Category: Gardening

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Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Life in general

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is Getting Brighter

Lilly Amid the Pruned Hydrangeas, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Volunteer Lilly Amid the Pruned Hydrangeas, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

All my time and creative energy for the past few weeks has been given to sorting, discarding, organizing and moving things as I downsize my living space and move to my new studio. All the studio furniture and most of the painting supplies and gear are in and I’ve emptied and removed almost all the big plastic bins on my steel shelving in the former garage, readying the space for art stuff and still life objects.

One bin was filled with 70+ old paintings on panels that I’d saved over the past few years after my annual January review-and-dump sessions. I’m keeping just 20 of the old ones and another 20 from last year that I like and dumping the rest. One cool thing about this process is that I could easily see where each reject painting went wrong, whether it was drawing, values, composition, and/or color choices. Hopefully that knowledge will help prevent making those mistakes so often in the future.

The Reliable Lilly, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
The Reliable Lilly, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

I also emptied a huge bin filled with family photos that never made it into albums. I filled a trash can with negatives and pics of pretty places and blurry faces. Now all the photos in their envelopes fit in one large file cabinet drawer. Those photos are still in great shape, but the ones in the family albums (with the sticky stuff behind the photos) are fading badly. Later I’ll pull those photos out of the albums and put them in envelopes or boxes too, as they suggest on Small Notebook, a great organizing/simplifying website.

My house is pretty much sorted out now, and in a week or so I should be back to “normal” life, painting and sketching regularly again. The rental unit still needs some finish work, but that can go on behind the scenes, without messes in my living space or cat-terrorizing-power tools and men in boots stomping through the house.

Categories
Drawing Flower Art Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

A Bit of Spring Before Thunder and Lightening

Calla Lillies, ink & watercolor
Calla Lillies, ink & watercolor

Tonight it is thundering and lightening and pouring down buckets of rain. But there was a warm sunny day last week when I was able get out in the garden and sketch a bit. Callas are so graceful and such lovely volunteers, popping up all on their own wherever they please.

 

My tiny fig tree, ink & watercolor
My tiny fig tree, ink & watercolor

 

Just after my friend Barbara finished writing her book about growing fruit trees and delivered the manuscript to the publisher, she also delivered to me a baby fig tree that she couldn’t find a space for her in garden.

I was so excited to see that my new baby tree made it through the worst of the winter and was no longer just a stick. It now has actual leaves sprouting from the tip. In case you can’t tell from my sketchy drawing, those are random rocks and bricks I placed around the baby tree as a warning to the gardeners so they wouldn’t mow over it.

Categories
Art business Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

Between a Rock and… a Request for Help

Moss Rock Grows Moss, ink, Pentel Brush Pen & watercolor
Moss Rock Grows Moss (typo--it's 2011!) ink, Pentel Brush Pen & watercolor

After ten years this very large rock sold to me as a “Moss Rock” and installed in my front garden has finally grown a patch of moss. It looked so pretty and the day was unseasonably warm and sunny so I couldn’t resist going out to sketch it. I sat on my porch and drew the mossy rock while my usually indoor kitties joined me in the sun.

And now my request for advice:

I need help figuring out how to sort/store my oil paintings. I have at least a hundred oil paintings and plein air studies on panels (probably more) that I’ve done over the past few years. I’m sure for some people it’s simple: just sell them all.

But if you’re like me and still have many paintings on hand, I’d love to hear how you organize, catalog, store and/or protect them from damage. I have many watercolors on paper in large flat files sorted by subject matter, with drawers labeled accordingly. But I haven’t figured out a good system for my oils.

When I get a request from someone wanting to purchase a painting it can be challenging to find it and I always have my fingers crossed that it hasn’t gotten damaged.

My questions:

ORGANIZING: Do you store your paintings by subject? Size? Date? Inventory number (requires entering in art tracking program)? OR…just skip the organizing and spend the time painting instead?!!

STORAGE: Should they be separated with wax paper when stored touching each other? Does it matter if they’re in the dark?  My garage is fairly dry but not insulated so is affected by weather. Is it ok to store oils on panels in Clearbag envelopes to protect their surface?

At the beginning of the year I usually sort through the past year’s paintings stored vertically on shelves like books in my studio. I dump the losers, label the keepers, and move older paintings to shelves in the garage. This year I had the flu during my two-week holiday vacation so never did the “dump and sort” so paintings have piled up in the studio shelves and storage closet and there are more drying.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Categories
Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

First Tomato of the Year of the Foggiest Summer Ever

No. 1 Tomato, ink & watercolor
No. 1 Tomato, ink & watercolor

Despite this being the coldest summer in the San Francisco Bay Area that I can remember, my tomato plants produced their first little, shiny, red tomato. Now if we’d just get some sun instead of wind and fog, the green ones might get a chance to ripen too.

Ironically, last February some news reports warned that due to global warming, fog along the Californian coast had declined by a third over the past 100 years; the equivalent of three hours a day, dropping from 56 to 42 percent of the time. Meanwhile another report came to the opposite conclusion, saying, “The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.”

All I know is that this is the first summer that my down comforter and electric blanket have remained on my bed all the way through July. I wouldn’t want to trade for the extreme heat in other parts of the U.S. and the world, but it would be nice to have a little bit of summer before fall!

P.S. In case you have sharp eyes and noticed that the stem behind the tomato seemed to have previously held four tomatoes, you’re right. It was leftover from a purchased bunch of tomatoes on the vine but I thought it was cute and would look nice in this picture.

Categories
Animals Emeryville Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Ground Squirrel and Mysterious Hole

Emeryville Marina Ground Squirrel, ink & watercolor
Emeryville Marina Ground Squirrel, ink & watercolor

After a delicious breakfast on the patio at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Diner in Emeryville last Sunday, my friend Michael and I walked around the Emeryville Marine. He’s very patient with my need to stop and pet dogs and to take photos of things when I can’t sketch (can’t because he doesn’t have that much patience). I loved this cute little guy’s Joe Casual pose. When I got home I sketched him and his portrait now has the place of honor as the first page in my new journal.

Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, Emeryville, color photo
Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, Emeryville, color photo (I so wanted to sketch the scene when I was there, but also wanted to socialize so I took a photo and made a note to come sketch at Rudy's on a Tuesday night with my sketch buddies.)

Mysterious Hole

Meanwhile something dug a 6″ wide hole and tunnel under the grass in my backyard. I searched online, trying to find out what kind of animal dug the hole. I found this website that tells you, based on the diameter of the hole and the mounding of the dirt around it. According to that site and this one, the most likely options were armadillo, fox or badger.

Except I live in urban northern California where we definitely don’t have armadillos, badgers or foxes. We do have opossums and raccoons, but possums live in trees, not burrows, and both raccoons and possums have soft hands so their only digging is for grubs just under the sod.

Worried that it could be some huge kind of rat, I called the county’s Vector Control Department (love the euphemism “vector” for nasty critters that spread disease). A very nice gentleman came out this morning but he couldn’t figure it out either, although he mumbled something about skunks but then said not.

I followed his instructions to dig up and fill in the hole, lay a board next to it, sprinkle the board with baby powder and check it mornings looking for footprints in the powder. If the critter comes back he’ll leave his footprint and then we’ll know what it was. Maybe it’s a very small heffalump.

Categories
Animals Berkeley Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plants Sketchbook Pages

Barbara’s Baby Chicks and Garden

Auracana chicks, 9 days old, ink & watercolor
Auracana chicks, 9 days old, ink & watercolor

My best friend Barbara ordered baby chicks by mail. She’d built a little hen house from scrap lumber and had it all ready for them. So she was surprised when the bundle of chirping chicks arrived with instructions to keep them indoors at 90°F for several weeks. Instead of being in the garden when we came to sketch they were living in the upstairs guestroom/studio in a big box with a heat lamp.

We were greeted at the garden gate by Gertie, her big, old, sweet Sharpei/Mutt.

Gertie the Garden Greeter
Gertie the Garden Greeter

I tried to get her to pose for me but she was a bit unclear on the concept.

Garden path with cactus, ink & watercolor
Garden path at sunset with cactus sculpture. Ink & watercolor

Barbara’s garden (photos from previous post) is abundant with flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, wild birds, her ceramic sculptures (the 3′ tall cactus above is actually made of glazed ceramic), her mosaics and the fabulous scent of healthy growing things. It’s a small garden in North Berkeley, but feels like a visit to the country far from urban stress. Her next door neighbors are musicians and so our sunset sketching was accompanied by birdsong and live music playing softly next door.

Elephant, sun/moon plate and potted bamboo
Elephant, sun/moon plate and potted bamboo

One of Barbara’s many garden still lifes. Every few steps in her garden (and in her jewel of a cottage) there is another such treasure, but she is the best treasure of them all!

Categories
Drawing Flower Art Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Painting Rose

Can’t Resist Those Roses

Irresistable Roses, ink & watercolor
Irresistable Roses, ink & watercolor

On a day that felt like a marathon of busyness I couldn’t resist pausing this afternoon to sketch roses from my favorite bush which was putting on a glorious show of snazzy blooms.

I like that I can turn my journal sideways and paint across the centerfold to double the size of my “canvas,” but it’s a little sad and distracting having that strong fold line across the middle. I’d thought of painting on a sheet of watercolor paper instead of in my journal but I had the silly idea that there wasn’t time for that and anyway my journal was feeling a little neglected.

I’ve spent the past couple of days catching up on non-art stuff, like cleaning the house from top to bottom, finally dealing with a pile of paper that needed filing or doing, and using the FURminator (best invention ever!) on my two cats, filling an entire empty Kleenex box with fur that would have been shed otherwise. I saved the big ball o’ fur, thinking it might be fun to use in an art project but  haven’t figured out what yet.

Categories
Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

Hydrangeas (and me) in Progress

Hydrangeas in progress, ink & watercolor
Hydrangeas in progress, ink & watercolor

We had a sunny day after months of rain, so I took a walk around my garden. I was happy to see the hydrangeas coming back after having been cut down to little woody stalks. The three I’d planted after the comical hydrangea planting fiasco were all sprouting and there was a new one, a volunteer that appeared on its own volition.

And I too feel cut down to my woody stems, stretched thin by all I try to do.

So I’ve been thinking about who I am as an artist, who I want to be, what work brings me the most joy or the most suffering, my artistic strengths and weaknesses, and how I can make the time I spend on art as satisfying as possible.

I’m so grateful for artist friends like Barbara and my sister, who are good listeners and understand the challenge of having so many (too many?) interests and artistic pursuits to follow. Or, as Barbara writes, we’re “Never Bored” (or “Never B-ed” as she spelled it, for reasons she explains in her blog post).

Ultimately my goal is a more balanced life; I know that to stay healthy, along with time for art, I need to make more time for exercise, relaxation and play. (And some of my best art-making has been play; it just doesn’t have to be so darn serious!)

And like my hydrangeas, some good ideas are starting to bud and bloom about how I can nurture my most rewarding art pursuits now, while putting off or letting go of the others until more of my time is my own.

Categories
Flower Art Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

Geranium Getting Going (Except it’s a Camellia)

Camelia Buds, ink & watercolor
Camelia Buds, ink & watercolor

In a momentary memory lapse I wrote “Geranium Getting Going” in large letters in my sketchbook under this image. Then I thought, “Wait a minute, aren’t geraniums those red, ruffled, bitter smelling flowers often found in window boxes or untended and leggy in sad little gardens that someone has given up?”

And then it came back to me, DUH! This is a Camellia, not a Geranium. From a Camellia bush that I planted and that lives right outside my studio door and always blooms in the winter. It’s full of buds now and soon will be blooming madly.

I’ll just blame the memory lapse on the 4 hours of sleep I got last night as a result of working into the wee hours rebuilding my website, which is nearly done. I’m a bit disappointed that after all my work I’m finding some design issues that may be limitations of the platform I chose after much research last summer. I’m even tempted to start over on the system I would have chosen if I knew then what I know now. But this service comp’d me several years of hosting for free (because of all their system screw ups when I first started the build last summer) and I’ve already done so much work that starting over, when I’d rather be painting anyway, seems pointless.

If you would be willing to visit the new site and “beta-test” it a bit before I make it my official webs site, I’d love to have a few extra eyes on it. Just leave me a note if you’re willing to go there and click around a bit. It helps to know whether it looks ok on various computers and monitors or if there are any problems I’ve missed. Thanks!

Categories
Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Plants Sketchbook Pages

Rubber Tree: The gift that keeps on giving

Rubber Tree
Rubber Tree

I just needed to sketch something, anything, yesterday, and this rubber tree plant outside my studio window was glowing in the sun. My son Robin gave it to me as a housewarming gift 10 years ago when I bought my combo home/studio (a duplex; one unit is my house, one is my studio).

I wanted a rubber tree because of that catchy old song about an ant who believes he can move a rubber tree plant ; buying my own house was a dream about as big as that little ant’s and I did it. (Sinatra sings the song below, but be warned, you won’t be able to get it out of your head after you listen.)

The plant got too big for the living room so I cut half off half and stuck that in the ground. I took the other half to my office. The plant in my downtown Oakland office is sorely abused but just keeps on growing anyway.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on rebuilding my website which seemed like a very indoor thing to be doing on such a sunny day. But after sketching outdoors for half an hour I realized how deceptive that sunshine was: it was cold out there! And then I was happy to be indoors.

Yesterday I signed up for Bookbinding I on January 9-10 at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Maybe when I can bind my own sketchbooks I’ll be able to make one that fits on my scanner and doesn’t leave a big blurry section in the middle. While I love the Fabriano Venezia sketchbooks I’ve been using the past 6 months or so, they’re just half an inch too big to fit.