Category: Food sketch

Sketching Dinner at Zaki’s Kabob House

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 21, 2010
10 Comments on Sketching Dinner at Zaki’s Kabob House

Jerusalem Lemonade and Lentil Soup, ink & watercolor

Last Tuesday night we met at Zaki’s Kabob House in Albany for some delicious Mediterranean food and sketching. It was a cold rainy night but the restaurant was busy. Sonia had called ahead to confirm it would be OK for us to spend the evening there sketching. We were further encouraged by the bumper sticker on the door that said “Make Art Not War.”

If you wonder why this sketch has a note saying “Paste Menu Here,” it’s because when I said I’d ruined the composition (pre-watercolor) by adding that glass on the right, Cathy said, “Just paste a piece of the menu over that spot.” I solved the problem by just not painting the glass and leaving the note instead.

Sonia and I painted at the table but Cathy didn’t like the dim restaurant lighting for painting so made many more sketches instead. I was happy that my colors turned out well despite not quite being able to see them while working.

Usually when we’re sketching in cafes we are unable to avoid eavesdropping on nearby conversations, always a source of amusement or amazement at what people say in public. But shortly after we sat down, Ellen, a member of our plein air painting group, arrived to join her realtor for dinner at the next table. After some introductions, and passing around of sketchbooks (including an invitation by the realtor to show them in their office “gallery” which we declined), we returned to sketching while they dined and chatted.

It was odd eavesdropping on someone we knew. Cathy appreciated it though, since they were talking about sofabed shopping, and Cathy is in the market for one too.

Tags Albany, cafe sketching, Drawing, eavesdropping, Food sketch, Glass, Ink and watercolor wash, Micron Pigma, Pen and Ink, People, Sketchbook Pages, Zaki's Kabob House

Art supplies Food sketch Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Rubber Mallet $5.95 and Tangerines

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 13, 2010
11 Comments on Rubber Mallet $5.95 and Tangerines

Mallet and Tangerines, watercolor & graphite

After a lifetime of not even knowing rubber mallets existed outside of cartoons, twice in the past year while working on projects I read directions to “tap with a rubber mallet.” I thought to myself, “Who has a rubber mallet? Not me.” And then used a regular hammer which didn’t work out too well to put it mildly.

So when I was shopping for bookbinding supplies at my local Dick Blick art store and I saw a rubber mallet sitting on a nearby shelf for only $5.95 I couldn’t resist. It was just so funny looking. I have no idea why they were selling it at Blick’s and what artists would be using it for, or how it could sell for less than a toilet plunger at the hardware store.

So I found a good use for it in the studio—as a still life subject—and it fits right in, don’t you think? Tangerines, rubber mallets, why not? Maybe my next still life will be of smashed fruit and a juicy mallet. But that will have to wait for a sunny day. No way I’m smashing fruit in the studio. It’s messy enough as it is.

Meanwhile I thought I’d check out what rubber mallets are really for and I found this on About.com‘s Home Renovation tools page:

“Admittedly, the rubber mallet is not the first thing on your tool list. But once you have a rubber mallet, you begin to discover many uses. Here are some common uses:

For ceramic tile, it helps gently tap tile into place.

Laminate flooring: great for this brittle material.

Tap carpeting onto tacking strips.

A “sounding device” if you need to hear what is behind a wall or in a pipe.

PVC pipe work.

Two tight-fitting sections of drywall.”

I can’t help picturing cartoon versions of each of these uses, especially with me behind the mallet accidentally tapping something into smithereens. And how funny is it that my blog’s spell checker thinks “smithereens” is spelled correctly but that the word “blog’s” is not.

Tags Art supplies, fruit, fruit art, rubber mallet, Sketchbook Pages, Still Life, tangerines, Watercolor

Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Pomegranate in a Teacup

Randomly grabbing items to sketch, a little still life composed itself: one of my sister’s teacups, an aging pomegranate and an Adobe user manual (I keep four of their heavy manuals handy as weights to flatten my sketchbook when scanning it).

I’ve spent the past few days making my first hardcover journal (more about that when it’s done being pressed). And now my current sketchbook only has about 20 pages left and then I’ll get to start the new one. I used to treat sketchbooks like they were so precious and couldn’t waste a page. I’m so much happier now that I use them for everything, and enjoy filling them because that means I get to start another one. I even subject them to sketchbook abuse, dragging it everywhere and not worrying if it gets bumped or dirty, sort of the way siblings poke each other as a way of showing sisterly love.

Tags Ink, Ink and watercolor wash, Sketchbook Pages, Still Life

Berkeley Drawing Faces Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting People Sketchbook Pages

Tuesday Night Sketching at Brennan’s Berkeley

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 4, 2010
8 Comments on Tuesday Night Sketching at Brennan’s Berkeley

Brennan's Bar and Restaurant, ink, watercolor and logo

I stood outside on a dark, drizzly night in front of Brennan’s Bar and Restaurant last Tuesday night, drawing until my sketchcrawl buddies arrived. Brennan’s recently moved to a new building, a former train station a block away from their former location under the University Avenue overpass in Berkeley.

I’d propped up my sketchbook on the hood of a truck parked nearby and immersed myself in figuring out the building. “HONK! HONK!” Suddenly the truck honked at me. I jumped, and moved away, thinking someone was approaching and would get in their truck and drive away. But nobody showed up so I went back to drawing. But then every few minutes the truck would HONK at me again.

Each time I jumped and then I heard guys laughing. One of the three silly, half-drunk men joking around near the bar was using his remote to play around with me. He came over to see if I was drawing him, as his friends said I was doing. Uh, no. But I told him he could pose for me. He declined and they left just as Cathy and Sonia arrived.

Brennan's Turkey Leg Dinner, ink and watercolor

We went in and ordered dinner. I have a thing for turkey legs so while Cathy and Sonia each ordered half turkey sandwiches, I got this huge plate of turkey, mixed veges, boiled cabbage (yuck, what was I thinking?) and boiled potatoes. The turkey was great and I took home enough for two more meals.

I switched to using a Pilot Varsity fountain pen, adding water over the lines with a waterbrush to make washes. It was so convenient sketching at Brennan’s. The light was good, the atmosphere full of energy, and we sat right near a water and condiments station so we could fill and empty our water containers a few feet from our table. Since it’s cafeteria style dining there was no waiter to care how long we sat there.

Cathy suggested we do some contour drawing so I drew the condiments at the next table.

I used to go to Brennan’s back in the 70s for their Irish Coffee (and for pitchers of beer with my women’s softball team after our games). Now that I’m not consuming sugar or much caffeine that wasn’t an option. But I did get a cup of decaf and it was worse than our office coffee so I figured I probably wasn’t missing much.

This couple was pretty good about moving between two poses. I found that if I just waited a bit they would return to the position I was drawing.

These guys at the bar were soooo nerdy. The guy on the left was actually wearing orange pants.

This week we’re going to the Berkeley main library to draw.

Tags Berkeley, Brennan's Restaurant, Drawing, Faces, Ink, ink and watercolor, Ink and watercolor wash, ink sketch, Pen and Ink, People, Sketchbook Pages

Animals Drawing Food sketch Gouache Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Sweet Pears and a Buzz with Busby

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date December 30, 2009
22 Comments on Sweet Pears and a Buzz with Busby

Pears on a Blue Plate, ink and gouache — Pears on a Blue Plate, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache, 7x5"

In the week and half since I gave up sugar and Splenda, pears have become my new treat. Not only are they crispy, sweet and delicious but they come in such pretty colors too. This sketch is a celebration of their gifts.

But meanwhile, giving up coffee didn’t go as well….

After five days of feeling wiped out, depressed, listless and witless I couldn’t take it anymore and finally had half a cup of coffee. That’s all it took: within a few minutes I was back to my old inspired self again and the blues were gone. Yay!

Maybe I’ll try to quit caffeine when I’m retired in a few years, but for now, each day is too precious to spend feeling like a zombie.

Tags Animals, blue plate, caffeine detox, Cats, coffee, Drawing, fruit, Gouache, Ink, Painting, pears, Sketchbook Pages, Still Life

Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Insipid Cuppa

I like to use my winter holiday vacation as a time to review my past year and sort out what I did well and what needs work. Since this is also the end and beginning of a whole decade, this process felt even more important this year. One thing that really stood out was that I needed to kick my caffeine habit and its evil companion, sugar (both fake and real).

So, after a week of being foggy-brained, sleepy and witless, I’m now free of caffeine, sugar, and Splenda* and finally starting to feel good and my inspiration is returning.

Without the sweeteners, decaf coffee and tea were tasting pretty vile to me so I began the search for a flavorful herbal tea with at least a hint of sweetness. I finally found a couple that I like but in the meantime spent a fortune buying seductively-named but ultimately insipid teas that taste like something you might use to clean windows.

Case in point: the tin of “Hot Apple Cider Tea” pictured above. It looks and tastes like hot apple cider about as much as a picture of an apple tastes like an apple. If I’d painted a cup of that tea, it would look like a cup of water. The tea in the cup above is Good Earth Tea and warm milk. It’s not bad. 🙂 But it sure isn’t a latte. 😦

*UPDATE: Just looked up “What is Splenda” and here’s what I found:

Splenda is made from cane sugar by replacing three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule with chlorine. The resulting molecule is not recognized as sugar or a carbohydrate by the body and as such, is not digested. Some refer to Sucralose as Chlorinated Sugar. Sucralose does not occur in nature.

Eek! I’m embarrassed to admit how much of that stuff I was consuming!

Tags caffeine detox, coffee, coffee art, Ink and watercolor wash, Moleskine, Pen and Ink, Sketchbook Pages, Still Life

Art theory Collage Drawing Food sketch Sketchbook Pages

Don’t Replace, Reface: Dealing with a “Bad” Sketchbook Page

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date December 10, 2009
15 Comments on Don’t Replace, Reface: Dealing with a “Bad” Sketchbook Page

Fresh : Luck, collaged pages — Fresh : Luck, collaged spread in 6x9 Fabriano Venezia sketchbook

Are you tempted to tear out the page in your sketchbook when a sketch goes bad? I used to do that.

When we were sharing sketchbooks Tuesday night, I pointed proudly to three pages that had terrible drawings on them of an object that simply wasn’t draw-able (or nameable–more about that in a minute). I said, “Look! I wasted three pages and they’re really ugly and I’m OK with letting them just be there.” Cathy the graphic designer, said, “Well, you know, you could just paste stuff over them.”

Is It Luck? Ink & gouache lottery tickets and business card (click to enlarge)

So when I visited my local donut shop in a moment of weakness (apple fritter: my drug of choice) I collected some random stuff they had on the counter: a postcard advertising a Tibet Day, some California lottery slips, the proprietor’s card, and the bag my fritter came in. I thought the picture they chose for the card— an Italian-looking chef—was funny since the store is owned and run by an Asian family. I cut stuff up and pasted it down (the bag was already sticky!), wrote and drew on them, colored with crayons, and painted on some gouache. You see a bit of the bad drawing/writing about it coming through the bag/blue paint.

Fresh Daily, collaged page: post card pieces on bakery bag pasted over bad sketch, and crayons and paint

When I wrote “Is it luck?” I was referring both to the lottery tickets and getting a good drawing. Is it luck when a drawing turns out well? Sometimes it feels like a sketch or painting can’t fail—it seems to paint or draw itself—a total gift. Other times it’s just the opposite and I have the feeling from the very start that the project will be a big FAIL. I try to recognize those negative thoughts and make them stop when I do, but sometimes they just won’t go away.

Oh… and the undrawable thing I was trying to draw? It’s something I found in a “Free” box on a neighborhood walk. A cute little wooden sorting device with numbered slots for 31 days on a sliding thingee, with three little drawers that could hold paperclips or other small stuff. It looks like a funky version of this only in oak color and without the clock.

I thought I might be able to use it for drying paintings on panels, but the slots were too narrow. It was way too boring and complicated to draw so after three tries I put it in the garage to take to the thrift shop with some other donations. I thought about returning it to the neighbor’s “Free” box but that seemed like cheating.

So when the sketch turns into a big mess, now I know what to do: don’t rip it out, don’t just leave it there glaring in its butt ugliness; just do what those TV commercials for kitchen cabinets advertise: “Don’t replace, reface!” And when the subject isn’t fun and/or interesting to draw, stop. Life is too short to waste what is meant to be fun time not having fun!

Tags Altered pages, Art theory, Collage, Drawing, Gouache, Ink, Sketchbook Pages

Art theory Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Macaroon Marathon

After struggling with sketching a coconut macaroon at Saul’s last night, I brought it home in a take-out container and then sketched it eight more times, in a duet with the takeout box.

Then I had my way with the sketches I didn’t like that I’d done at the restaurant (below).

Before I’d started the sketch above, I used the edge of the page to make a bunch of little thumbnails to play with composition ideas. This was inspired by a conversation I had with my sketch buddy Cathy. She’s a graphic designer with years of experience. Her sketches are wonderful with exciting line and great composition.

I asked Cathy what she thinks about when she starts a sketch. She said the first thing she considers is how the subject will interact with the edge of the page (or the border she sometimes draws first). She said she never “floats” a subject in the middle of the page; subjects are always cut off on one or more edges. Despite my thumbnails I ended up with way too much table and plate compared to macaroon and was mad at the sketch. So I used the space to write a note to myself about making better use of the page.

Then I went back to the second macaroon sketch from Saul’s and started doodling around with it. My doodles reminded me of the fence around Gramercy Park that was just outside the hotel I stayed in on a trip to New York a long time ago. With the fence, the scale of the macaroon seemed mountainous (or at least boulder-like).

Two other discoveries I noted on the page: 1) I’d divided the page almost perfectly in half (a design no-no), and 2) that I don’t like cropping things because I don’t want to miss out on a single detail or insult the object by lopping off some of it. How silly is that? I’d like to overcome this quirk and learn to put more focus on design, not just detail.

Tags Art theory, Drawing, Food sketch, Ink and watercolor wash, macaroon, Pen and Ink, Sketchbook Pages

Berkeley Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Sketching at Saul’s Restaurant and Deli, Berkeley

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date December 9, 2009
8 Comments on Sketching at Saul’s Restaurant and Deli, Berkeley

My sketchcrawl buddies and I met at Saul’s Restaurant to sketch tonight. Saul’s was really nice about letting us hang out for 3 hours and the food was delicious. It takes such discipline to draw it before eating it! The owner of the restaurant does wonderful drawings herself, as can be seen on their menus and website.

Pickles, Ink & watercolorPickles, Ink & watercolor

Except for breakfast, a meal at Saul’s always starts with their dill pickles.

I had a plate of grilled trout with a bright green sauces and very colorful veges: kale and purple cauliflower.

Then I got into a fight with a macaroon. I drew it, painted it, messed it up, and started over. Cathy and Sonia were ready to leave, having both done some really nice sketches, but I wanted to keep fighting with the macaroon, feeling like a flop. So I asked for a take-out container and brought the macaroon home. After drawing it several more times at home I finally won the battle with the macaroon which I’ll post next time.

Tags Berkeley, Drawing, food sketches, Ink and watercolor wash, Pen and Ink, Saul's Deli Berkeley, Sketchbook Pages

Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Thanksgiving 2009, ink and watercolor — Leftover turkey leg, ink and watercolor, Sketchbook 2009 Vol. 6 Page 1

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving with so much to be grateful for. We had a delicious home-cooked dinner with a turkey barbecued and smoked with cherry wood. Per tradition, I brought a big salad and as usual it remained uneaten. After dinner Rob played piano with Marcy on accordion in her former dining room (now art and music room), Tim dozed in front of a football game while Sophie and I sat at the art table where I did this sketch to start off a new sketchbook.

Later, when Bob the cat began playing piano (he jumps on it with a crash then walks across it repeatedly and hisses at you threateningly if you try to remove him) it seemed a good time to depart. We were all tired, happy and full, and called it a great day. (Best not to mess with Bob — he’s sent at least one person to the emergency room!)

Tags Cats, Drawing, Ink and watercolor wash, Sketchbook Pages, turkey