on the way home, I decided to skip it. It was a fun bike ride home and then I had a little nap. A perfectly enjoyable day!

Categories
Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Meeting People

Meeting-People

Ink in Moleskine

I spent the entire work day in a meeting today that was all about numbers, numbers and more numbers. I filled a dozen pages in my little Moleskine sketchbook with drawings of people looking bored. They fed us a nice lunch and it was good to meet some of my work colleagues from other offices. The meeting was supposed to end at 3:00 but somehow the guy leading the meeting missed that memo.

At 3:20 he handed out a 50 page Federal RFP (Request for proposal) and said it would be a fun little “activity” for us to read through it and decide whether there was anything in the RFP that would make us think we would or would not want to submit a proposal. This was just an exercise–it wasn’t a current RFP–just practice. This was after we’d studied 16 pages of budget reports looking for errors, with the error finders winning $5 worth of Carl’s Junior gift certificates (woo-hoo!). We could win more trips to Carl Juniors for playing this little game.

None of us in the meeting are really numbers people and we were tired and grouchy and wanted to leave. The other people at my table revolted. One woman whispered, “They don’t pay me enough to do this!” and the other replied, “This isn’t in my job description.” We all just sat there belligerently.

The meeting leader looked over at our table and asked why were weren’t reading and I blurted out “We don’t want to, it’s too much!” (So very professional of me.) That gave another table courage to tell him we were supposed to have ended the meeting 20 minutes ago. He said that explained why half the room had already left and he ended the meeting. Unfortunately my boss and I still had an after-meeting meeting with him and his boss.

Finally we got to leave and since I was in downtown San Francisco for the first time in ages, I decided to go to Nordstrom and buy a little new makeup. Mine was so old that it was probably carrying botulism (actually that might not be so bad–isn’t that what they make Botox from?). Hopefully I’ll be able to convince myself to take the time to actually put on the new makeup. I figure I owe it to the people who have to look at me!

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters

Bread: Everyday Matters Challenge #84

Sourdough 2
Sourdough 1

Last week’s challenge for the Everyday Matters group was “Draw bread.” This delicious sourdough loaf (a specialty of the San Francisco Bay Area) was sketched from life using Painter’s digital pencil and paint tools.

My cats were very confused finding bread on my drawing table and my little calico, Fiona, tried to snatch a slice and make a run for it when I wasn’t looking. She has a thing for grains–I left a plastic bag of granola on the counter while I was drawing the bread and when I brought the bread back to the kitchen the granola bag was ripped open on the floor and piles of granola were everywhere. She also opens the cereal cabinet door, climbs in and shreds open the Cheerios box (doesn’t touch the Special K low-carb cereal though). She also steals my socks if I put them down when I take them off but I don’t think that’s related.

Even though this came out looking more like a marker drawing than pencil (I’ve since solved that problem and now pencil draws like pencil), I had great fun doing it. It’s exactly like drawing in a sketchbook, but somehow more freeing in a funny way. I’m going to make a “sketchbook” to hold my digital sketches too.

I used to feel judgmental about digital art, thinking it was somehow not “real” art–and maybe easier. It’s definitely not easier, or better or worse, just another art tool to explore and play with. I hope you don’t feel disappointed to find digital art here from time to time, not just watercolor. Watercolor is my true love, but an occasional dalliance with digital is fun too.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Outdoors/Landscape People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

It’s About Time: What I learned today

Old Teeth

“Old Teeth” (study for a large painting I’m going to make, drawn today from a combination of photos I took on Broadway in Oakland). Ink, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook. If you wonder why those hip-hop people want to have gold teeth, you might also enjoy a previous post here about a new invention I came up with in a dream for those baggy-pants boys.

 * * *

I spend a lot of time being frustrated because there isn’t enough time to do all of the things I want to do. Every weekend I start off being optimistic, with exciting ideas to explore for painting, drawing, teaching, learning; things that need to be done to care for myself and others; gardening projects, housework, paperwork, etc. But weekends (and most days) always end the same way: feeling disappointed because I didn’t accomplish half of what I thought I could do.

They say (whoever “they” is) that with age comes wisdom. Well I got a huge chunk of wisdom today, and this is what I learned:

There will NEVER be enough time to do everything. Not only that, there will never be enough time to do HALF of what my busy mind comes up with on any given day, week, month, year.

So all I have to do is accept the reality that time is finite and that my little brain, full of ideas, is not. Instead of fooling myself into thinking I can do it all, I need to reassure myself that I probably can’t do half of it, and just pick what I most want to do that day, do it, and rejoice.

When I told Michael about this discovery, he asked if that meant I’d no longer be living in what we call “Jana’s World” where time is this fluffy substance that is mostly ignored until it suddenly surprises me to discover I’m late, yet again. But I like living in Jana’s World and I’m not looking to relocate; it’s (Jana’s) World peace I’m after.

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Change (Diaper)

Diaper Change

Here’s my second Illustration Friday idea for the topic Change. This was fun to draw in Painter but I used my laptop so I could sit at my drawing table instead of standing at my desktop computer. But the desktop monitor is callibrated and the color stays the same regardless of the viewing angle. Unfortunately that’s not true for my laptop. So when everything was finished on the laptop and I transferred the file to my desktop computer to use Photoshop’s “save for web” feature before uploading, I discovered that the colors were horrible. Half of the picture was piss yellow and hideous.

An hour later, mucking around in Photoshop, and it’s sort of fixed. It’s all a learning experience but I’m going to have to figure out how to work comfortably and still have the color turn out right. Any tips greatly appreciated!

(Here’s my other Illo Friday submission this week.)

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Slam

Boy from the movie Slam
Sanford Draughting Pencil in Raffine 6×9 sketchbook

I finished watching the 1998 movie “Slam” tonight and I loved it! It’s about the redemptive power of art (poetry) in the life of a young African American man living in the Washington DC projects. When the movie ended I wanted more and decided to draw the lead actor. But in scanning through the DVD, looking for an image to pause and draw, I spotted this sweet boy and decided to draw him first. Now I’m too tired to draw anymore tonight. Since I’ve already had the DVD for a couple of weeks, I guess keeping it a few more days to draw from it won’t matter.

I’m going to cancel my Netflix subscription since I never seem to get around to watching movies. When I’m home I always seem to be more interested in drawing, painting, writing, or learning from and being inspired by other artists in the international art blogging community that has so enriched my art life.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

More little tomatoes

Tomato-basket

Ink and watercolor in 6×9 Raffine sketchbook

Searching my house for something to draw tonight I had to resort to looking in the fridge. Everything in my house just seemed so man-made and dry. I needed something alive and bright to give me enough energy to draw since I’m recovering from a funky migraine and feeling a bit bedraggled. These little tomatoes were shining brightly in the light of my fridge and they were fun to draw and paint.

The highlight of my day today was listening to an interview with novelist and screenwriter Nora Ephron (who is also a blogger) on the NPR program Forum (where it’s available to listen or download). Her new book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman” is a funny take on the insults of aging. She is one of my favorite witty writers. Her book “Heartburn” (about a failed marriage) has one of the most hilarious passages I’ve ever read about picking the one person to end up with who’s going to drive you crazy. She is so brilliant and funny!