Category: Outdoors/Landscape

Butterfly at Blake Gardens

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 2, 2007
5 Comments on Butterfly at Blake Gardens

Watercolor on Arches paper, 11 x 7.5″ (with a touch of white gouache on antennae)
Click here for larger version

(Above) Reference photo I took on Thursday at Blake Gardens.

I have two more days of vacation left and finally I’m really ready to paint. I’ve sorted out the images I want to work from and have some ideas how I want to approach them. This first image seemed to call for watercolor and it felt good to get back to paint again tonight.

But unfortunately today mostly got lost to errands, paperwork and monitor calibration again when I called the company who makes the Eye One calibration tool I bought because of some continuing problems I was having. Their tech support was superb and the patient and intelligent gentleman I spoke to uncovered a number of problems I’d created by messing around with stuff I shouldn’t have been messing with. He helped me undo my mistakes, got everything working properly, and helped me to understand more about the concept of color management.

Now it’s back to managing REAL color on the end of a paintbrush. I’m not panicking too badly about the end of vacation because I only go back to work for one day (Thursday) and then I’m off again for my usual 3 1/2 day weekend.

Tags Animals

Flower Art Gardening Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Tilden Botanical Garden

Serpentine Cone Flower
Ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
Click here to see enlarged

Today I went to Berkeley’s Tilden Park Botanical Gardens with Richard. It’s a lovely, serene place filled with California native plants and trees from giant redwoods to wildflowers. He hiked around the hills, fields, bridges, creeks and wooded areas, enjoying the quiet breeze and birdsong. Most of the flowering plants had already done their big blooming in the spring but these coneflowers grabbed my interest so I sat down on the grass and did this quick sketch while Richard, a photographer, took close up shots of flowers.

Then we decided to move on to Blake Gardens. Richard had never been there and there were many parts of the estate I’d never explored, so we hiked all around there too, finding amazing jewels of nature and design at every turn. We took lots of photos but since time was limited and we wanted to see everything, I didn’t do another drawing. Now that I’ve seen the full scope of what’s there I think it holds promise for unlimited painting opportunities.

Tags Pen and Ink, Plein Air

Animals Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Patterson House at Ardenwood Farm

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date June 27, 2007
18 Comments on Patterson House at Ardenwood Farm

Ink and watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor sketchbook
Click here for enlarged view

This is the Patterson House at Ardenwood Farms, an historical, working Victorian farm in Fremont, California. They have a blacksmith shop and people dressed in period costumes using the tools of the time to cook, churn butter, wash clothes, and other chores; a horse drawn train, farm animals and historic farm equipment. We’d planned to go sketch all the sights and activities on Thursday but when I phoned Ardenwood they told me there would be 250 campers there that day and the next. She recommended we come today when there were no groups scheduled so we did. Unfortunately she didn’t mention that everything was shut down on Wednesdays–no docents in Victorian clothes, no activities, nothing. The only thing to see was the house and a few farm animals.

Michelle and I wandered the property, noting where things would have been happening if they weren’t closed. We decided to draw the house, which was very enjoyable. I drew directly in ink and then added watercolor. Then we visited the barnyard animals, watched the funny goats, some mating bunnies, and drew this solitary bunny:

Ink in moleskine sketchbook

Tonight I went by myself to Ashkenaz Music Center since nobody else wanted to join me to hear the most amazing musical group, The Fishtank Ensemble. They are a unique and extremely talented group of musicians who play a combination of Gypsy, Eastern European, Klezmer and Jazz with some unusual instruments, including a Japanese Shamisen, a musical saw, several different violins and other string instruments, accordian, standup base and a female singer with an extraordinary operatic voice. It was fantastic! I’d heard them live on the radio on an NPR program a few weeks ago and had been trying to find their CD locally and was amazed when I drove by Ashkenaz and saw their name on the marquee for tonight. What a treat! And they had their CD for sale which I bought.

I think I’m finally getting into this vacation thing–going to a musical concert on a “school night” is great!

P.S. Does the picture of the house look overly contrasty or washed out on your monitor? I’m still having trouble getting my monitor to properly display the intensity of the color and contrast. I’m afraid I’m toning down the image in Photoshop to make it look right on my monitor which tends to mamke everything look very strongly colored. So then it looks good on my monitor but I have no idea how it looks on anyone else’s.

Tags Animals, Ink, Pen and Ink

Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Watercolor

Judy’s House – A Watercolor Dilemma

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date June 24, 2007
19 Comments on Judy’s House – A Watercolor Dilemma

Watercolor on Arches paper 15 x 22″
Click here to see large version

This was a painting that was going well–it was commissioned by a friend as a gift for her husband for their anniversary. She wanted me to paint their home and cats in their favorite spot at the front window with their tulip tree in bloom.

As a first step I’d done a perfect flat wash for the sky. Then I did the cats in the window since that was a key feature and moved the rest of the painting along, blocking in the shadows, doing the shrubbery and the other other windows, and the details. Then disaster….

I had a latte sitting on a tall table in the studio. The painting was taped to a drawing board that was sitting on the floor leaning against the table. The next thing I knew the cup was knocked over and coffee was dripping off the table, down the sky in the area to the left of the chimney. I quickly blotted the painting and used a sponge to successfully remove the coffee before it stained. It left that area looking slightly lighter. I tried to ignore it, but today, when the rest of the painting was finished I decided to go over the sky with another wash of blue. But by now the paper was wrinkled and the paint sunk into the valleys, creating anything but a flat wash. So, I tried another wash, which just exaggerated the valleys. Then I tried removing paint with a tissue to give the effect of wispy clouds but that didn’t look right either. So I wiped off as much as I could, waited for it to dry and painted another glaze of blue which not only did the same thing, but also got a little splotchy on the right side.

I’m going to flatten the painting by pressing it under tissue paper and a pile of books for a few days and then maybe try again to glaze the sky. I have this awful feeling that I’ve ruined the painting, not just the sky but many other areas too, and that I should probably start it over again, which I really don’t feel like doing at this point … or maybe it will look better after I don’t see it for a few days.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Here’s the finished painting

Landscape Oil Painting Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos

Pt. Reyes in Oil

Oil on canvas, 16 x 20″
Click here to see enlarged view

Yippee! I finally got back to oil painting and I think that everything I’ve learned in acrylic and gouache and from reading books on landscape and seeing other people’s instructional photos and videos on the web and especially the great advice I’ve gotten from other art bloggers finally clicked. I was actually able to capture just what I wanted to in this painting, which is a rare gift!

I just wish I could tell whether the images look right on the screen. I still haven’t quite gotten my monitor calibration dialed in. In the painting the distant hills and mountains look a little misty–like there’s lots of atmosphere/fog between them and the viewer, subduing the colors. The blue peeking through the clouds is ultramarine not cyan like it appears on my monitor. But this afternoon I wanted to paint, not futz around with computers. I did enough of that last weekend!

Here are the things I’ve learned about oil painting that I applied:

I limited my palette
toned the canvas with a wash of acrylic yellow ochre
painted the sky white and then blended in the blues
blocked in the darkest darks, the mid-value big shapes, and then did the next smaller shapes and then added details.
I made sure to wipe my brush if it picked up some of the wrong neighboring color before applying more paint
I didn’t let myself get lazy about mixing colors from whatever was left on the palette instead of adding the missing color in fresh paint
And I stopped before I overworked it and didn’t get hung up in details

And here are the people who I pestered for oil painting advice (which they generously gave me) that finally sunk in:

I did the painting from this photo I took on a hike in Pt. Reyes to the ocean. I painted it this afternoon in about four hours (including cleaning up), trying to pretend that I was painting plein air:

Tags Photos

Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Ten Minute Trees on Memorial Day

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date May 28, 2007
13 Comments on Ten Minute Trees on Memorial Day

Click here to enlarge

All images ink and watercolor in Moleskine Watercolor Notebook

I got inspired to get back to sketchbooking after looking at Pete Scully’s watercolor sketches (scroll down on his site to see entries from May 9-13) from his recent trip to Santa Monica, where I was born. They reminded me how sketches of even the most ordinary sights of daily life can make exciting sketches when seen through fresh eyes (and with some talent and skill like Pete’s). I decided to just go around my neighborhood, doing 10 minute sketches of trees, trying to capture their various personalities and gestures.

The one above is viewed past the flag on my next door neighbor’s house looking across the street to a little house and its very big tree.

Click here to enlarge
Above is my little Bay Laurel tree in front of my house. I thought it would be nice to have bay leaves at my disposal but it’s a weird tree that stays green all year but grows sort of clumpy and doesn’t really seem that tree-like. My drawing doesn’t either–I think I made the trunk to wide for the leafy part. I guess I should have added a little background to give a sense of size but my 10 minutes was up. (I gave myself up to 10 minutes to sketch and 10 minutes to paint and used the timer on my watch.)

Click here to enlarge
Above is my other next door neighbor’s tree–some sort of non-fruiting plum tree that really is this color and while it was planted a year after my Bay Laurel it’s twice as big.

I didn’t get any further than my own front yard but thoroughly enjoyed myself, listening to the birds chirping and neighbor’s music playing through their windows on this first sunny day in a week.

Tags Pen and Ink

Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Worldwide Sketchcrawl 14 – San Francisco

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date May 21, 2007
24 Comments on Worldwide Sketchcrawl 14 – San Francisco

Ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge images, click picture then select All Sizes

Saturday was the 14th Worldwide Sketchcrawl and I attended the one in San Francisco. We met at the Ferry Building around elevenish (people straggled in for about an hour and then we finally left to walk up the Filbert Steps (straight up a huge hill with cute, old, little multi-million dollar cottages perched on it). This is the same area where the movie The Parrots of Telegraph Hill was filmed. The picture above is looking up at the porch on one of those cottages.

Next we hiked further uphill to Coit Tower where I drew the view above, looking down at the Ferry Building (the clock tower) in the distance and the Bay Bridge behind that. I was starving–lunch had gotten pushed back a couple hours since people didn’t seem to be trying to follow the planned schedule so I bought an “Its It” ice cream sandwich in the gift shop at Coit Tower. Unfortunately a big piece of chocolate fell off and melted all over my favorite green t-shirt, which I didn’t notice until later.

From there we walked to North Beach and met in Washington Square Park. I drew the bell tower on top of the cathedral across from the park (above) while laying on my back in the grass, listening to blasting 70s disco music and the generator powering the loudspeakers. A Communist Party group (mostly clean-cut college kids) were having a May Day celebration with red banners, red shirts, red cups for their drinks. On the other corner of the park a Jesus group set up their own stage and speakers and made random religious announcements.

This was a great day in San Francisco, perfect sunny weather and a festive atmosphere everywhere. One of the highlights of my day was finally meeting the wonderful Martha of Trumpetvine Travels. It was a delight seeing her drawings in person in her custom made sketchbook (that she gives directions how to make on her blog). I had so much fun hanging out, chatting, drawing and hiking with her. We had lunch in a deli near Washington Square and when we learned that people were going to stay at the noisy park another half hour, we decided to move on to Chinatown (next stop on the crawl) where I drew the building below.

I know it’s wonky. I started with the part that interested me and just kept drawing with ink until I ran out of space. While I drew one corner of the building Martha drew the whole interesting street with hanging lanterns, and all the different shaped buildings. It should be interesting to compare our drawings since we did all the same subjects, but in our own styles. Chinatown was packed with amazing sights, sounds, smells, and way too many people to find a spot to sketch until we reached the outskirts and found a bench to rest on. We hiked back to the Ferry Building to do one more sketch but once we were there realized we were too tired and called it a day. A very good day!

Tags Pen and Ink

Gardening Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Photos Plants Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sister Spa Day

Watercolor & Ink in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge, click images

Yesterday I treated my sister Marcy to a sisters’ spa day at the wonderful Osmosis Day Spa in Freestone, CA and then dinner at the Union Hotel in Occidental.

We started with a tea ceremony in their Japanese garden and then had enzyme baths which was the most relaxing experience I’ve ever had. After putting on lovely Japanese robes, we were escorted to a private room with a glass sliding wall facing another zen garden and pond.

In the room were two large cement tubs piled with fragrent cedar sawdust, soft rice bran and enzymes imported from Japan. After climbing in, we were each buried up to our chins with this warm, heavy stuff. It was like being in the most comfortable recliner ever, and like being in a womb. Beautiful music played while we relaxed and for once my mind went completely blank. Every five minutes our beautiful attendant arrived to refresh the cool washcloth on our forehead, gently wipe our faces with a cool cloth and give us sips of water. Because of the enzymes, the sawdust gets warmer and warmer until it’s time to get out after 20 minutes.

Thoroughly baked to just the right temperature, our attendant helped us out, brushed us off and then we showered before moving on to our heavenly 75 minute massages. Speaking of baking, across the street from the spa is the Wildflour Bakery, where Marcy bought a loaf of “Sticky Bun” bread which was hot out of the oven filled with rich, melting cinnamon and nuts.

After the massages we retreated to the zen garden and sat in the open air meditation gazebo (seen in the photo above). Marcy sat on the provided meditation cushions watching the Koi and meditating until she dozed off and almost fell over. Then she joined me on my bench where I was making the sketch at the top, of the view from the gazebo (photo below).

By then it was nearly four and since we’d skipped lunch we headed a few miles west to Occidental for dinner at the Union Hotel. The second sketch at the top is what was sitting on the bar in the cafe at the hotel along with several more large clay bunny statues. Then it was a lovely 1 1/2 hour ride back home through the most brilliantly green fields covered in yellow and white wildflowers. For city girls it was fun seeing all the horses, cows, sheep, lambs, llamas, a few deer, a squashed skunk, and many hawks out in the beautiful country.

“Pull over, I have to pet those horses,” Marcy said. So we drove down someone’s dirt road to pet the horsies, who were only interested in us long enough to determine we had no food for them and then went back to eating grass. The car above is in the side garden at Osmosis–a bit incongruous but I’m sure there’s a story behind it.

Tags Pen and Ink, Photos

Gardening Outdoors/Landscape Plants Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A Morning Walk

A neighbor’s beautiful front garden and purple house

Ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
Click images, select All Sizes to enlarge

The creek by Peets Coffee and Albany Hill

Today I woke to a beautiful spring day and went for a walk with my sketchbook and little paint set, planning to end up at the creek for another try at painting it. I find it quite challenging (impossible, really) to make something that looks like a creek amidst trees and spring greenery. But a few blocks from my house I spotted a beautifully landscaped yard in front of a tiny blue and purple house and had to stop and paint the blossoming fruit (?) tree surrounded by what I always think of as Martian plants (a little painting of one kind here). But they’re really called Euphorbia (photo of this kind), which is almost “euphoria” and always makes me wonder how it got named that.

So being a word-loving dictionary nerd I had to look it up. It wasn’t very exciting: “From Latin, euphorbea after Euphorbus, first-century Greek physician.” Also, “Euphorbiaceae: very large genus of diverse plants all having milky juice.” I think I’ll just keep calling it Martian plant since it’s so otherworldly looking.

But euphoria — what an interesting definition: ” A feeling of great happiness or well-being, commonly exaggerated and not necessarily well founded.” Hmmmmm, that makes me stop and ponder. If I’m feeling unfounded happiness or well-being, I’m not about to question it! Bring it on!

Tags Pen and Ink

Acrylic Painting Gardening Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Photos

An Artful Life

I’m doing something different today, inspired by a visit to my best friend Barbara’s house today — I’m sharing some of her wonderful artwork and photos of her garden. She truly lives an artful life and every corner of her little house and garden has something to delight the eye and spirit.

Images can be enlarged by clicking them and selecting “All Sizes”

Left: Life size ceramic woman (celebrating retirement and gardening). Right: View from the front porch. Just beyond this is the lush vegetable garden.

When Barbara retired not too long ago, she completely redesigned the tiny rental cottage beside her 3-story house in North Berkeley, sold the big house, and moved into the cottage with her husband and teenage daughter. Barbara is an amazing gardener and artist.

Above: Cottage front. Barbara created this mosaic on the foundation of the cottage using broken pottery and her handmade ceramic chickens.

Left: Barbara’s mosaic studio she built herself from recycled doors, windows and other things. Right: Path in her garden

Two pretty corners in the garden. Left: A ceramic gardening woman holding a carrot and a tall mosaic garden mirror.

Left: Whimsical ceramic whistles in Barbara’s sunny kitchen and a graceful ceramic woman in the hallway window. She started by making ceramic whistles and then learned how to make Ocarinas. I wonder if the female sculpture was inspired by our figure drawing sessions.

Two canvas painted “rugs” on the kitchen floor by the sink and fridge. I have rugs on my kitchen floor in those spots too, but they’re ugly things from the hardware store.

Above: Even the laundry room is artful. The detergent is hidden inside a tapestry cover.

Two of Barbara’s acrylic cactus paintings from back in the day (after she was a fabulous silversmith making exquisite silver jewelry when we first met, but before she became a teacher). During her years as a teacher she stopped painting and focused her art on quilting. Now she’s painting on her ceramics and plans to start painting on canvas again too.

I’m looking forward to some time painting in her garden. It’s about as close to heaven as you can get in Berkeley, especially when it comes with her homemade lemonade!

Tags Acrylic Painting, Photos