Category: Every Day Matters

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Drawing Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Dishes done (EDM #64)

Dishes done

Watercolor & Noodlers Ink in Moleskine 5×8″ watercolor notebook
(click image to enlarge, select “All Sizes”)

I love doing dishes. When I saw these, all nice and clean and lined up on my sink I had to capture them in my sketchbook.

I like waking up on mornings when there’s dishes to wash from the night before. It’s a nice, relaxing way to start the day peacefully. Doing dishes doesn’t require deep thinking, heavy lifting, computers, manuals, or electricity–just a sponge, water and soap. I can listen to NPR on the radio while enjoying the warm suds and squeaky clean feel of a plate as I line it up in the rack. I admire the jewel-like color of the dish soap, which I keep in a squirt bottle originally designed to apply hair dye–similar to the ketchup dispenser at my favorite greasy spoon. I reflect on how much I like the dispenser and the clear plastic sponge holder suctioned-cupped to the tile backsplash.

I look out the window over the sink and see the ugly rose bush from Home Depot that always looks straggly and think about replacing it. I ponder when my next door neighbor will landscape his yard and get rid of the ugly little red rocks from the previous owner. I admire the huge tree that I can see across the street and I urge the ivy to keep on growing that is very slowly starting to cover the soundwall at the end of our street.

Then the dishes are done and it’s time to move on to something more demanding, but I’ve had that little time to go from sleep to awake and have actually accomplished something tangible while still in my jammies.

(I keep changing my template, trying to find one that doesn’t either resize the 500 px wide Flickr images or cut off their sides. Do you find this type hard to read? Also, the comment option is at the top of the post in this template which seems dumb, and I don’t like the blue background).

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Every Day Matters Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Bubbie Hanging Laundry (EDM #88: Breezy)

Breezy - Bubby hanging laundry

Drawn in sketchbook with pencil, scanned into Painter, and digitally inked and painted.

I was very close to my grandmother and was born on her 50th birthday. She was very short and round and so soft…her skin was like velvet…well, very wrinkled velvet, and she always smelled like the sweet dusting powder she used. She had no clothes dryer–didn’t believe in them. She hung everything up to dry in the backyard, though she could barely reach the clothes line. Then EVERYTHING was ironed…even underwear, towels, and sheets. She had a special canvas laundry cart that she dragged the laundry around in that had a pocket stuffed with wooden close pins that I liked to play with. As she ironed she sprinkled the clothes first to dampen them (before steam irons) using a glass milk bottle (from when milk men delivered your milk each morning) with a special top that had holes in it and was designed for that purpose.

I was so happy a few minutes ago…I’d finished this memory drawing of my grandmother (Bubbie) that I’d been working on this week (which was actually for last week’s Everyday Matters challenge) and I’d finished this week’s Illustration Friday challenge and I really liked that drawing too–it WAS so cute and funny. And then Painter crashed just as I added the final, finishing touch. And then I realized I’d been working for two hours and NEVER SAVED that file!!!!! I can’t believe I did that! I was going to post this picture tomorrow and post the Illustration Friday picture tonight, but I can’t. It’s gone. And it’s midnight. I can’t do it over now.

Maybe losing my file was an omen–I’ve been trying to decide whether I wanted to continue pursuing/exploring digital art or stick with watercolors. If I’d done the drawing by hand, I would at least have something to show for the time, something to work with as a reference if I had to do it over. But I have NOTHING. Maybe this was the message I needed to tell me to forget about digital art and stick with paint and paper?

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 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
Every Day Matters Outdoors/Landscape Watercolor

View from San Quentin Prison (EDM #83: Water)

Bay View from San Quentin Prison

When I was driving home from San Anselmo (Marin County) Friday I pulled into the entrance to San Quentin Prison to watch the sunset on the San Francisco Bay. I took some photos to use for this week’s Everyday Matter’s Challenge: draw a body of water.

This afternoon it was really nice to get back to watercolor after spending yesterday struggling with the Painter software. I did this on an Arches 12 x 9″ watercolor block without doing much drawing first. I’m not sure if I should have simplified more–maybe deleted the foreground fennel plants or the electrical tower (I think that’s what it is) in the background. I also discovered when I finished that the reflection in the water doesn’t line up with the sun in the sky. (Ooops!)

Here’s the reference photo and a picture of the sign in front of the prison. It’s so weird that there’s a funky old prison on some of the most beautiful and expensive land in the country, if not the world. (click photos to enlarge on Flickr).

Bay vew from San Quentin Prison San Quentin Prison

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

For Labor Day – My Office: EDM #82

Labor Day - My office

I drew this from a photo I took of my office when I was leaving work for the long weekend Thursday evening. Since this week’s Everyday Matters challenge #81 was “Draw your art workspace” and I’d already drawn my studio the week before, I decided to draw my work workspace instead.

I’m lucky to have a lovely view of Lake Merritt and Fairyland Park. But I’m unlucky to always have to keep my blinds closed and never see the view (unless it’s raining) because the glare from the lake makes it impossible to see my computer and the heat coming in the windows makes it feel like a sauna.

…and I’ll be seeing it all too soon tomorrow morning.

Noodlers Ink, watercolor in Raffine almost 6×9 sketchbook.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Streetlights (Everyday Matters #81)

Streetlights

Ink & watercolor in 9×12 Aquabee Sketchbook (Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink).

Last week’s Everyday Matters challenge was to draw streetlights. The one on the left is on the corner of Carlson by Nation’s Burgers in El Cerrito. I spotted the middle one while taking a lunch-break walk along Lake Merritt in Oakland. The lamp on the right is on the Albany end of Solano Ave.

I drew the one below in my little Moleskine sketchbook with a Micron Pigma this morning while I was on the elevated platform at the BART station waiting for the train. It was right at eye level.

lamp

Categories
Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

What Makes Me Happy: My Studio (EDM #80)

My StudioThe Everyday Matters challenge this week was to draw something that makes you happy and write about it.

I love my studio and I love spending time in it. All I have to do to get happy is sit at my drawing table–the one in the far left corner–and start drawing. When I’m drawing or painting I like to listen to a good book from Audible.com or music on my computer. I wired the PC to my stereo system so the sound is great.

My house is a former duplex that I converted into a studio and a home. The studio was originally a living room/dining area so it’s nice and big, with room for me and six or seven watercolor students to meet. There’s even the window seat I’ve always wanted (in the far right corner) which I made by putting a sheet of laminate over a set of flat files and covered it in foam, an old quilt and some fake fur pillows.

The tall table on the left is made from two more sets of huge flat files with a sheet of laminate on top–a good spot for mat cutting, framing or demonstrating in class. People can gather round to watch or three people can use it as a worktable to paint as well. Behind that wall is the studio kitchen and the bathroom.

Behind where I sat to do the drawing is the door to the outside, my stereo, and a door to the rest of the house: two bedrooms, another bathroom, kitchen and living room/dining area.

The neighborhood’s foggy and not posh (oops–I’ve been listening to a wonderful book by Australian Bryce Courtenay,”Brother Fish,” narrated by actor Humphrey Bower and I see I’m picking up the slang) but it’s a friendly neighborhood and not far from all my favorite spots in Berkeley and Albany. I’m happy now from being in here all afternoon but now it’s time to go water the garden–one more thing that makes me happy.

Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in 9×12 Aquabee Super Deluxe sketchbook.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Ears to you: EDM Challenge #79

Ears-web

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is “Draw an Ear.” I tried drawing my own, but as it turns out, my ears can’t be seen by my eyes so I had to wait for innocent victims to venture into my web. Today was the day. First Cody came over to pick up laundry he’d left in the dryer so I charged a small equipment usage fee: sit while I draw your ear. He obliged by lying down on the couch and napping with ear nicely exposed. I had time to do it in ink first and then in pencil, which worked better. Watercolor would have been even more fun, but nap time was soon over. (His are the two bottom ears.)

Tonight Michael and I went out to dinner at Saul’s Deli in North Berkeley and then we watched a movie–well he watched the movie and I watched his ear and drew it. His ear was more interesting than the movie–some bank heist/hostage thing by Spike Lee with Jodie Foster and Denzel Washington with sub texts about Nazi war loot and the evils of violent video games and racial profiling. I didn’t stay up to watch the whole thing–sleep sounded a lot more appealing than finding out whether the good guys or bad guys win. But I did feel like a winner with his ear drawing. I like how it turned out, including the little hole from where he used to wear an earring back in the day.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Souvenirs…of Life

Tibetan-Bell

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to “draw a souvenir from a place you’ve been.” This is a Tibetan Bell. I’ve never been to Tibet. My father bought it for me at a street fair in Jack London Square in Oakland on one of his rare visits from the many places he lived in the U.S. and Canada. I loved the sound of the bell and he was happy to buy it for me.

I’ve been missing him lately–sometimes when I’m drawing I get glimpses of the amazing cartoons he used to be able to draw on command and wish I could talk to him about drawing and art. He and my mother both painted for a few years when I was a kid and both were talented photographers. I highlighted my mother’s paintings from the 50s here a few weeks ago, but all of my father’s paintings were thrown away by his second wife when he left her for his third wife.

Searching my house for souvenirs to draw, I discovered that my only keepsakes represent different periods of my life and the people and pets I’ve loved. And even those are few: my grandmother’s pearls and glass butterdish, a spice jar with hair from long gone cats and dogs, the books my father wrote, my wedding ring in a little box I painted blue, a folder with my sons’ grade school essays and drawings, earings given to me by friends and family.

Of course I have my journals, drawings, photos and paintings–those are keepers of my memories too. But I wonder what it means that I have no souvenirs or tchotchkes from places I’ve been. Maybe just that I don’t like to dust.

Ink and watercolor in WC Moleskine. I know I said that for a week I would stop painting when I was 75% done, but I was too tired again tonight to notice, and so put in the background when I should have stopped. It was a lot prettier with just a shadow and an all white background. I did stop painting the bell before I thought it was done so that’s a little progress. I’ll try again tomorrow.