Bedside Table with Coffee & "An Illustrated Life" - Morning
DeLuxe Parked - morning walkPoodle Waiting at Trader Joes, El Cerrito - Midday Busby Annoyed, Trying to Nap - After DinnerFiona "As Seen on TV" (literally) - Evening
Messy Desk - Late Evening
I challenged myself to do a sketchcrawl of my day, making a 10 minute drawing (almost) every hour, wherever I was at the moment. I was surprised by how many times during the day I saw things I’d like to draw. But I waited for my timer to tell me, “Now!” and then started drawing. If I was out and about, I added the watercolor at home in the evening.
Reading Danny Gregory’s book, An Illustrated Life, inspired me to get back to my sketchbooks which I’d been neglecting while I focused on oil painting this past year. As a result of that neglect, I had half a dozen unfinished sketchbooks that I’ve challenged myself to complete by the end of the year. Hence the sketchcrawl above (and more to come as the year draws to a close, or should I say, “as I draw the year (and my sketchbooks) to a close!
St. Patrick's Church, San Francisco, ink & watercolor 8x6"
Shirley (Paper and Threads) was visiting San Francisco this week and Martha (Trumpetvine) and I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon sketching with her in the park. Poor St. Patrick’s Catholic Church isn’t really falling over despite the many earthquakes it has weathered over the years. It’s just my usual wonky drawing. Martha and Shirley will post their drawings on their own blogs eventually but here is a snapshot of our work lined up together.
Shirley's, Jana's and Martha's sketches
And here we are lined up, with me a head taller and trying to take a photo and holding my iPhone at arm’s length.
Jana, Martha and Shirley
We were joined virtually on our little art blogger sketchcrawl by phone from Lisa in Texas and via Facebook (where I posted an update and photo while we were sketching) by Marta (MARTa’s Art) and EJ (Rose-Anglais) .
After sitting on cold concrete steps to sketch we were ready to warm up. We walked back to Shirley’s hotel, and she treated us to a glass of wine on the 39th floor of the Mariott Hotel (also known as the “Jukebox” building because of its unique architecture). Here’s the view from the bar just before sunset.
View from the Marriott Hotel bar
It was such a treat to spend a Friday afternoon with these two very talented and beautiful women. After the sun set in golds and pinks, and the lights of the city came on, I had to leave while they went off in search of dinner. I BARTed to Oakland for the monthly Friday night “Art Murmur” gallery walk where my sister and niece had pieces in a show. Walking from BART I passed the grand old Paramount Theatre and set my camera to “burst” mode so I could capture the changing lights of the neon marquis.
Bananas in a Bag, Watercolor & acrylic on hot press paper, 6x8"
I’m usually skeptical of anything that says “As Seen on TV” on the label, but I heard someone raving about how “Debbie Meyer Green Bags” keep fruit fresh longer and decided to give them a try. They actually do work. I used them during the summer with tomatoes from my garden and very few of them went rotten. They seemed to last for weeks without putting them in the refrigerator. I used the bags successfully with bananas and peaches too.
They supposedly can be reused 8 to 10 times but I’ve found that each time you reuse the bags they seem to have less potency. The package says they are “made with a “a natural mineral ‘Oya’ that absorbs and removes the ethylene gases that cause normal deterioration.” Oya is made from zeolite, a kind of clay found in Japanese caves.
You do have to keep the contents of the bags dry and I found putting them in the refrigerator means they get moisture inside and you have to keep wiping the inside of the bag. I hope I don’t find out later
About the watercolor:
I wanted to use masking fluid to preserve the white highlights and shiny spots on the bag but when I opened my bottle of masking fluid I found it had turned into a solid lump of white rubber. So I tried using a white colored pencil as a resist on the white areas, but when I painted over it it didn’t repel the paint. I could have drawn the whole thing out really, really carefully and saved the white areas by painting around them, but I didn’t have the time tonight.
So I just painted, planning to use my white gel pen for the highlights but discovered it too had dried up. In the end I made the highlights with liquid Golden acrylic, drawing straight from the little squirt bottle of paint, blobs and all.
Debbie Meyer Green Bags
P.S. WordPress rolled out it’s new version today with a beautiful, pwerful and simple new user interface that makes blogging a joy! Yay WordPress!
Updated: I worked on the painting and tried to make the little girl sunnier (ABOVE). When I compared the finished painting to the original photo I discovered that the girl and the ducks were way too big compared to the actual scene. Oh well.
The original is BELOW:
(Original) Little Girl at Lake Temescal, Oil on Gessobord, 8x8" from photo
When I woke up this morning I was feeling grumpy because it was my last day of vacation and I’d hoped to accomplish more in the studio than I had. I tried to think of an antidote to grumpiness so I didn’t ruin my day. I decided to write down everything that makes me happy and was surprised that it took three pages in my journal. When I finished writing I was feeling much more cheery.
I’d be interested to hear what makes you happy.
About the painting: I took the photo when I was painting at Lake Temescal in Oakland last month and cropped it to experiment with a square format. I pretended like the image on my monitor was a plein air scene and tried to paint as if I was outdoors. I must admit I didn’t really fool myself, and knew the light wouldn’t change and the little girl wouldn’t move.
What makes me happy: (in the order it occurred to me this morning):
A nice walk, fun in the studio, a good meal, a beautiful rainy day being cozy indoors, an enjoyable movie, a snuggly cat or dog, comfortable clothes, good art supplies, loving friends and family, a good book, a day to myself, learning something new, a new art magazine in the mail, days off work, a hot bath or shower, unscheduled time, bursts of creativity, being pain free, comfortable shoes.
A warm beach, windows into other peoples’ lives, my guardian angel (don’t ask), great art, beautiful art books, libraries, book stores, art supply stores, wearing colorful bandanas, finding the right shade of lipstick, looking and feeling cute, tall men with strong arms, drawing people, drawing anything, the flow of watercolor on paper, a successful painting.
A clean house, a toasty warm bed on a cold night, doing dishes, scooping the litter box (I know, I’m nuts), a speedy computer, learning to see colors accurately, my framed art hanging on the wall, a good workout, a small garden, smooth stones, shells from the ocean, the scent of the sea, eating fresh oysters.
Remembering my Grandma, seeing my sons happy and healthy, a hug from my sister, a good laugh, a hike and catch up chat with a friend, organizing things, an air conditioner on a hot night, a refreshing drink when I’m thirsty, a latte made with love (and Peets coffee), a smooth road without potholes, competence, a good teacher.
Good news for a change, financial security (someday), walking instead of driving, people who work for common good, generosity, kindness, puppies, kittens, rain, having someone say “God bless you.” My GPS (not getting lost anymore), my spunky little Toyota RAV4, my Soltek easel and plein air cart, my fuzzy slippers and ratty sweatshirt, my closet for storing canvas, my washer and dryer, owning my own little house.
My neighbors, the internet, my iPhone, good healthcare, a nice cup of tea, writing and/or sketching daily in my journal, a fridge full of fresh healthy food, silly kitties, a massage and sauna, my special black-handled cereal spoon (was my mothers from her 1950s kitchen).
An artist friend once said that in her opinion, the definition of ” plein air” is “bad landscape painting.” While I have seen some really great plein air landscapes, I’m finding that its challenges often lead to results that look clunky and kindergartenish. It takes a lot of practice to be able to successfully capture a scene in the two hour window you have before the light changes and everything looks completely different.
When starting a plein air painting (or any painting for that matter) it is recommended to first simplify the scene down to its most basic elements, the largest shapes of value and color. However, because I love detail so much, something inside me often rebels at simplifying and then I find myself with an incoherent mess.
I like to think of plein air painting as akin to figure drawing, rather than a way to achieve finished works of art: It’s good for you, but not an end in itself. But if I spend my painting time mostly working plein air, I end up with lots of crappy paintings and frustration from working small. And that leads to messing around with the painting at home instead of leaving it alone.
Painting process
Below is the sketch that I painted at Lake Temescal on Sunday. It was a gorgeous day and although the lake was smooth and reflective and beautiful, the backlit trees along the lake were calling out to be painted. Below is the original version of the scene painted plein air.
Original painted plein air
When I brought it home I broke my rule (that I have yet to follow): Leave plein air paintings alone, call them sketches and move on. Instead, after dinner I started messing with it, using a photo reference.
Today I studied the painting, still dissatisfied, trying to figure out what was wrong. I converted photos of the scene and my painting to “grayscale” in Photoshop and compared them. Immediately I could see that the photo had strong value contrast and that my painting did not. I worked on it some more, adding some dark accents. Here are the photos:
Color photo of scene
Grayscale of photo of scene
Photo of painting phase 2
B&W photo of painting at top of post
Original painted plein air
After messing around that evening
Lake Temescal Backlit, Oil on panel 9×12″
When a painting isn’t working I turn it into a little laboratory for learning, pushing it until it’s total crap or I’ve learned what I was trying to learn, or both. I think I should have just left this one as a happy color study.
Martinez Waterfront Park, Ink & watercolor in watercolor Moleskine, 5x7"
I arrived late and lazy (due to my efforts to decaffeinate myself) for our paint out at Martinez Waterfront Park today and decided to sketch in ink and watercolor instead of setting up my easel and oil paints. It’s a great park, with a marina full of boats on the bay, fields, trees, ponds, an historic train station and old train (pictured above), a nearby river and marshlands and much more. It’s right on the edge of the older part of town and the Amtrak train station is just outside the entrance to the park.
I sat on a very hard stone bench at the old train station about 20 feet from the tracks. On the sketch above, I drew without much of a plan, just picking things I saw that interested me and sticking them somewhere on the page, drawing in ink and hoping it would all fit together somehow. I added the watercolor on site.
The two artists in the sketch were standing between the west and east Amtrak tracks. Every 15 minutes a train would roar by about 2 feet of where they were standing, sounding it’s horn so loudly it was painful, but they stood their ground like the dedicated plein air painters that they are.
Martinez Hot Dog Depot, Ink & watercolor in Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, 5x7"
I turneda bit to the left at the end of the day and quickly sketched this wonky old Hot Dog Depot (named because it’s adjacent to the train depot. The perspective is all wonky but so was the building. It has a weird corner section where that second smaller window is. So the building isn’t a rectangle, it’s a pentagon (5-sided). I didn’t have time to worry about perspective as the group was convening for a critique and I had to hurry to finish this at all.
I became the official bathroom monitor today at Lake Anza in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. Swim season is over; there are no lifeguards, entry fees, or snack bar and the lakeside entrance to the restrooms is closed for the season. The overhanging roof by the restroom entrance provided me a nice shady spot to paint but it meant that people kept walking up looking confused (and sometimes a little desperate) when they saw the locked door behind me.
I’d already found an entry to the bathrooms outside the swim area, around the back of the building so about every 15 minutes I told worried people how to find the restroom. I got to help nervous little girls, a group of German tourists, cyclists in shiny shorts, tan teenage girls in tiny bikinis, a hairy man wearing a huge gold necklace and Speedos, a picnicing Mexican family, a group of adults pushing a very ill teenage girl in a wheelchair hooked up to breathing tubes and tanks.
The latter group decided to set themselves up at a picnic table directly in front of me but when they realized they would be blocking my view, they picked up the huge table and moved it. The amazing thing about painting plein air is that people are so nice. Everybody who takes a peek always says something complimentary, even if the painting is total crap. And then they tell you about their [aunt, brother, friend, grandmother, etc.] who paints really good paintings, or how they can’t draw a straight line.
As the day grew warmer more and more people arrived, my original concept for the painting of an empty lifeguard stand on a deserted beach didn’t make much sense. So when this dad and little boy walked by I jumped at the chance to try putting people in a plein air oil painting. I also had an intention to focus on warm/cool color temperature relationships.
I struggled with the water — it kept looking like a meadow. The other painters in my group painted the water in variations of light blue-green and suggested I do the same to solve the problem. But I saw almost no blue in the water. It was gold and green and purple and orange and pink. Then every once in a while a breeze rippled the surface and a bit of sky blue reflection appeared.
After the critique I returned to my easel, painting and repainting the water for two more hours but by then the light had changed so much from when I arrived that I finally called it done and went home.
Here’s the photos of the morning and afternoon views of the same scene.
Who am I as an artist? What really interests me enough to spend hours painting it? Do I really like painting landscapes? Do I really like painting plein air? Do I even like looking at plein air landscape paintings?
After making 100 plein air landscape studies and only liking 2 of them, it seemed like a good time to reevaluate and those are the questions I’ve been asking myself.
Before I took up oils a year or so ago I was fascinated by details and enjoyed seeing and painting the reflections in glass, faces that told stories (human and non-human animals), the world inside a flower, urban scenes from around my quirky home town.
Then I started painting mostly plein air landscapes in oils and was told I needed to lose the details; simplify; just paint the big shapes; soften the edges, go for design and composition rather than content. But the more I simplified the less I enjoyed painting. I started to question whether I wanted to continue with oil painting and plein air painting.
Then I serendipitously discovered a book of Charles Sheeler‘s paintings at a used book store. I’d never been much interested in his work before, but when I looked at the images and started reading I was led to the answers I’d been looking for. I saw in his landscapes (mostly urban/industrial), still lifes and interior scenes a specificity, strong point of view, personality, AND great design. I saw a way I could translate what gave me joy in watercolor into my oil painting.
I realized that what interests me is the PARTICULAR, not the general; the close up, personal view that tells a story; a portrait of an object, a person or a place; not the general widescreen view as I’ve been doing.
In trying to better define my thoughts, while waiting for my train at the at the El Cerrito Plaza BART station I sketched the thumbnails at the top and bottom of this post (which can be enlarged by clicking either image). Below is a photo of the scene, though a slightly different point of view:
Photo of similar view from BART minus foreground
And here is what I discovered and wrote in my sketchbook, thumbnail by thumbnail:
1: No focus, BORING. What I’ve been doing: including every single detail from the window frame in the foreground to the cars, parking lot, city, bay, hills across the bay, and the sky.
2. A little more interesting. Focus on the Cerrito Theatre marquis sticking up with foreground and background being less important.
3. A close up view but no focal point, still boring. 3 trees. Who cares?
4. BORING. Sky mountain water. Big Fat So What!
5. Maybe… a portrait of specific trees and lamp post but still not interesting enough to bother painting.
6. Now this interests me! A person waiting, a bench, a sign, a particular tree.
Thumbnails of BART view
Now I just hope I can find a way to implement this new way of viewing and painting with oil paints. I wrote several more pages about these ideas in my sketchbook, but I’ve probably bored you enough for today. Now off to paint!
(Not) El Cerrito Recycling Center, oil on panel, 12x9"
Despite the light fixture over my easel getting blinky and unusable and then climbing on a step stool to try to fix it and throwing my back out and then having to clip on a couple of lamps whose bulb color is too pink, I was determined to make an attempt at this painting. I gave myself two hours and got it done.
The painting is inspired by the view of the hills behind the El Cerrito Recyclying Center on a slightly foggy morning last week. I was attracted to the turquoise color I saw in the rocky hills so that was my focus. I deleted parked cars and the Goodwill truck and let the road continue on into the hills instead of ending at a dead end. I let myself just play around and not try to get it exact.
Now I’m going to take something strong for my back and go to bed. I have lots more painting planned for Sunday and Monday so I’m hoping my back will cooperate after some rest.
The weather on Sunday was absolutely perfect and although I really wanted to stay home and start a large studio painting, I couldn’t resist the chance for another summery plein air painting opportunity before the weather changes. We met at China Camp again for an all day paintout and barbeque but I was only there for the afternoon.
[I started several times to describe the day and the scene, with children playing in the sand, catamarans being launched, the waspy buzzing thingees (yellow jackets?) that tried to share my lunch, how tired I was, etc., but decided it was too boring…]
So I’ll just say a bit about the painting and call it a night: After hunting for a painting spot I realized that what really interested me was the sky and the distant hills and the sparkle on the water. After doing a couple thumbnails to try to fit all of that into the scene, I sketched out the big shapes on the canvas.
Then I decided to just start at the top and paint my way down like I was icing a cake, trying to capture the right colors in relation to each other as I went. Here’s a picture Sue took at China Camp when I was 3/4 done:
In progress at China Camp
And here’s the painting as finished plein air:
China Camp as finished on site
After I got home and had dinner, I looked at it again and thought the water looked more like a meadow and not like what I’d seen. Even though I was really exhausted, I decided to try to fix the water, working on it for about 2 hours, painting and scraping it off, over and over. I must have gone through the equivalent of a tube of paint! Finally I wiped the water portion off completely and went to bed (which is what I should have done in the first place, since I was too tired to think clearly about what I was doing).
Tonight, working from memory only, I tried doing the water again and am satisfied enough to move on.
Jana Bouc, Artist 