Pest Control at Pastime Hardware, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
When we made our annual sketching pilgrimage to Pastime Hardware on a cold winter evening I picked the Pest Control department. I was attracted by the big, ugly, inflated hanging rat and the artificial owls who seemed to be discussing who was going to nab the rat.
The names of the products seemed inflated too: Pest Chaser Pro and Sonic Pest Chaser (both made me imagine cartoon critters that jump out of the box and chase critters away). And then there’s the Tom Cat Mole Trap (contains cat? that chases moles?) and Cat Stop (do you need Cat Stop after you’ve released the Tom Cat Mole Trap?)
I know someone who is courting real owls by putting up owl houses in her yard. That solution might be worse than the problem. My son has a family of screech owls living in a tree across the street from him and they keep him awake, screeching all night long.
I love the way the big guy seems to be looking at the pretty girl’s butt in her shiny black tights. In reality they got in line at different times, but my drawing took on a life of its own.
One of the things I love about living in the Bay area is the wide variety of people you see, dressed however they please, with either no concern about fashion or a style all their own. I fit right in!
I hated doing performance reviews at work but was always glad when I’d finished mine and could see all I’d accomplished. This year I had to do my last review at work because I am leaving to paint full time next month!!! I think that’s my biggest news of the year and something I’ve been working towards, finishing up projects since September.
Since I know how valuable performance reviews are, I assign myself to do a review of my art/life too. So here are my reflections on the past year and looking forward into 2013.
STUDIO
In early 2012 I moved into my new studio which I’m thoroughly enjoying and have continued to modify to suit my needs, including building Carole Marine’s still life “stage,” and adding a hula hoop for fun warm ups.
My painting Pile of Persimmons was licensed for the cover of Mills College literary journal Persimmon Tree.
I was interviewed for this article about Urban Sketching that was published in the local paper.
ART-LIFE
The biggest life change: I’ve reduced my day job hours to one day a week and in another month will leave to paint full time!!!!
UPS Delivers at Night, Oil on Canvas, 20×16
I continued work on a series of 16×20″ portraits of people at work in my community. One of these, UPS Delivers at Night was the runner-up in best Portrait of the Year on Making a Mark. It is being purchased by the “model” and UPS corporate wants to do a story about it.
Last year I said I wanted to learn to relish and appreciate imperfection and that has helped me to begin to learn to stop before a painting has been perfected (otherwise known as overworked).
I’ve made it a priority in 2013 year to find that magical point of balance between painting, blogging, and everything else like healthy eating, exercise and sleep. I’m already making progress.
Feeling more confident with my oil painting technique, I’m often able to paint with conscious competence now (see this post for explanation of the 4 steps from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence) which is way better than the conscious incompetence I was coming from.
Last year I decided to do watercolor sketching instead of oil painting at plein air paint-outs. This year I will start oil painting plein air again to see if what I’ve learned in the studio with oils in 2012 will allow me to enjoy and succeed at taking them outdoors.
I experimented with Stillman & Birn Sketchbooks but found I prefer the paper of Moleskine Watercolor Notebooks to S&B when I’m not binding my own.
I began using a limited palette in oils, working with just 4 to 6 colors. It’s a great way to learn more about color and helps create harmonious paintings. In watercolor it seems more difficult since I usually want to control not just color but transparency/opacity /sedimentary and other characteristics of watercolor paint.
I fell in love with oil painting on oil-primed linen panels for smaller sized work (I use regular stretched canvas for anything bigger than 11″x14″). I’ve been using relatively inexpensive Centurion panels and they’re wonderful!
STUDY/WORKSHOPS/TEACHING
I took a week-long Alla Prima Portraiture class with Rose Frantzen at Scottsdale Artists School in February 2012. It was intense. She takes her teaching very seriously and we worked hard from 9 to 5. After class hours she entertained us with wonderful stories from her life and the art world. I learned a lot but would have benefited more if I’d come to the class more skilled at portrait drawing and alla prima painting. I spent too much time just trying to get my darn drawing (with paint) right.
I did a lot of work and study to improve my drawing skills in 2012 and it will continue to be a major focus in 2013.
Although I expected to start up my watercolor classes again in 2012 I didn’t. I plan to start teaching again in the spring, once I’ve completed my last day job assignments.
Continued to sketch every Tuesday night with my Urban Sketchers group as well as on our “field trips” and independently. Our group is having a show this month and has started hosting a monthly sketching event for the public the first Tuesday evening of each month.
Stopped bookbinding to make more time for studio painting but will return to it again in 2013.
ART BUSINESS/SALES and LICENSING
Last year I decided to concentrate on painting and wait until I left my day job to put effort into art biz/marketing. Despite that plan I did sell a number of paintings, sketches, prints and commissioned works including a large watercolor of a corporate building commissioned as a gift to a retiring CEO, as well as portraits of people, cats and dogs, and landscape paintings.
Whole Foods Oakland bought my sketch (below) to use in their employee lunchroom.
Whole Foods Oakland, ink & watercolor, 5×7″
Licensed work, in addition to those listed under Publications above, included a sketch of carrots for Canadian Carrot Community Arts Coffeehouse’s Facebook and a police car sketch used by Fayette County, Georgia’s Public Safety Department for a brochure. It’s amazing the way the web gets our work seen by people in such diverse places such as….
The French advertising agency for Hermes (yes that Hermes!) contacted me to do a series of illustrations for them for a new website
1950 Royal Typewriter
campaign. They wanted the drawings to be in the funky brush-pen style I used for some antique industrial equipment sketches like this old typewriter. They sent me story and concept sketches my drawings were to follow, which they were going to animate. In the end I turned it down for a variety of reasons but it was an amazing opportunity.
A local gallery invited me to have a show in 2013 of my still life paintings. I am honored by the invitation but not sure I want to spend the money on framing everything. Am I being silly? It seems easier to sell online but I know it’s important to “get the work out there” locally too.
BLOGGING & WEB
WordPress sends its members an annual blog report. Mine began: “About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 220,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein it would take about 4 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe.” Cute.
I celebrated my six-year blogging anniversary in 2012 with 220,309 views from 188 countries. I wrote 102 new posts (total 1,118) and uploaded 430 pictures in 2012. My highest views on a day in 2012 was 1,763 on October 29, 2012 and total views on my blog from inception May 2006 through 2012 is 1,213,061.
Posted regularly and administered the Urban Sketchers S.F. Bay Area blog as well as starting a Facebook and Flickr page for Urban Sketchers. Some of our group below.
I neglected my Flickr and my Daily Paintworks site in 2012 as well as posting less often on my blog than in previous years. My intention for 2013 is to revamp and re-energize my website and Flickr pages and post more regularly on my blog. But painting must always come first.
Since my end-of-year wrap-up blog post remains unfinished, here are a couple of autumn sketches that were waiting patiently to be posted. I have a good excuse though: my new iMac arrived last week and since then I’ve been immersed in learning the Mac after over a decade on Windows PCs. I’ve been transferring files, talking to both Moron and Genius-level tech support, and installing and learning Mac versions of my applications.
Miller-Knox Park Autumn, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I’m finding the Mac to be quite delightful in many ways and a bit confounding in others. But little by little I’m getting the hang of it… And..Oh Crud! right after I typed that I made some kind of wrong move and instantly I was popped out of the blog and into an endless loop of…
Computer: “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” I click: “Stay on page.” Computer: “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” over and over until I finally give up, say OK and click “Leave this page.” And of course nothing happens. Had to force quit and restart.
But Yay WordPress; it saved the draft! I wish I knew what I did so I don’t do it again. It has happened a bunch of times and I have no clue why.
It’s quite humbling going from being expert on the PC to being such a beginner that I couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the Mac (finally found the power button hidden behind the screen).
Figgy Lives to Fruit Again, ink & watercolor, 8×5″
Poor Figgy! I knew when I planted her (him? if it fruits is it female? do trees have genders?) from a little twig that it might be too close to my old clay pipe sewer line. And it was: the roots grew down and my drains clogged up.
Baby Fig’s First Fruit, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I have documented this little tree’s life since I first planted it as a cutting (see planting a stick, 3 leaves, and skinny trunks) and for the first time it had produced several delicious figs (sketched above). There were still a few on the tree (can you find them in the sketch below?).
Fig Tree: Tall as My Pocket, Ink & watercolor, 8×5″
After several approaches to fix the clog failed, the plumber had to dig a huge, deep hole to reline the pipes. This required moving the tree, which it turns out, I’d planted RIGHT ON TOP of the sewer line where it met the street.
Digging out the tree, ink & watercolor sketch
The plumber is a good man who loves trees.While I watched and sketched, he had his crew very carefully dig the tree out, gently arrange and trim the extensive roots (it’s true: trees have as much below the ground as above). Then they dug another big hole several feet away and replanted Figgy.
Critical Condition (both me and Figgy). I never seem to have enough information when working with contractors and often make wrong decisions. I cropped off and spared you from most of my journal scribbling on that subject.
By then it was getting dark, I was getting panicky as I’d been without water and bathroom use all day, and the job was extensive and expensive. They set up lights and kept working, finishing around 9:00 that night.
A few days later I could see Figgy was in critical condition. The leaves were dead and the branches were shriveling. That called for emergency surgery; I cut off most of them and as you can see by the sketch at the top of the post, it was successful.
So Figgy is a stick again, but full of potential, just as the year ends and a new one begins. I will spend this evening reflecting on 2012 and 2013 and will post about that soon. Meanwhile, best wishes to all for blossoming in a lively and good new year !
Early on the morning after Thanksgiving our Urban Sketchers group went to Oakland’s Chinatown for some sketching. It was business as usual in the busy produce markets, herb shops, meat and seafood stalls, and Chinese restaurants, with no sign of Black Friday.
I found a spot to sit in front of a bank and had fun drawing all the details in the architecture. I started in pencil because the scene seemed so complicated. It’s easier to get it “right” with an eraser but it takes so much longer to draw it twice, in pencil and then in ink. I had to add the watercolor at home from a photo because by the time I chose my spot and did the drawing, it was time to meetup with the group.
While I drew, local people stopped to watch and give me encouragement, whether in excellent or broken English. My favorite was the plump, elderly lady who said something in Chinese, grinned, and gave me a big thumbs up. The amazing thing about sketching in public is that no matter how good or bad you’re doing, people always say nice, encouraging things.
Chinatown-some of the Urban Sketchers plus-1 (that’s me, second to right)
Since many of us were there, we took photos for our group blog. I used the timer on my camera, setting it on the edge of a defunct fountain in the center of this plaza. I didn’t realize I was including the lady on the end. She must have been really tired as she nodded off and slept through our photo session. The photo we ultimately used on the USK blog masthead here was kindly taken by a guy who watched me repeatedly duck under the yellow warning tape around the fountain, set up the camera, and dash back to sit with my friends.
Turkey Vulture drawn in ink from taxidermy specimen, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
So here it was the day before Thanksgiving and I wanted to draw a turkey. I called around trying to find a live one to sketch but failed. Then I tried to find a taxidermy turkey. No luck. The ranger at the Tilden Nature Center said they did have a collection of taxidermy birds including owl, songbirds, turkey vulture…but no turkey.
Wait! Turkey Vulture! It’s a bird, it’s named Turkey so why not? I called back to confirm they had it in stock (they rent it out: $10 for two weeks) and then drove up to Tilden Park.
Turkey Vulture: It’s Value, drawn from specimen with notes from display case, ink & watercolor 5×16″
Here are a few interesting things about Turkey Vultures:
Turkey vultures (nicknamed “buzzard”) have a 5-6 foot wing span; “there is no more graceful bird in flight” but they have weak legs so walk awkwardly
In order to fly they need a run into the wind to lift off and can fly 60 miles per hour
Vultures are the “garbage collector of the bird world” and eat everything from dead mouse to moose.
If they are in danger and can’t run, they vomit their foul-smelling meal at their enemy.
Be thankful for them: “Without vultures, much of the world would be cluttered with the bodies of dead decaying animals.”
I’m Thankful For…
Along with turkey vultures, here are some things I’m grateful for:
YOU, my dear blog visitor and reader,
my much-loved friends and family, and
the freedom, security, comfort, and good health that allow me to live this wonderful creative life.
I know none of the above is guaranteed or permanent so I try to be grateful every day, not just Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for?
The best way to start the day is an early morning walk on the beach in Santa Monica. I love the wonderful air, the sounds and scents of the sea and the damp sand on bare feet for miles. My son, his girlfriend, their dog and I drove down there to visit my mom a few weeks ago.
After the Lifeguard Trials swim, lining up at the pier, 4×6″
We stayed at a motel two blocks from the beach so that each morning I could get out and walk the beach. One day they were holding lifeguard trials with hundreds of people lined up on the shore, all wearing green bathing caps, ready to try out for the first round of trials. After the big swim they lined up again at the pier.
Santa Monica Morning Beach Walk, ink & watercolor, 4×6″
My mother grew up in a house half a block from the beach. It would still be in our family if the city hadn’t claimed eminent domain to build fancy high-rise apartments and forced my grandparents out. Their wonderful old house had a great front porch and a backyard that was mostly sand. I always loved visiting them and spending the day at the beach. My grandparents fought the city as long as they could until their house was one of the last standing. Finally they moved about a mile from the beach to the house where my mother lives now.
Although I don’t care for the stereotypical L.A. lifestyle which is all about appearances and money, I miss the southern California beaches where I grew up. Northern California beaches are beautiful but they’re just not the same: rocky, cold, windy and foggy.
Now that we’ve voted, all we can do is pray for the best possible outcome. This beautiful bodhisattva (a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others and is worshipped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism) is life-size and greets visitors in the entry hall in the home of a friend of mine.
Polling Place-Richmond Korean Baptist Church, ink & watercolor
My polling place moved from the senior center a few blocks away to a neighboring area I didn’t know existed so it was an interesting walk there. It got even more interesting when trying to follow my iPhone’s new BAD map program that speaks turn-by-turn directions. It got me there OK but totally messed up on the way home.
Election Night Sketches
If you’re reading this on November 6, check out Wendy McNaughton’s blog. She’s live-blogging her sketches from NPR headquarters and they’re wonderful. I think you have to refresh the page occasionally to keep up with her sketches.
Aztec Dancer waiting; wearing animal head (coyote? wolf?), fur and feathers, ink & watercolor, 8×5″ (drawn from Micaela’s photo, not on site)
LOUDDRUMMING! Brilliant Colors! Aztec Dancers! Smoke from sage (and other “herbs”) and grilling meat! LOUD Bands! Dancers! LOUD Spanish radio stations broadcasting live! Sugar skulls! Costumes and painted faces! Marigolds everywhere!
I followed the man in the sketch above after he finished dancing, trying to get a photo or a sketch of him and failed, meanwhile losing my fellow sketchers in the crowd. Micaela managed to get a photo which she let me use for this sketch.
People of all descriptions lined up to be blessed with sage smoke and feathers, (drawn from my photo, not onsite) ink & watercolor, 8×5″
It was the Dia de Los Muertos celebration in East Oakland and I felt like I was in Mexico. Spanish was the language heard everywhere. Families came to celebrate and honor their loved ones who had passed on with beautiful altars filled with marigolds, fruit, religious imagery and mementos of loved ones.
1948 Chevy Fleetline, drawn in ink on site, painted at home (5×8″)
I was finding it difficult to sketch at the festival since it was so LOUD my ears hurt and so crowded we kept losing each other. Being tall, I didn’t want to stand in front of someone’s booth or altar and block the view. Then I found the wonderful old low rider car show at the edge of the event which was much quieter and less crowded. I set up my stool and started sketching directly with a Micron Pigma pen.
People stood behind me and watched me draw. They said nice things about my sketch, including the owners of the car, Jose and Denise, even though my sketch turned their meticulously restored, beautiful work of art into a jalopy.
My first car when I was in high school was a ’49 Plymouth (it was already an antique) and looked a lot like this sketch. To get to school in the morning my sister would have to push it until I could “pop the clutch” to start it. Then she’d run after me and hop in. I was afraid to tell my dad that it wouldn’t start on its own—I thought I’d broken something but it just needed a new battery. I was sad when the motor died.
Boy who likes to draw cartoons watched me (in blue hat) sketch
This young man stood behind me and watched me draw so I offered him a notebook to try his hand at sketching the car but he declined. He said he didn’t know how to draw cars but liked to draw cartoons. I said I didn’t know how to draw cars either, but just did it anyway.
There were booths selling decorated skulls made of sugar, beautiful little skeletons in fancy dress, paper cut-outs, hats, jewelry and even paintings on black velvet of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis as skeletons.
Aztec Dancers, brush pen inkSugar skulls, little skeleton ladies and a view looking down from BART tracks when we were departingPainted faces everywhereSugar candy skulls; they added your name on top for freePretty skeleton dollsAztec DancerOne of the many amazing altars at the festival
Jana Bouc, Artist 