PiQ Cafe (Pane Italiano Qualita) serves espresso and bakes pizza and Italian pastries near U. C. Berkeley. It’s a busy place in the evening with lots of sketching opportunities. I got a fabulous Decaf Americano coffee and drew the pastries instead of eating them.
Half Price Books from Inside PiQ Cafe, ink, 8×6″
My sketch buddies sat at the outdoor sidewalk tables and drew the bookstore across the street but it was too cold and dark out there for me (Cathy’s sketch and Cristina’s sketch). I drew the bookstore too, but from inside the café.
PiQ has a unique restroom arrangement: you carry a metal pitcher attached to a key card into their elevator, take it down to the basement and follow signs around a corridor to the bathroom and then repeat the trip.
Molly B’s is a shop in North Berkeley’s Walnut Square with great window displays. They were closed but the window was lit up when I was there sketching. I think they sell ladies clothes and underwear. According to one Yelp reviewer, the store has “Beautiful fabrics, witty designs, and some amusingly bizarre skirts and trousers.”
Imperial Tea Court, Ink & watercolor
After I finished my sketch at Molly B’s we met upstairs at the Imperial Tea Court for a little more sketching and sharing. These were a couple of large containers on the counter (and a guy sitting at a table).
And if I’m ever going to get caught up on my blog posting (I’m not even out of September yet!), I am going to have to learn to keep it short. So that’s it for this post.
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?
View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #1, ink & watercolor, 6×8″
Very near my home is Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline, with the world’s largest and most beautiful dog park. It is situated on the San Francisco Bay directly in line with the Golden Gate Bridge. There are views of San Francisco, wetland marshes and the East Bay hills looking east. I love dogs and don’t have one so I often go down there to walk the trails and enjoy other people’s dogs.
In the sketch above, I stood on the wooden bridge over the marsh and tried to capture everything, the marsh, the freeway, the buildings behind it and the hills beyond. Too much, really, for a small 8×6 sketchbook.
View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #2, ink & watercolor, 6×8″
On my next visit it was extremely windy and I almost lost my sketchbook and a brush over the top of the wooden bridge rail I was using for a table. The light wasn’t very interesting, very flat with no shadows.
View from Pt. Isabel Bridge #3, ink & watercolor, 6×8″
On the third visit the tide was in and the area in the first two sketches was mostly underwater so I turned to face west with San Francisco and the bridges in the distance.
I don’t feel that I did the scene justice in any of these sketches and hesitated posting them, but will return again and keep trying until I’m happier with the result.
Around the Corner from Actual Cafe, ink & watercolor 6×8″
When we arrived at the Actual Cafe in Oakland to sketch, the sun was just starting to set. It seemed a shame to go indoors while it was still nice out so we sketched around the corner from the cafe first. Even though it’s in a rundown neighborhood, this house had some charm, with its pillars and rounded porch roof.
Susan Ford’s Sketch of Me Sketching
While I was sketching the house, Susan was sketching me sketching the house (above). She also got the house next door and the cute car as well.
Actual Cafe Espresso machine and counter, ink & watercolor, 6×8″
And then we went inside. I had a delicious cappuccino (decaf these days) and sketched their snazzy Italian espresso machine. As you may have noticed, these are from September; I’m still trying to get caught up on posting sketches and paintings but I just keep making more. That’s a good thing, right?
St. Mary’s College Chapel #2, ink & watercolor, 8×6″
St. Mary’s College in Moraga had two great landscape art shows* that I attended a month or so ago. After I visited the museum I tried sketching their chapel. I had to draw quickly while fighting off wasps that were buzzing around me and kept landing on my bright yellow Lamy Safari pen.
St. Mary’s College Chapel, ink & watercolor, 8×6″
When I started sketching the chapel in the two pictures above, what interested me were the interesting shadows but by the time I finished drawing and was ready to paint, the shadows were mostly gone. I wasn’t having a great sketching day and struggled a bit with both of these.
It’s an interesting campus, very quiet and serene with well-scrubbed, polite students, very different from other Bay Area colleges where diversity and tattoos are the norm. On the hours the bells ring out a very dirge-like sound which seemed out of place.
*The two art shows included “The Nature of Collecting, The Early 20th Century Fine Art Collection of Roger Epperson.” Epperson was a park ranger who over 30 years collected more than 300 museum-quality California landscape paintings by shopping at antique stores, flea markets, garage sales and online. The other show was “Richard Gayton: One Square Mile in California.” I especially loved seeing his sketches and annotations in his journals of the local wildlife and his experiences drawing them within the one square mile in Mt. Diablo State Park.
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.
After the Party: Cerveza and Lemon, oil on Gessobord, 7×5″
My neighbors from Mexico really know how to celebrate birthdays. They prepare by cooking delicious traditional Mexican food for days (including a huge vat of my favorite, birria de chivo) and decorate their yard, filling the patio with tables, chairs and umbrellas like the best cafes.
Beer and Lemon study for oil painting, Ink & Watercolor, 8×5″
The kids gleefully bounce like human ping-pong balls in a giant inflatable jumper in the front yard while the adults enjoy Cumbias music, dancing and good food in the backyard. I appreciated the chance to practice my Spanish but was relieved to discover that most of their friends are bilingual; when my meager Spanish fails we can still talk.
I thought the little beer bottles were cute so I took mine home to paint.
The oil painting is available here. The study is in my journal.
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 