Category: Every Day Matters

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Drawing Every Day Matters Illustration Friday Watercolor

Clean & Cold (IF & EDM)

Cold-wet-dog

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is CLEAN and the Every Day Matters’ challenge is COLD. I wanted to tie the two concepts together to make one picture. It worked (I think) when I remembered how cold and wet I used to get when cleaning my old dog with the hose after she’d rolled in something nasty and smelly. No matter how cold it was outside, I wasn’t bringing that stinky pooch in the house for her bath. I cleaned her with the hose and she showered me right back.

My thinking went like this: dog’s nose (cold, but not necessarily clean), floating ice cubes in bath water (clean AND cold but a waste of water to fill the tub), a towel turbanned self-portrait after a shower (clean, but not too attractive), a root beer float (cold) and an emptied glass (clean but I’d have to go out and buy ice cream…and eat it!)…and on and on until I came up with getting cold cleaning a dog.

Ink and watercolor (a bit of opaque white on the hose spray) on Arches watercolor paper.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)

Hydrangeas

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to sketch fresh flowers. These hydrangeas are from my hairdresser’s shop, Circle Salon in Kensington, CA. The shop is always filled with multiple bouquets of her stunning home-grown flowers–all of them more interesting than anything you’d find at the florists. Julie’s an amazing gardner and a great hairstylist too. For the series of Saturday watercolor classes I’m teaching, she’s letting me visit the shop on Fridays and take home some nice specimens for the class.

I wish my garden produced such beautiful flowers, but it takes more than wishing and I don’t seem to have the time, energy, or willingness to use chemicals required here in the fog belt of the San Francisco Bay Area, to do more than wish and water.

I drew directly from the flower with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine.

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Colored pencil art Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A bike ride for ink and coffee

Peets Coffee 4th Street

I took a Sunday afternoon bike ride to Berkeley’s 4th Street, an upscale little shopping street in a formerly industrial zone by the railroad tracks, about 4 miles from my house. People come there to do some recreational shopping and to dine, and many dress up in show-offy clothes. I felt a bit dorky arriving in my hand-me-down, shiny black bicycling shorts partially covered by a big, old white t-shirt with a B. Kliban picture of a cat painting a messy picture on the front, a bike helmet and bike shoes.

I found the shop, Castle in the Air, that carries Noodler’s Ink (highly touted by artists in the Every Day Matters group as the only waterproof ink that won’t clog fountain pens and great for use in the Lamy Safari pen). The gentleman working there insisted that Noodlers is not waterproof and showed me his smeared sample of the ink that he’d brushed with water (in a cool little handmade book with samples of all their many, many inks). While he was persuasive and fun to talk to (being another art supply lover and an artist) I decided to buy the ink and try it for myself. My Lamy is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I’ll see whether the combination is as great as people say it is (and if it magically makes my drawings as good as theirs!)

Then I crossed the street to Peets Coffee, got an iced latte, and found a table in a hidden corner on their little patio. I drew this with my Micron Pigma (which IS waterproof) in my large watercolor Moleskine. I added some watercolor pencil and water with my water brush but decided to finish it at home with real paint since I didn’t have the right colors.

I also experimented with adding some overheard conversation fragments into the drawing. The guy in the middle with the sun glasses didn’t stop talking the whole time I was there, so many of my scribbles are from his stories about his herniated disk, learning to drive, rude New Yorkers (he’s one), Oprah’s show about women being embarassed to talk to their gynecologists, Italians, and on and on. Instead of being annoyed, as I might have been, it was fun being a spy and writing down bits of his blathering.

As I got up to leave I noticed an attractive man sitting at a table in the sun who was watching me and smiling. I smiled back and felt flattered for a moment until I saw him moving to my table out of the sun as I walked away.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Watercolor

Draw a Recipe (not): EDM Challenge #75

Non-Recipe

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge was to write and illustrate a favorite recipe. I felt guilty that I haven’t been putting any effort into cooking in order to spend more time in the studio and couldn’t think of a favorite recipe it had been so long since I’d looked at one. Then Anita, an amazing botanical and nature artist on the Botanical Arts group on Yahoo wrote that she has a little plaque in her kitchen with these words and then I knew what to do with this challenge! Now I can hang this in MY kitchen and stop feeling guilty for my lackluster meals.

I already had the vegetables out for the watercolor class I’m teaching that started this morning. Often students find drawing and painting vegetables to be an easy way to get started in watercolor. But this group ignored the easy veges and jumped right into complex paintings. They’re such a talented group. I think I’m going to learn as much from them as they will (hopefully) learn from me.

This is watercolor on Arches hot press paper. I dragged out my old caligraphy fountain and dip pens, but they wouldn’t work right on cold press paper so I switched to hot press paper but they didn’t work on it either. And the ink wasn’t really waterproof (though it was waterproof enough to thoroughly stain 4 fingers). So I gave up on the caligraphy pens and just used a marker, which I’m not liking much, but, as my wonderful boss Ruth often says, “Good enough is good enough” or “It’s close enough for jazz!”

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

BART Commuters & Matisse

BART riders
Here’s the sketches I did on my 13 minute commute this morning and yesterday. I’m discovering that if I draw really slowly, even though the train car jiggles a lot, I’m able to do a better job of capturing a likeness.

Yesterday on the trip home, a young African-American man, slightly scented with marijuana, sat down facing me, our knees nearly touching. He had tightly braided cornrows and large, gentle but glassy eyes which he promptly soothed with eye drops. I really wanted to draw him and asked his permission–there was no way I could do it unnoticed. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

Then he reached over and took my Moleskine sketchbook from my hand, opened it to the first page, and carefully studied every page. A minute before we reached my stop he handed it back, still shaking his head slowly, saying “My life is all bad and….no, no….not drawing me…no.” (I couldn’t hear everything he said because of the rumble of the train). I don’t think he heard me either when I tried to say something encouraging. He was so young and already felt so hopeless about his life.

On a more positive note, when I opened my new biography of Matisse the first thing I saw was this drawing (click on it to enlarge):
Matisse
With the tilted head and closed eyes, I thought “sleepy commuter!” and was excited becase it is so much like the kind of drawing I’m enjoying doing right now. I’m only on the second chapter of the first huge volume and I’m already captivated.
Matisse2
As a young man Matisse worked as a clerk in a law office and “treated the job as no more than a minor inconvenience, enrolling without his father’s knowledge in classes at the free art school installed a two minutes’ walk away in the attics of the ancient, crumbling Palais de Fervaques. Classes were held before and after work, from 6 to 8 in the morning and 7:30 to 10 at night.” He made the above sketch 50 years later of that law office’s front door. It reminded me of Danny Gregory’s drawings. I bet there are no art schools offering classes from 6 to 8 in the morning any more, and certainly no free ones!

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Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Beach at Tennessee Valley, Marin County – EDM #74

Beach at Tennessee Valley cp water

Ink & watercolor pencil in large Moleskine watercolor book (above)

Beach at Tennessee Valley cp

Watercolor pencil before adding water in large watercolor Moleskine (above)

Beach at Tennessee Valley pen and ink
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.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Mailboxes: Everyday Matters Challenge #73

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:

Mailbox drawing

Below is my current mailbox (my crazy cats and I with address slightly blurred to protect the innocent):

Mailbox-real
Below is my old mailbox: (Notice the required opening of the jaws to insert mail.)
Molly-mailbox

Molly-mailbox Open

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.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Reflecting Pool at Blake Gardens

blakegarden-2-web.jpg
Watercolor on Arches 9×12.

I returned to Blake Gardens today, much better equipped for painting outdoors and did this 2-hour sketch of the pond from a different angle. I brought my new lightweight Winsor Newton watercolor easel and put all of my supplies into my granny cart (one of those tall wheeled mesh carts that you usually see old ladies pulling to the grocery store. I’d bought it a year ago to use like a janitor’s rolling cart and pulled it around the house with my cleaning supplies hanging from it and a trash bag in the middle–now it can do double duty since I paint way more than I clean!). Setting up, I clamped a sheet of foamcore on top of the cart which turned it into a handy table beside the easel.

When I arrived I had a delicious picnic on the grass under the tall trees. My back got tired halfway through painting so I laid in the grass for a while and watched the sky like I used to love to do when I was a little girl.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Life in general Plein Air Watercolor

Plein Air Painting at Blake Gardens (EDM: Someplace New)

Blake Garden

Plein air painting done at Blake Gardens, the 11 acre botanical gardens and University of California President’s Residence in Kensington, CA. (Open to the public weekdays.)

The Everyday Matters challenge for this week was to go someplace new and paint it. I’d never been to Blake Gardens before and I’d never done a complete watercolor plein air painting before except little sketchbook pictures, so I went to Blake Gardens and did this painting on a 9×12 Arches watercolor block.This scan actually looks better than the original, which was a little washed out.

I’m very fond of working in my studio from my photographs, with excellent lighting, comfortable temperature, a stereo playing my favorite music or audio books, and a comfy window seat when I need to sit back with a cool drink from the nearby fridge and rest.

Plein air (outdoor) painting is different! It was very HOT out so I picked a spot in the shade, but as the sun moved it was soon shining directly in my face. My white paper was blinding me. I’d look up at the scene and could barely see it–all I could see was white. My paint kept drying too quickly and I’d brought a too-small brush which was making icky streaks. I had to give up on wet-in-wet painting entirely and had trouble mixing colors because they looked much brighter than they really were. I spent the first hour just doing thumbnails, trying to figure out which part of the scene to put in the picture. It’s much easier to compose a painting from a photo than looking at the wide world in person!

I’m glad I pushed myself to try something new and will go back again soon, with bigger brushes, an umbrella and better snacks.