Rush Ranch Horses, Sepia Copic Multiliner and watercolor wash
Mariah, a wonderful young artist, accompanied me to my plein air group’s paint-out today at Rush Ranch in Suisin City. She was immediately inspired by a spot, sat down and started sketching. I faced the opposite direction and sketched these horses in the corral.
Before we’d left my house, I showed her a book on drawing animals that demonstrated how to first find and assemble the basic shapes contained in the animal (rectangles, circles, triangles) and then refine them. I decided to practice what I preached and did that with the horses. I’d never noticed what big knees horses have before. I sketched with my sepia Copic Multiliner .03 and then added watercolor washes.
Rush Ranch Vista, ink & watercolor wash
The views from Rush Ranch were tremendous. I could have sketched for hours more but we’d arrived late and after our second sketches it was time for the group critique and lunch.
We were late because I got lost yet again (missed the turnoff and drove forever before turning around — and this was with GPS!) My mind had wandered to thinking about the people fishing (and the fish) in the slough off the little bridge we’d just passed so I missed the entrance sign and decided that the GPS telling me I’d arrived was wrong. This was especially stupid since the printed directions from my group said to go over that bridge and then turn right in 3/4 mile.
Instead I drove and drove, went over another bridge and THEN started looking for the turnoff. I went miles past that bridge, eventually arriving at the gate to a “youth correctional facility” (jail for teens) and admitted I’d blown it again. When we finally found our way back and I saw the huge “Rush Ranch” sign, I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.
Well actually I could believe it. I think I could get lost just walking from one room to another these days!
I’ve been away from my blog this past week, for a number of reasons, including setting up a new computer, an extended family member suddenly hospitalized in a coma with no brain activity, plus other more positive family events.
So in this brief intermission, here is a page from Costa Rica’s Zoom magazine I received recently. My sketches illustrate an article about Leaf Cutter Ants (amazing creatures that live in Costa Rica). When the editor was looking for illustrations she came across my sketches on my blog and asked for permission to use them in the article. It’s fun seeing them in print:
(Click image to enlarge)
I’m looking forward to some solid studio time for the next two days and getting back to regular posting. Meanwhile, life goes on…
I went out for a bit of “sketchercize” today, trying to get unsluggish. My plan was to walk 30 minutes, sketch wherever I landed at 30 minutes and then walk 30 minutes back. But 15 minutes out I came across this odd montage and had to stop right there. Up a few stairs just past some lovely native drought resistant plantings, and a miniature pagoda was a full sized authentic teepee in front of a wall of bamboo. Somewhere behind that was a house.
Why would someone have a teepee in their front yard? Is it for houseguests who have overstayed their welcome? A mother-in-law apartment? A garden shed? A kid’s playhouse? An art studio? A meditation room? A dog house? A place to just get away?
One nice thing about living in the San Francisco Bay Area, or at least in this part of it, is the feeling of “Anything goes,” and “Live and let live.” Slightly (?) odd artists like me fit right in. I definitely found my tribe when I moved to Berkeley, and while I live a few miles north of there now, apparently it’s close enough for teepees.
And now off to watch the season five finale of Project Runway on DVD. Since I’ve finished all 5 seasons of The Wire, and caught up on Project Runway, I’m excited to get back to more drawing and reading and much, much less time in front of the TV!
I’ve been testing pens that I have on hand, trying to find one that is permanent or archival but also will bleed when water is brushed across it. I haven’t found it yet, so if you have any suggestions, send them my way. While I was testing I was hungry and annoyed that I was going to have to stop and go cook dinner, and then clean up after dinner.
I’d recently learned that cats don’t need variety in their food (assuming they’re being fed a high quality cat food) and that in fact, switching their food around gives them digestive problems. Cats only have about 500 taste buds compared to our 9,000 so they make their eating decisions based on smell (and how hungry they are), not so much on flavor. When I stopped constantly changing their food, Busby’s chronic digestive problems disappeared and he became much nicer to have to around.
Since veterinary science has determined exactly what nutrients are required for cats, why hasn’t medical science discovered something similar for humans? I’m not saying I’d want to eat kibble 3 times a day (although my beloved Cheerios do look an awful lot like kibble and my cat Fiona has been known to rip open the Cheerios box and eat them) but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just take a meal replacement pill, beverage or bar and have all the nutrients needed to nourish the body and stave off hunger until the next mealtime? Take the poll at the bottom of the post and tell me if you agree.
I was also thinking about how much more I enjoy sketches and sketching when they’re about something other than making a copy of something, and when there are words included. Pretty pictures are nice, but when something is just about being a pretty picture it feels soul-less to me. I want some meat in my sketches, not just pretty (or at least some kibble, if not meat).
No those aren’t circus dogs stacked up in a doggie pyramid, I just drew them that way as dogs came and went, begging for scraps at the table where the couple was eating lunch.
I’d planned to spend the day in the studio today, but when Barbara called to invite me for a walk at Pt. Isabel, I couldn’t resist. Since it was sunny and not too windy (or so I thought) I also brought along my plein air gear, thinking I might set up to paint there after our walk. But we took a L-O-N-G walk on the Bay Trail with an equally long walk back, and then had a late lunch at the Sit Stay Cafe in the dog park.
The wind had picked up and I was getting cold and didn’t really feel like spending 3 hours standing in the wind (see top left picture with poor bent over tree from the constant ocean winds). So while I was trying to decide, Barbara took out her sketchbook and I decided to do the same. By the time I finished it was already 4:00 and another weekend was nearly over.
But a day with good solid exercise and a little sketching is a good day and it counts. (Unlike some days that just suck and don’t count.)
"Lovers Mongrels Curs #1 M.H.", Acrylic on canvas, 28x22"
It’s not what you might think, based on the above work in progress. It’s that I finally started the series of paintings that I’d been waiting on for over a year. I hadn’t realized it, but I was waiting for the painting to tell me how to paint it (see below about intuition and broccoli).
I’m just having so much fun with the series and haven’t wanted to use time I have for painting being on the computer. Also I wasn’t sure if I was ready to post what I’m working on yet. I’m also not sure how much I want to share about each painting and the series as a whole, except to say that it’s sort of auto- and bio- graphical, about the men who’ve played a role in my life, hence the title of the series: “Lovers, Mongrels and Curs.”
This painting is the first in the series and it is still a work in progress; a little sketchy but I like it that way and may just leave it…or not.
I followed the saying, “If you don’t know what to do, just wait until you do,” instead of forcing the start of the series. It just took some down time to conceptualize how the series needed to be painted and for the ideas to bubble up (literally: I was on vacation, lying on my back on the deck of my little, private, open-roofed, hot-tub room at Albany Sauna, watching the clouds float by overhead while the hot tub bubbled beside me when it came to me that the series needed to be painted large, in acrylic.)
I wanted to work on two paintings simultaneously, side by side on the wall so first thought of using gessoed paper or unstretched canvas, finally settling on stretched canvases. But how to hang them?
Using Velcro to Hang Canvases on the Wall for Painting
After some brainstorming I found an easy way to mount two canvases side by side on the wall without harming the wall or making holes with nails.
2 canvases mounted on bulletin board with Velcro
I applied a few strips of Velcro along the top rail of my 36×48″ metal framed bulletin board already hanging on that wall (the cork is covered by a sheet of paper pinned to it). Then I measured and matched the other half of the Velcro strips to the backs of the canvases and stuck them together. To stabilize the canvases a bit I put a few large push pins along the bottom and sides. It’s working great!
Listen to Your Broccoli poster, colored pencil, 16x14", created after reading Bird by Bird in 1994
“There’s an old Mel Brooks routine, on the flip side of the ‘2,000-Year-Old-Man,’ where the psychiatrist tells his patient, ‘Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.’ And when I first tell my students this, they look at me as if things have clearly begun to deteriorate. But it as important a concept in writing as it is in real life.
It means, of course, that when you don’t know what to do…you get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside. It will tell you what to do. The problem is that so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children. When we listened to our intuition when we were small and then told the grown-ups what we believed to be true, we were often either corrected, ridiculed, or punished. God forbid that you should have your own opinions or perceptions–better to have head lice.
. . . So you may have gotten in the habit of doubting the voice that was telling you quite clearly what was really going on. It is essential that you get it back.
. . . Get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side.
. . . Get your intuition back and make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. . . Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
. . . If you don’t know which way to go, keep it simple. Listen to your broccoli. Maybe it will know what to do. Then, if you’ve worked in good faith for a couple of hours but cannot hear it today, have some lunch.”
Friday night was the monthly Stockton Avenue Art Stroll, a neighborhood art walk that is always packed with people, live music, interesting art displayed in venues ranging from actual galleries to a beauty salon and a holistic health center. This time there was also a contingent of art cars since one of the people showing his art, Ken Duffy, is married to a local art car artist, Emily Duffy (her “Vain Van” is pictured above on the right, with more photos on her website).
But Friday night I saw my favorite art car ever: The Witchmobile! (Click to enlarge to see all the glorious details below).
Witchmobile front
Witchmobile rear (note broomsticks)
Witchmobile driver’s seat!
Witchmobile Crow roof ornament
Witchmobile front grill
Witchmobile broomsticks
Witchmobile great bumpersticker
I’ve always loved art cars. Years ago when I was married and a stay-at-home mom, I gladly drove a rusty old brown Toyota Tercel (that we called the “TURDsel” since that’s what it looked like) so that we could afford the vintage Porche my husband had always wanted. I wanted to do tromp l’oeille painting on the Turdsel so that it looked like a pile of dog doo with flies buzzing around it in 3-D. But my husband was embarassed enough that we had that ugly rust-bucket parked in front of our house, let alone one that said out loud “I’m a piece of S**T”).
I’d also thought about turning my previous car, a white Toyota Corolla, into a swan, covering it with white feathers and making a swan head to sit on top…
What was I thinking? Somehow, despite printed instructions, my GPS unit and mapping software on my iPhone, I managed to get more lost than I’ve ever been in my life today (except for the time I was driving across country on highways and somehow ended up on a dead end street). I arrived so late at our painting site that there was no time to set up all my gear so I just did this quick, wonky sketch.
The paint-out was on Mare Island, a former naval base and shipyard with historic buildings, factories and old officers’ mansions. First I was a little late leaving the house, and then, after going over the Vallejo-Carquinez bridge four times, and multiple wrong turns (second guessing the GPS), and driving in circles, I was REALLY late.
Part of the problem was not being able to get to sleep the night before and drinking way too much coffee to try to wake up in the morning. But the biggest problem was that I hadn’t taken the time to pinpoint where I was going and so the information I put into the GPS wasn’t accurate. And the stupidest thing was that my plein air group had provided me with perfectly simple instructions which I complicated by using my GPS incorrectly. (A perfect example of GIGO: Garbage In: Garbage Out).
By the time I got home I was tired, hungry, disappointed and frustrated so it seemed like a good day to work on the rebuild of my website. At least I made good progress on that and accomplished something today.
Agapantha Fireworks over Hydrangeas, watercolor, 9×6″
In honor of Independence Day I spent the day quite independently, doing a little gardening, a little cooking, and then starting the first of a series of autobiographical paintings in acrylic on canvas.
I skipped the picnics and fireworks (except for hearing them boom in the distance and having to comfort my stressed out cats, and again just now, after 11:00 p.m., they’re illegally exploding somewhere in my neighborhood). So I thought I’d sketch these agapanthas that looked a bit like fireworks exploding over the hydrangeas.
I like the idea of celebrating independence day with flowers rather than the sound of “bombs bursting in air” anyway.
Hidden away behind the new, massive Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light is a “Healing Garden” for the victims of sexual abuse by priests. I knew it was there because I’d read about it when the cathedral was opened to the public, but had a hard time finding it.
I was having a stressful day at my office, which is just across the street from the cathedral, and had gone looking for the garden at lunch. I thought that a few minutes in a healing garden would be restorative before tackling the afternoon’s work.
The “garden” is hidden away in a little corner behind the church, and consists of a small patio, about 10 feet in diameter, ringed by wooden benches arranged in a circle around what looks like a big cracked rock. The only greenery in the “garden” are some small hedges in cement planters that support the slatted benches.
The healing I found in the garden came from sunshine and sketching, not from sitting next to the huge concrete cathedral, on a hard wooden bench, gazing at what turned out to be a sculpture of a big cracked rock, not an actual rock.
The plaque on the bench: “This healing garden, planned by survivors, is dedicated to those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm, NEVER AGAIN.”
The plaque beside the sculpture: “Some day, 11, 2000. Masatoshi Izumi. Basalt.”
I get that the sculpture might represent how hard, broken, and cracked apart the lives of the victims must be. What I don’t get is how this could be called a “Healing Garden.” Where’s the garden? Where’s the healing?
I hope that survivors who visit and are able to find the garden do find it a healing experience.
Jana Bouc, Artist 