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Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchcrawl Urban Sketchers

Worldwide Sketchcrawl 31: San Francisco

View from Dolores Park, ink & watercolor
View from Dolores Park, ink & watercolor

Saturday was the 31st Worldwide Sketchcrawl and I joined the San Francisco group to explore the Mission District and sketch. I tagged along with my friend Pete Scully who had mapped out a route that included stops at two famous S.F. comic book stores.

Sketcher at morning meetup at Dolores Cafe
Sketcher at a.m. meetup at Dolores Cafe

While waiting for the crawl to begin everyone sat and stood around drawing everyone else. See Pete’s sketch of me seriously sketching here.

Pete Sketching atop stairs
Pete Sketching atop stairs

Later, while Pete climbed up a set of stairs to draw a Victorian house, I sketched him sketching and then picked up some lunch at a cafe up the street.

Fire Hydrant and Mission Dolores
Fire Hydrant and Mission Dolores

Since I was sketching with Pete, of course we had to stop and draw a fire hydrant (see Pete’s fire hydrant series here). I was amused by the similarity of shapes in the tower atop Mission Dolores and the fire plug.

Mission Mariachis hanging out
Mission Mariachis standing around

I don’t know what these guys were waiting for but they never did play.

Old "New Mission Theatre"
Old "New Mission Theatre"

The theater is defunct, the sign peeling and is dwarfed by neighboring Giant Value big box store. I bet the theater was beautiful when it was new.

Below, some BART people on the very bumpy ride to SF. I’m finding that as much as I love my fountain pen for its smooth flowing, I have less control, especially when drawing on transit or when standing.

Continue reading “Worldwide Sketchcrawl 31: San Francisco”
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Art business Art supplies Bay Area Parks Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Kensington Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Amazing Art/Materials Resource Site + How to Store Paintings

Kensington Hilltop School, ink & watercolor
Kensington Hilltop School, ink & watercolor (a beautiful school above a wonderful park at the very tip-top of Kensington hills)

In my last post I asked for advice on sorting and storing completed oil paintings on panels. Along with the good suggestions from readers,  I found a fantastic website that provides the answers to these and many other questions about proper handling of artwork and art materials of all kinds.

The website is AMIEN.org (Art Materials Information and Education Network), “a resource for artists dedicated to providing the most comprehensive, up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased factual information about artists’ materials.”  They are part of the education department of the Intermuseum Conservation Association.

AMIEN’s forums are the place to find information to all our questions about proper use, handling, storage, shipping, application, etc. of art materials and finished art work or all kinds. Here is a portion of what they say (more here) about storing oil paintings on panels:

Store your paintings standing on edge, one next to the other, with a piece of acid-free paper loosely covering the face of each painting. You can tape the paper to the back of the panel and fold it over the front.

Ideally, you will put these paintings in a rack, elevated off the floor, in some location that is relatively dust-free and not subject to wild swings of temperature and relative humidity. Even more ideally, each painting ought to be separated from the others, but that would take a very large rack. Second best: You should not have more than about 5 paintings leaning against each other; separate the groups of paintings.

AMIEN’s forums cover topics like Watercolors, Pastel, Encaustics, Acrylic Paints, Supports, Grounds, Solvents and Thinners, Varnishes, Pigments, Color charts, Oil Paints and Mediums, Alkyds, Mural Paints and Techniques, Colored Pencils, Printmaking, Photography and Printed Digital Media, Matting, Framing and Labeling, Picture Protection, Crating, Shipping, Storage, Conservation, Hazards and much more.

About the sketch at top: Friday afternoons I have the pleasure of spending time with two lovely 11-year-old girls who still like to swing and play make-believe games on playground equipment. I discovered Kensington Hilltop School while hiking in the hills on the weekend and brought them there the next week. They played, I sketched, we had fun.

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Building Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchcrawl Stanford Urban Sketchers

International Sketchcrawl #30 at Stanford University

Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor
Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor

It was fun to meet the South Bay members of our Urban Sketchers SF Bay Area group Suhita and John, and to meet some of the members of Sketchcrawl Silicon Valley at the Stanford sketchcrawl on Saturday. Cathy and I made the hour plus drive down there and met at noon. We started with lunch at the outdoor cafe with a view of the Rodin Sculpture Garden (sketched above at the end of the day after everyone left and it is my favorite because I love those funny, imperfectly groomed trees).

Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center
Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center

My first sketch was the one above, of a statue called “Faith” in front of the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Starting with “Faith” seemed good, since it helps to have a little faith that the sketching will go well.  By 1:00 there were about 10 of us and everyone went off to follow their muses with a plan to regroup around 3:00. I followed Cathy who knew her way around, since my muse, like me, has no sense of direction.

Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor
Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor

The sign on the building said “Memorial Arch and Court Erected by His Mother, 1898 in Memory of Leland Stanford Jr. Born to mortality May 14, 1868…” I ran out of room to record his year of death but he only lived until age 16 so his mother donated the land Stanford was built on to create a memorial for her son.

Chapel and courtyard
Chapel and courtyard

From a distance the front of the chapel appears to be glowing gold but when you get closer you can see it’s covered with a stunning mural made entirely in mosaic. Coming from an urban environment where things are crowded, noisy and grungy, Stanford was amazing. The Stanford campus is tremendously spread out (over 8,000 acres), with most buildings only one or two stories, but massive nonetheless. Everything is immaculately clean, with amazing gardens, gazillions of trees (well, officially 43,000), and quiet. At $51,000 a year for tuition, room and board I suppose one should expect a lovely environment!

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Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Places Sacramento Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Urban Sketcher Trip to Sacramento Part II

Tower Bridge over Sacramento River, ink & watercolor
Tower Bridge over Sacramento River, ink & watercolor

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, we left the Crocker and walked a few blocks to Sacramento’s Old Town to meet up with Urban Sketcher Pete Scully who lives nearby in Davis. Then we all stopped to draw this beautiful bridge, which is actually painted with gold metallic paint, unlike the Golden Gate Bridge which is painted a red-orange, and is not gold at all.

Eagle Theater, ink & watercolor
Eagle Theatre, ink & watercolor

Old Town is several square blocks of restored Gold-Rush era buildings with board walks instead of sidewalks, old trains, horse-drawn carriages, and a few people in costume like this woman (who, when I asked if I could sketch her, told me she was just waiting for her husband to come out of the restroom, and indeed left after 5 minutes). It’s very rustic, and while a bit touristy, is not nearly as bad as Fisherman’s Wharf or Pier 39 in San Francisco.

Sacramento Amtrak Station Exterior
Sacramento Amtrak Station Exterior

My last sketch of the day was the exterior of the Amtrak station in Sacramento. The building is very ornate and I would have liked to spend more time accurately capturing some of the details but my eyes were burning from some nearby idling diesel buses so had to go indoors.

There’s a Starbucks at the other end of this block-long building and I ran down there to get a latte for the ride home and then almost missed the train. On the trip back we shared our sketchbooks and relaxed; such a pleasure compared to driving.  I want to plan some more train sketching trips soon!

Be sure to also check out Pete Scully’s sketches of the day on his blog and Cathy and Sonia’s sketches on our Bay Area Urban Sketchers blog.

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Building Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Virtual Paint-Out

Rio de Janeiro: Virtual Paintout

Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"
Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"

This month’s Virtual Paint-Out location is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since I seldom travel I find it so much fun to do so virtually via Google Street View. I love being able to wander, exploring roads to see where they go without fear of getting lost (let alone dealing with airports or spending the money).

Here’s the way the scene looked on Google and then the way I cropped and the way I adjusted it in Photoshop.

Original Google Street View, Rio
Original Google Street View, Rio
Rio Photoshopped for painting
Rio Photoshopped for painting

As I do these each month I’ve noticed patterns in the way nicer houses and neighborhoods are near beaches or on top of hills and the poorer neighborhoods are indeed on the wrong side of the tracks.

I’ve also noticed a sense of freedom when painting these since I don’t have so much investment in the outcome. And maybe that’s what led to my liking most of my Virtual Paintout paintings more than the ones I’ve labored over.

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Berkeley Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Places Shop windows Sketchbook Pages

Zut! Undies! Fourth Street at Night, Berkeley

Zut Restaurant, 4th Street Berkeley, Ink & watercolor
Zut Restaurant, 4th Street Berkeley, Ink & watercolor

When I saw that a restaurant named Zut! opened on Fourth Street, I remembered Zut the dog, who lived next door to me in Berkeley in the 70s. Zut and his owner Denny lived in a tiny cottage behind a two-story house owned by a man named Huckleberry that he shared with the Arkansas Sheiks‘ (Karana Drayton’s folk group whose fiddler was Laurie Lewis.)

Denny and Zut were also musical; Denny played piano and Zut sang (howled) along with him. Zut and my dog Kangaroo were good buddies and liked to wander the neighborhood together, usually ending up at Bulky Burgers on the corner, cruising for hand-outs.

So when we were sketching on 4th Street last Tuesday night, I asked the hostess about the name. She showed me their mural that included a wonderful portrait of good old Zut and told me that Denny Abrams was indeed an owner of the restaurant.

A La Folie, Undies on 4th Street, ink & watercolor
A La Folie, Undies on 4th Street, ink & watercolor

I always enjoy sketching manikins in shop windows and this one at A La Folie displaying expensive undies didn’t disappoint.

Fourth Street Holiday Lights, ink & watercolor
Fourth Street Holiday Lights, ink & watercolor

Fourth Street’s holiday lights were hung so we expected they’d also be lit but only these two were. I guess they are waiting to light them until after Thanksgiving when the shops stay open evenings. Even without the grand lighting, we were grateful for the relatively warm evening that allowed us to sketch outdoors at night in November.

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Building Landscape Mexico Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Virtual Paint-Out

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (Virtual Paintout)

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 9"x12, oil on panel
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 9"x12, oil on panel

It was so wonderful traveling around sunny San Miguel Allende, Mexico (virtually via Google street view and my paintbrush!) while it was cold and rainy here. I tried “driving” around to find the church at the end of the road, but just like I do with real driving, I got lost and never found it.

Once I’d adjusted the image in Photoshop to straighten the walls, crop to 9×12″ and warm the color a bit, I used the “gridding-up” method to create a drawing first. I displayed the image in Photoshop using”View/Show Grid” set to overlay a tic-tac-toe like grid). Then I drew a matching grid on my paper and started drawing, one square at a time.

Using the grid makes it easier to accurately see and draw the shapes in the image, section by section. Drawing first instead of going directly to paint helped me to understand what I was seeing and to notice interesting patterns like the pipes sticking out of the buildings and the circular motif of the windows in the building on the left as well as the church in the distance.

What a gorgeous little town! I’d love to visit there sometime!

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Building Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Alvarado Bar, Grill and Pupusas: Painting Plein Air in Gritty Richmond

Alvarado Bar and Grill, San Pablo; oil on panel, 8x10"
Alvarado Bar and Grill, San Pablo; oil on panel, 8x10"

I recently began painting twice a week with the East Bay Landscape Painters whose members are preparing for a show of urban paintings of unexpected, nothing-special spots. For two Saturdays we painted on the unlovely corner of McBryde and San Pablo Avenue in Richmond.

I set up my easel by the air and water pumps at this gas station and set to work. I sketched out the composition and started painting the building when a huge semi truck double-parked right in front of it and began unloading produce for the market next door. My view was just about like this so I started on the empty lot next door. Half an hour later the truck left and I could finally paint the bar. I was happy with the above painting; a rare occurrence when I paint plein air.

Pupusas and Desayunos; oil on panel, 8x10"
Pupusas and Desayunos; oil on panel, 8x10"

The next Saturday afternoon we returned to the same corner. It was hot so I set up in a shady spot under this tree in front of a used car dealership and painted the Pupusas place across the street. Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez also painted the Pupuseria, except she worked on an enormous canvas (maybe 24×30″) and her painting was fantastic! She also tells a funny story here about the day and the idea behind painting nothing-special spots.

While we were having our critique in the shade of the Fish and Chips place, one of the artists who’d left her chair and easel set up across the street by the pupusas shop just happened to look over her shoulder. She saw a guy jump out the side door of a van and pick up her folding chair. She started yelling at him, ran across the street and grabbed it back before he could stick it in the van. He took off and returned to our critique.

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Berkeley Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Landscape Life in general Painting Places Shop windows Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Alcatraz Liquor Deli and A Cuppa Tea, Berkeley

Alcatraz Liquor Deli, Berkeley; Ink & watercolor
Alcatraz Liquor Deli, Berkeley; Ink & watercolor

We met at the corner of Alcatraz and College on a warm evening and sat at tables outside A Cuppa Tea to sketch. Two women sat down beside me with cups of tea and began talking about prison while counting passing dogs. They asked about our sketching group, noticing us drawing, and then shared that this was their Tuesday night routine, and they were up to a dozen dogs already.

Although I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, hearing them talk about life in prison and the girls in their halfway house was just too interesting. It seemed ironic that having recently gotten out of prison they chose to meet on the corner of Alcatraz (the infamous  prison located in the middle of the San Francisco Bay).

A Cuppa Tea, Berkeley, Ink & watercolor
A Cuppa Tea, Berkeley, Ink & watercolor

It was great having the light of the cafe to sketch by as it got dark. When I could no longer see the street scene I turned around and drew the inside of the cafe through their window.

When we all finished sketching we went inside to see each others sketches. There were  signs all over saying, “Tables for customers only!” (To fend off the students who clog all the cafes in town with their computers and piles of books).  So Sonia bought another lemonade and when we left a few minutes later we left tips for the waitress.

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Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Painting People Photos Places Sketchbook Pages

Workshop, Weddings, Wheels at Legion of Honor, SF

Legion of Honor, SF, Ink & watercolor
Legion of Honor, SF, Ink & watercolor

My plein air painting group held a workshop today at the beautiful Legion of Honor in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park at which Ed Terpening demonstrated.  After an hour some people set up and started their own painting but I watched the full demo so had only enough time for this quick sketch. At the critique Ed pointed out the problem with the size of the guys in the foreground compared to the cars which made me laugh.

Ed is one of those rare artists who can paint while at the same time explaining the how, and why of what they’re doing. I learned so much! I’ve enjoyed following Ed’s blog, Life Plein Air for years and it was a real pleasure to meet him in person.

Afterwards I tried to walk over to the museum to see the Impressionists in Paris show (wonderful!) but was prevented by this craziness:

There were about a hundred noisy, smoky mopeds, coming up the hill and then circling around and around, more and more of them. Finally they left and I made it across the street and directly to the museum’s café for a much-needed latte. While I sipped I sketched the view out the cafe’s french doors (except they didn’t have Ed’s name above them):

Cafe view under my notes about the workshop in sketchbook
Sketch under my notes about the workshop in journal

I took notes during the demo on a page in my journal that had an unfinished sketch done with green pen which is what that green mark is under Ed’s name.

Apparently the Legion of Honor is a place people go to take wedding and Quinciaños photos (even though their ceremonies weren’t actually held there). I noticed five different groups being photographed and took my own photos of a few. Since I used a zoom lens you don’t see the tourists and museum goers that were all around them:

Wedding #1, Very serious and stoic
Wedding group #1, So formal and serious
Getting the flower girls ready
Wedding Group #2: Flower Girls
The Quincianera and her court of honor
Quincianera and her court of honor getting ready for photos

The Quinciañera is a Latin American tradition for celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday. Formerly a religious celebration, it has become an obscenely expensive event that can match weddings in cost and extravagance, including ball gowns, banquets, limos, huge parties, photographers, bands and more. I wish they’d save their money for college.

After their photos they left in a huge stretch limo as long as a bus but made out of a Hummer.

Priceless expression (great hat, too)
What is he thinking?

Nobody looked like they were enjoying themselves much in any of the groups. Except maybe the photographers, but they were getting paid to do their art.