Category: Life in general

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Flower Art Life in general Plants Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Zebra Plant

Z<p>ebra Plant

Loosely painted without drawing first using Kremer Pigments watercolors; then FW Acrylic Ink applied with Sumi brush. In 9×12 Aquabee sketchbook. (To enlarge, click image and select “All Sizes”)

At last, a day without a headache! Every time the weather changes I get migraney. It’s really frustrating here in the S.F. Bay Area because we sometimes go through three seasons in a day, especially in spring and fall. But there’s nothing like the absence of pain to brighten a day and remind me to feel grateful.
I visited my local Dick Blick (did his parents really name him that?) Art Supplies today, to pick up some ink and a sumi brush to carry on with my experiments with loose painting and adding ink. They were playing some weird music in the store that made me feel like I was getting another migraine–it had some kind of repetetive pounding sound, not a drumbeat, something chinky-chunky sounding, that was driving me nuts. I mentioned it to a fellow shopper in the ink section and she, irritated, “thanked” me for bringing it to her attention so she could be annoyed too.

I’m very sensitive to my environment, which is good for being an artist but bad for being out in the world where I easily get overstimulated when it’s busy and noisy and then need quiet downtime (preferably in the studio) to recover. Also not good for driving since I’m constantly noticing everything around me but the road. I try to make myself pay attention to driving so I’m not too much of a hazard–though I did back out of my driveway right into a parked car today (barely touched it, no harm done, but a good reminder to pay more attention!).

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Drawing Flower Art Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Westbrae Nursery Buddhas

Westbrae Nursery Buddha

Micron pigma ink pen, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)
(This was Monday’s post–I thought I’d clicked “Publish” but when there were no comments on it at all, I checked and discovered I had never actually put it on line….oops).

After working this morning I rode my bike into Berkeley this afternoon to do some errands. Last time I drove down Gilman I noticed that Westbrae Nursery had a bunch of Buddhas on display so after I finished my unshopping at REI (returning a clip-on umbrella that I thought would work for plein air painting but wouldn’t clip onto my easel) I rode over to the nursery.

I discovered that my new bike seat worked perfectly as a table for my teeny Winsor & Newton watercolor field kit. I stood with my bike just outside the nursery entrance to draw and paint this. One of the workers stopped by between delivery bags of manure and big plants to people’s cars. His comments: “Are you painting?” “Don’t you get tired standing?” “Wow you’re fast!”

Today was warm and sunny but by the time I started for home, the fog and wind had returned. Having not carried a jacket (a foolish mistake in the Bay Area), I had a chilly downhill ride home.

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Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages

Dad’s drawings: A tiny treasure found

In a recent post I mentioned that sometimes when I’m drawing I’m wistfully reminded of the wonderful cartoony sketches my dad used to do. I remember one time he drew me, all knobby knees and elbows and I loved seeing my image appear–it was like magic! I thought none of his drawings or paintings remained, having been angrily disposed of by his second to last wife (all right, his second wife, but it was all so dramatic and scandalous at a time when divorce was rare and he was moving on to his third and last wife.)

When I was helping my mom try to find an old photo album in her garage yesterday, we found a tiny greeting card-sized album containing mementos of her marriage to my dad–a few wedding photos and some cards and sketches he’d made for her when she was pregnant with me. I felt like I’d found an absolute treasure and was so pleased that she allowed me to take his sketches with me.

My dad died a few years ago around this time of the year so it’s really nice to be able to remember him now through his drawings and to share them with you on my blog.

(All of the following images by my dad, Howard Goldstein, can be enlarged by clicking on the image and then on “All Sizes”)

Below: Charting the labor pains “June 17, June 18” (I was born on June 19th.)
dad 2

Below: “RivaLee Enters A Room”
dad 3

Below: Talking to the doctor: “And then at 2:16 she had a harder pain but at 2:27 she…”

dad 1

These were all drawn in pencil on the back of paper that said “Enrollment Blank for the California School of Screen Process,” a mail-order art school business my father and two uncles ran for a while in the late 1940s. I guess by the time of my birth the forms had become scratch paper and the school was no more. According to the Enrollment Blanks, their school offered a diploma, a 10 page booklet on how to conduct a profitable business and “10 individual, easy to read, simple to understand lessons that will give practical experience” along with a “Complete Kit of Supplies: Paints, silk, materials, photographic supplies, frame, squeegee, stencil knife, tacks, hinges…in fact, all the materials necessary to complete the course.” Fortunately they all went on to have very successful careers in their chosen professions.

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Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Dining with Mom

Dining with Mom

Ink drawing in 6×8 Strathmore sketchbook. Drawn at the airport waiting for the plane home.

I made a one-day trip to Santa Monica to visit my mom and sister today. She took us out to lunch (my L.A. sister and her son are across the table from my mom and I–that’s me with my hand on my head trying to get small and hide) at Izzy’s, a nice Jewish deli.

While we were looking at our menus, there was a fly buzzing around our table. Now those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while know that my mom is a bit of a character–the sort who has lots of nerve (or chutzpah as it’s known in Yiddish) to demand extra this, special that, and then takes home most of the stuff on the table (or who, when hospitalized, demands a new mattress and a room with a better view…and gets it).

So we’re all sitting there, trying to decide what to order, when my mom starts waving her menu at the fly, trying to make it go away. It doesn’t. So she takes her hefty menu and swats the fly against the window and SPLAT! She kills the fly, leaving a nasty splotch on the window and the quite large and chunky, dead fly, stuck to the back of her menu.

My mom and I turn to each other and start laughing, realizing what she’s done and what a mistake it was. My sister and her son are totally grossed out, she being a vegan animal rights activist who would never kill a fly–she’d probably make a little nest in a box for it, and keep it with all the other rescued creatures in her apartment.

Just then the nice limited-English proficiency waiter arrives to take our order and reaches for Mom’s menu which she’s propped up against the window, fly side in, trying to hide the mess. I felt bad for the waiter and spoke up–“She killed a fly with the menu…see…it’s right there.” So, embrazened, she says, “Yes, and there’s a mess on the window that needs to get cleaned” and pointed to the splot on the window. He says “No problemo, I’ll clean it.” But I think he meant the menu. After he took our orders and the menus, that was the last we saw of him.

Our food was delivered by a grumpy waitress, only made more grumpy, I’m sure, by mother’s requests for extra slices of bread (to turn one sandwich into two), 3 takeout boxes, 2 bags and her paltry 10% tip.

We actually had a fun day together, walking on the beach, driving around looking at historic mansions in Santa Monica near Malibu, and doing a bit of organizing in her garage and closet. It was great seeing her feeling so much better and being realtively active again at 83.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Solano Ave Storefronts (EDM #85)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts

Please click image and select “All Sizes” to enlarge
Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook

Today was the 11th International Sketchcrawl and I’d planned to attend. But this morning I decided I really wanted to take a bike ride instead. I believe there are no shoulds when it comes to my art life– I’m the only one I need to please. I feel so fortunate that so much of my time is my own and that, at least for today, the decisions I have to make are about such happy things. So I nixed the official sketchcrawl, packed my sketching kit in my bike bag and took off.

I rode over to Solano Avenue, planning to draw the storefront of Solano Cyclery after getting them to fix my kickstand. But their storefront was boring so I took a little stroll and saw this Chinese restaurant and it’s next-door neighbor, Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts. (This week’s Everyday Matters Challenge is to draw a storefront.)

Sweet Lotus Lifestyle Gifts is crammed with Made in China chotzkes. I’m not sure what kind of Lifestyle they had in mind when they named the store but I don’t think it would be a good one if you owned all that cheap, shiny junk. The name always makes me think of Lifestyle brand condoms which makes me think the store should be selling vibrators and sex toys. I’ve never gone inside, so who knows, maybe they do, way in the back.

I sat on the ground in front of a wine shop to do the drawing. Then I noticed a conveniently placed wine barrel advertising the wine shop which was just the right height to stand beside and use as a table for my paints and notebook. While I was working several different people came over to see what I was doing and said nice things. I know many people feel uncomfortable having someone watch when they draw in public. For some reason I think it’s fun–people are always so nice and seem to be surprised and excited to see their own little world put down on paper.

When I finished after about an hour and a half, I realized I’d missed lunch. I picked up a California Roll from Kyoto To Go, the local sushi bento box store right across the street and sat in a little corner park and with my yummy lunch. Though I planned to make another stop to sketch on the way home, I decided to skip it. It was a fun bike ride home and then I had a little nap. A perfectly enjoyable day!

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Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Meeting People

Meeting-People

Ink in Moleskine

I spent the entire work day in a meeting today that was all about numbers, numbers and more numbers. I filled a dozen pages in my little Moleskine sketchbook with drawings of people looking bored. They fed us a nice lunch and it was good to meet some of my work colleagues from other offices. The meeting was supposed to end at 3:00 but somehow the guy leading the meeting missed that memo.

At 3:20 he handed out a 50 page Federal RFP (Request for proposal) and said it would be a fun little “activity” for us to read through it and decide whether there was anything in the RFP that would make us think we would or would not want to submit a proposal. This was just an exercise–it wasn’t a current RFP–just practice. This was after we’d studied 16 pages of budget reports looking for errors, with the error finders winning $5 worth of Carl’s Junior gift certificates (woo-hoo!). We could win more trips to Carl Juniors for playing this little game.

None of us in the meeting are really numbers people and we were tired and grouchy and wanted to leave. The other people at my table revolted. One woman whispered, “They don’t pay me enough to do this!” and the other replied, “This isn’t in my job description.” We all just sat there belligerently.

The meeting leader looked over at our table and asked why were weren’t reading and I blurted out “We don’t want to, it’s too much!” (So very professional of me.) That gave another table courage to tell him we were supposed to have ended the meeting 20 minutes ago. He said that explained why half the room had already left and he ended the meeting. Unfortunately my boss and I still had an after-meeting meeting with him and his boss.

Finally we got to leave and since I was in downtown San Francisco for the first time in ages, I decided to go to Nordstrom and buy a little new makeup. Mine was so old that it was probably carrying botulism (actually that might not be so bad–isn’t that what they make Botox from?). Hopefully I’ll be able to convince myself to take the time to actually put on the new makeup. I figure I owe it to the people who have to look at me!

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Drawing Life in general Outdoors/Landscape People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

It’s About Time: What I learned today

Old Teeth

“Old Teeth” (study for a large painting I’m going to make, drawn today from a combination of photos I took on Broadway in Oakland). Ink, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook. If you wonder why those hip-hop people want to have gold teeth, you might also enjoy a previous post here about a new invention I came up with in a dream for those baggy-pants boys.

 * * *

I spend a lot of time being frustrated because there isn’t enough time to do all of the things I want to do. Every weekend I start off being optimistic, with exciting ideas to explore for painting, drawing, teaching, learning; things that need to be done to care for myself and others; gardening projects, housework, paperwork, etc. But weekends (and most days) always end the same way: feeling disappointed because I didn’t accomplish half of what I thought I could do.

They say (whoever “they” is) that with age comes wisdom. Well I got a huge chunk of wisdom today, and this is what I learned:

There will NEVER be enough time to do everything. Not only that, there will never be enough time to do HALF of what my busy mind comes up with on any given day, week, month, year.

So all I have to do is accept the reality that time is finite and that my little brain, full of ideas, is not. Instead of fooling myself into thinking I can do it all, I need to reassure myself that I probably can’t do half of it, and just pick what I most want to do that day, do it, and rejoice.

When I told Michael about this discovery, he asked if that meant I’d no longer be living in what we call “Jana’s World” where time is this fluffy substance that is mostly ignored until it suddenly surprises me to discover I’m late, yet again. But I like living in Jana’s World and I’m not looking to relocate; it’s (Jana’s) World peace I’m after.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Slam

Boy from the movie Slam
Sanford Draughting Pencil in Raffine 6×9 sketchbook

I finished watching the 1998 movie “Slam” tonight and I loved it! It’s about the redemptive power of art (poetry) in the life of a young African American man living in the Washington DC projects. When the movie ended I wanted more and decided to draw the lead actor. But in scanning through the DVD, looking for an image to pause and draw, I spotted this sweet boy and decided to draw him first. Now I’m too tired to draw anymore tonight. Since I’ve already had the DVD for a couple of weeks, I guess keeping it a few more days to draw from it won’t matter.

I’m going to cancel my Netflix subscription since I never seem to get around to watching movies. When I’m home I always seem to be more interested in drawing, painting, writing, or learning from and being inspired by other artists in the international art blogging community that has so enriched my art life.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

More little tomatoes

Tomato-basket

Ink and watercolor in 6×9 Raffine sketchbook

Searching my house for something to draw tonight I had to resort to looking in the fridge. Everything in my house just seemed so man-made and dry. I needed something alive and bright to give me enough energy to draw since I’m recovering from a funky migraine and feeling a bit bedraggled. These little tomatoes were shining brightly in the light of my fridge and they were fun to draw and paint.

The highlight of my day today was listening to an interview with novelist and screenwriter Nora Ephron (who is also a blogger) on the NPR program Forum (where it’s available to listen or download). Her new book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman” is a funny take on the insults of aging. She is one of my favorite witty writers. Her book “Heartburn” (about a failed marriage) has one of the most hilarious passages I’ve ever read about picking the one person to end up with who’s going to drive you crazy. She is so brilliant and funny!

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Drawing Gardening Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Little Green Tomatoes

Tomato plant

Haiku for my little tomato plants

Poor green tomatoes
Planted too late to grow red
Reach for fading sun

I guess I planted them a little too late. Everybody else has harvested theirs and removed the plants from the garden. Mine are still striving to grow up and become nice big juicy red tomatoes but summer is over. Unless we get a month of Indian Summer (fingers crossed) they will never grow up to become edible fruit.  Just sad little green tomato babies.

I drew this as a meditation after a frustrating day (more about that in a minute). I sat down outside and started drawing the middle of the plant, looking at it like a jigsaw puzzle, where each intersecting shape was a puzzle piece. Every time I reached another intersection I followed that line to the next. Eventually the puzzle started fitting together. But the sun went away and it was getting windy so after I did about 80% trying to accurately capture each little leaf and stem (amazing variety of charming leaf shapes on tomato plants!) I quickly sketched another 20% to fill it in so I could go inside. This Jigsaw Puzzle method of drawing I came up with is really helping me to understand better what I draw–especially when there are layers and layers of shapes. (Raffine 6×9 sketchbook, Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink, watercolor)

My frustrating day involved typical contractor bad behavior– not finishing a job, not calling when they said they would, leaving holes that were supposed to be patched, making me stay home all day waiting for their return to finish which never happened, leaving a mess. Drawing helped me let it go, as did this quote I found in one of my old journals:

“Cheer up! Life isn’t everything.” (Mike Nichols)