When Cathy and I visited the Marin County Fair to sketch I was experimenting with sketching on pieces of paper instead of in my sketchbook as I wrote about here. Later I pasted the sketches into my journal. Above is a medley of chickens of various kinds along with one of the 4-H girls sitting at the “pet a chicken” table.
Boy with his chicken: matching hairstyles?
I asked this sweet boy if he intentionally styled his hair to match his chicken and he looked at me like I was nuts and said, “No.” The best part of the fair for me is seeing the kids who show their animals and win prizes for how well they present them.
Cow Parts
I made numerous attempts to draw cows, trying to figure out their shapes, and finally sketched one I liked plus a few parts (head and butt). I had no idea their feet had two toes(?). Amazing what you don’t see when you don’t really look.
Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats
It got really hot so we went into the air-conditioned theater on the fair grounds to see the Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats perform. I tried sketching in the dark, adding color later. They were amazing. The sketch, not so much.
Hanging Teddy Prizes and Tilt-a-Whirl
For the last sketch of the day we sketched from the midway. I sat on a ledge on the back of one of the game booths in the shade of the hanging teddy prizes. I cooled off a little more than I expected: I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was sitting in a puddle of water.
Randy Craig Trio at Caffe Trieste, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
On a rainy Tuesday night (in June! it never rains in June here!) we met at Caffe Trieste, a small very “North Beach” coffee house in Berkeley. The place was packed, but Micaela arrived early and saved a great table for us. Soon the wonderful Randy Craig Trio squeezed their equipment into a corner and started playing, accompanied by a woman singer.
Gelato at Trieste, ink & watercolor
I loved getting to sketch accompanied by live music! The musicians were great and their choice of songs was really interesting and brought back memories of the records my dad used to play, including a great rendition of Twisted, made famous in the 50s by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (seen here playing with Count Basie at the Playboy Club):
and later by Joni Mitchell. We ended up staying later than our usual Tuesday night 6:30-8:30 because we didn’t want to leave while the band was playing (and we probably couldn’t have squeezed out between the crowded tables anyway).
Warm up sketches, the singers and the audience
So I used the extra time to add to the warm-up sketches page above. They’re nothing special, but as my boss often says, “Good enough for jazz!”
Along with an end of journal self-portrait, I always put an “If Found” notice and silly self-portrait at the beginning of each book (phone number erased for privacy). I started doodling something I was carrying under my arm that turned into a very fat cat (or is it a pig?) And yes, I do wear Pippi braids and bright green shirts sometimes.
Newly bound journal; cover from old tablecloth
Above is my new journal, covered in a piece of cloth cut from an old tablecloth, stacked on top of the last journal, now complete. I temporarily added the silly butterfly sticker as a reminder of what I intended as the front and bottom of the book. And then in my usual Jana way, I accidentally ignored it and started sketching from the opposite direction. And it doesn’t make a bit of difference.
Even though I’ve gotten the binding process down to a 6-hour project per book (when done one at a time; haven’t tried batching them yet), I was looking for a way to save time and be able to sketch without having to bind my own journals. I have yet to find a store-bought journal I like as much as my own, so I wasn’t considering that option.
I came up with the idea of using an aluminum form holder filled with individual sheets that I could later put in an inexpensive art presentation binder in order, as if in a journal. I liked the idea I could keep different types of paper in the holder and set it up to use with my little watercolor kit.
As used, with sketch on left; palette & water container velcroed on rightClipboard for drawing on left, velcroed spots for palette on rightInterior of section that holds paper
While I like this nifty system, and have used it a few times, it just felt weird not carrying a journal containing a little history of what I’ve been seeing, doing and thinking (I don’t share the “thinking” pages here). So now I’m doing both, always carrying the journal above, and when I want a variety of paper, individual sheets, and/or a convenient surface for sketching and painting, I also bring the lightweight Form Holder. Mine is a small size, but a larger one might be really super as a laptop desk.
Page window template
Above is another nifty tool I had made at my neighborhood Tap Plastics for about $3.00: a little template made of very thin plastic with rounded corners that I trace around with a pencil to pre-draw borders on my journal pages. It helps me to have a window to draw within (which I sometimes ignore or erase if I want to work across the spread). Once I finish a sketch I go over the pencil line with black ink.
I drew the black lines on the template with a wet-erase marker so it can also be used as a viewer to see how and where what I’m looking at “should” fit in the drawing (though I rarely use it for that).
I neither know why, again in typical spatially challenged Jana fashion, I wrote “Top” on the template (why would it matter?), and even more perplexing, why I wrote “Top” at the bottom of the template. But it makes me laugh when I see it so I haven’t wet-erased it.
To put the finishing touches on a completed journal, I make a self-portrait for the last page. Since it was also my birthday, I wanted to incorporate my birthday flowers in the painting. So I hung a mirror with a yellow clip from one of my swing-arm lamps on my drawing table and put the vase of sunflowers between me and the mirror and then drew what I could see in front of me: the flowers in front of the mirror, with me and the flowers reflected in the mirror.
As usual for my end-of-journal self-portraits, I wasn’t willing to measure or try to draw and place features accurately but I think I did capture the feeling of me or the me as I was feeling.
In the next post I’ll show you my new journal and another idea I tried out for sketchbooking minus the sketchbook.
Red, White and Blueberries, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Happy 4th of July, whether it’s Independence Day where you are not. Why not make every day Independence Day and claim your right to freedom from whatever holds you back?
Today I chose the freedom of sketching blueberries in my sketchbook instead of struggling with other “work” I’ve been doing in the studio. I’m also trying to claim independence from the “shoulds” that are telling me I should be at a barbeque, roasting wieners, drinking beer, and waving flags.
It looks like the Bay Area will at last have a non-foggy 4th and if so I’ll be heading up to Albany Hill to watch the fireworks around the Bay Area. And now I declare independence from my computer!
My friend Ikuko invited our Tuesday night sketching group to sketch in her lovely and lovingly tended garden. I picked a spot that was still in the last bit of sun and sat in a lawn chair to sketch and relax. For a change I tried to just be loose and free and it was really fun.
Ikuko's at Sunset, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
I was interested in all of the odd contraptions on top of her fireplace and the glowing light of the sunset on the bricks and the windows. I managed to fit almost everything I wanted on the page (with a little rearranging from real life; the mail box was below the frame but I liked it so stuck it in.) I was a little annoyed when I finished the sketch that I’d “messed up” the house numbers (the 2 is too big) but a week later, who cares!
Baby Fig Tree Grows Three Leaves, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
You might remember seeing my previous sketch of my baby fig tree here when it was just a little stick. Now it has three leaves. Yay! It was fun to sit on the sidewalk in front of my house and sketch (except for the occasional ant that tried to annoy me). That reminded me of being a little kid sitting on the sidewalk playing jacks for hours. I used to be pretty good at it. I wonder if anyone still plays jacks and if they’re still made out of metal.
Trying to sketch while recovering from a migraine and dopey from medication doesn’t always work out well. While everyone else in my plein air group painted the Berkeley Rose Garden on a sunny Saturday morning, I sat on a nearby bench and focused on drawing one tree.
I liked how it looked until I added watercolor, which I thought ruined the effect. So I stupidly added more watercolor. And more. And a bunch of lines. And then I went home and took a nap. Today I washed off as much of the paint as I could, trying to get back to the original line drawing. Then I added some muted blue and grey washes and now I like it again. Tree saved! It was actually a sunny day, just not in my head.
And now for some interesting tidbits on making choices:
Hell Yeah! On Derek Silver’s blog he explains that as a perpetually over-committed person, if he’s not enthusiastically saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, then he’s saying “NO.”
When deciding whether to commit to something, if I feel anything less than, “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” – then my answer is no.
Why the Hell Not? Sid Salvera counters “Hell Yeah!” with the flip side on his post: Why the Hell Not? He asks:
Does this philosophy lead us to pass up opportunities we really should be saying “yes” to?
The most important thing I’ve learned about making choices is that if the word “SHOULD” appears in my decision-making thoughts (I should do that…) I need to swap it with “want to” or “don’t want to.”
Do you find it easy to make decisions? Do you get stuck in the “shoulds,” or say yes to things you don’t really want to do?
Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
When Laura Frankstone of Laurelines was in San Francisco for a long weekend I had the great pleasure of joining her for an afternoon of sketching in Golden Gate Park. Laura and I had corresponded and participated together in many art blogging activities since 2006, but this was the first time we met in person. She is a brilliant artist, a delightful person and great fun to sketch with.
Below are our sketches of the Conservatory. I added watercolor to mine (above) in the studio later since it was windy, foggy and cold sitting on the grass and so were ready to go explore the (way too hot) conservatory.
Laura's on left, Jana's on right (click to enlarge)Photo of the Conservatory with my sketch
After getting all steamy inside the Conservatory of Flowers’ jungle-like atmosphere, and touring the Wicked Plants exhibit, we came back out to sketch people on the lawn.
Girls Picnic in Golden Gate Park, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
We agreed to paint these later too, since time was short and we wanted to keep moving. Below are our two sketches.
Girls in the Park; Laura's above, Jana's below
If you click the image above to enlarge it you can see how Laura even captured the girl on the left’s cheek bulging with her snack.
Our last stop was the Tea House in the Japanese Tea Garden. The garden is an absolutely beautiful place with incredible plantings, sculptures, buildings, ponds, trees, moon bridges and more. I wanted to live there.
View from Teahouse in Japanese Tea Garden, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
While our tea was the most delicious jasmine tea we’ve ever had, our experience was not exactly the “meditative cup of tea overlooking the peaceful waters of the garden” because men were doing construction and running a small but loud and smelly bulldozer back and forth on the path behind what I sketched above. The combination of noise and exhaust were less than ideal but unlike me, Laura didn’t complain once.
Moments after we sat down in the Teahouse another woman sat down beside us and pulled out a sketchbook (before we had ours out). She was an art history student visiting from Boston and we all sketched happily together. The waitresses kept coming over to praise our drawings. I said, “You must see people sketching here all the time.” She said no, we were the first she’d seen.
One way to the stack the odds in your favor with most endeavors is to rehearse. So before I attempted the oil painting above, I did a little thumbnail sketch, a full-sized value sketch, and a watercolor sketch (below). I also took photos just in case the paperclips and scotch tape holding it all together failed (but they didn’t–the stack is still standing!)
Stacked, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
I did the watercolor sketch first with the fruit sitting on my drawing table and the grey studio wall as the background. I love ink & watercolor. So immediate and so fun!
Stacked, value study with Prismacolor cool grey markers, 10x8"
Then I set up the fruit stack by my easel and did this value and compositional sketch. I wanted the sketch to be the same size as the painting so I used the Gessobord as a template, tracing around it on the sketching paper. Once I had the drawing the way I wanted it, I used Prismacolor cool grey markers (30%, 50% 80%) to shade the values. It was easy to transfer the full-sized sketch to the Gessobord with a sheet of blue Saral Transfer Paper between the sketch and the board, then drawing over the sketch with a stylus.
I revised the background by hanging a dark gold/green cloth hung behind the still life hiding the gray wall. Now I’m wondering whether to repaint the leaves. What do you think? Is it better to leave them kind of soft and blurry so they don’t attract too much attention. Did you notice them before I asked the question?
Jana Bouc, Artist 