Category: Painting

The Horn Players

Ink & Watercolor in Moleskine sketchbook
Composed from memory, a quick scribble on a sticky note and a small photo (see below)
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When I was taking a lunchtime walk on Wednesday, I saw this guy playing his sax on the corner. A mom and little boy stopped in front of him and the mom pulled a little toy plastic horn out of her bag. She handed it to her son and encouraged him to play too. The boy was fascinated by the sax player, who sadly showed no interest in the boy and just kept on playing. I didn’t have time to take a photo or sketch so tried to take a mental snapshot. As soon as I got back to the office I grabbed the first pen and paper I could find and tried to draw what I’d seen on this purple sticky note.

The next day I was out walking again and the horn player was back on the corner so I took this quick photo from across the street.

Tonight I finally had a chance to draw the scene in my sketchbook, using my mental snapshot of the scene, my sticky note scribble and the photo (which was really helpful since I didn’t really know what saxophones looked like enough to try to draw it).

Does it bother you that the sax player is more realistic and the mom and boy are more cartoonish since they’re drawn from memory?

Tags Pen and Ink, People

People Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Puerto Vallarta Corn Snacks

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date March 6, 2007
7 Comments on Puerto Vallarta Corn Snacks

Ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
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I wish I could have actually done this sketch in person along the Malecon waterfront in Puerto Vallarta but there was no time alloted for outdoor sketching in my workshop. I noticed several different people selling both corn on the cob and corn kernels in plastic cups that they barbecue on site (the corn not the cups).

I wanted to do a small watercolor in my sketchbook since my painting time lately has been spent working with oil paints and acrylics. When I went to look through my Puerto Vallarta photos for something to paint I discovered most of them were missing. I’d done some nifty photo organizing the other day, sorting everything, trying to back up onto DVDs (but it kept eating the DVDs so I gave up and copied files from my PC to my laptop). Somehow I’d deleted half of the folders I’d sorted, thinking I was deleting extra copies from my laptop. Without going into lots more detail about how this stupidity occured, I’ll just say that I went through all the steps of the grieving process: anger, denial, bargaining etc., through to acceptance and then oh so gratefully, found a folder on my laptop that had the files!!

Tags Pen and Ink, People, Puerto Vallarta

Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Watercolor

Yay! Show is Up!

I had the most amazing experience tonight. Two very special people helped me hang the paintings for my show (well actually they climbed on ladders and hung the paintings while I nursed a beer to calm my nerves and said things like “Yep, you got it. Perfect!” or “Let’s move that one over there and this one over here” and they didn’t even get annoyed!) I’d been so worried about trying to hang the artwork in this rather challenging space and they made it look as classy and grand as a show you’d see in any gallery. I am so grateful and proud to have such caring and careful people in my life!

I have a hard time asking for help, never wanting to bother others. So when my dear friend Richard, who is a brilliant photographer and absolutely the best computer and audio technical guru around, volunteered to help me when he heard about the show I was amazed and thrilled because I know what a perfect job he does with anything he touches, as does my wonderful son Cody, who was the second to volunteer (after I asked him, but still…) Cody is my best art critique and has a dead-on eye for detail and is meticulous when it comes to the things he’s passionate about (including restoring to perfection fabulous “muscle cars“ from the 70s). With a team like these two, I knew the show couldn’t fail. I’m so proud and pleased at how it looks and how much fun it was to hang with my team.

Here’s a few photos taken at the end of the evening (in dim light and not the steadiest of hand).

Above, Richard after we finished hanging and he treated us to a slice of pizza.

Non-blurry versions available on my website.

People Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Elotes: Puerto Vallarta Street Vendors

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date February 28, 2007
11 Comments on Elotes: Puerto Vallarta Street Vendors

Ink & Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
(To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes)

On our trip into town this friendly gentleman (reproduced here twice from two different photos) was standing in the hot sun selling hot corn. He gave me a big smile and held up his sign…not exactly a candid, natural photo, but P.V. was rather like that. People were very friendly and kind, but very much oriented towards the tourist. I wish I would have planned for time to travel away from the well-beaten path after my workshop.

I changed the colors from the photo to use a warm, analagous palette (colors near each other on the color wheel). In the photo the umbrellas were multi-colored and the wall was a royal blue. But in a small sketch like this I thought it would be too busy with all those colors and wanted a hot feeling instead of a rainbow.

After I scanned the original version below, I decided it needed a dark doorway to break up the long wall and give some contrast and focus to the front-facing man. Which do you think works better?

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Tags Pen and Ink, People, Puerto Vallarta

Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Judy’s Tulip Tree

Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

After a day spent doing art business (finishing framing for the show I’m hanging Thursday evening, writing up the descriptions of the four flower paintings to be published in a book on flower painting, and sorting photos to make room on my hard drive) I needed to sit down for an hour and paint a pretty flower in watercolor to soothe my spirit.

I took the photo I painted from just a week ago when it was bright and sunny and my friend Judy’s Tulip Tree was in bloom. Today we’re back to winter with cold winds, sideways rain and gray skies.

Animals Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bird Sanctuary?

Ink & Watercolor in 6×9 Aquabee sketchbook
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Today after lunch I walked halfway around the lake beside my office with my boss and a work buddy. We were surprised to see a grey cat sound asleep in what looked like a cozy nest in a small tree alongside the lake. Lake Merritt is rich with avian wildlife, and is a sanctuary for migrating birds and many who live there year-round, including coots, comorants, ducks, egrets, way too many Canadian geese (constant hopscotching over big goose turds required), grebes, gulls, herons and tons of pigeons. There are also many feral cats and this one fits right in.

I thought we were going to be walking to the library on the gritty streets of downtown Oakland so didn’t carry my camera and missed getting a photo of this scene or another that would have made a great painting: a beautiful Hmong mother, grandmother and baby all dressed in bright colors sitting on a green park bench. I tried to memorize the cat in the tree scene so I could draw it when I got home, but we were walking too fast to “snap” a mental picture of the Hmong family.

Another co-worker came to work sick today with a “searing” sore throat and now I’m starting to feel like I’m catching a cold. Phooey. Actually my coughing started last night, so I guess can’t blame her germs. Time for some sleep and Vitamin C.

Tags Animals, Cats, Pen and Ink

Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Salt Shaker

Ink & watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

This morning I found out that four of my flower paintings have been selected for a book on painting flowers that will be published later this year. The rest of the day was good too. It’s supposed to rain tonight. And that’s the news from Jana’s world today.

Flower Art Oil Painting

Funky roses under wrong light

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date February 19, 2007
6 Comments on Funky roses under wrong light

Oil on canvas board, 12×16
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My next door neighbor was about to toss this bouquet of roses on Friday because they were at that funky, fully-bloomed, starting to get a little stinky stage, but I swooped in before they could go in the recycling bin and rescued them to paint. I was trying hard to loosen up and have a more painterly, impressionist way of painting them. But I discovered the importance of good lighting when mixing colors and painting with oils.

The painting looked really pretty while I was painting under the lights I’d rigged up to my easel. But the next day when I looked at it in daylight it looked like dull mud instead of brilliant. The lights I was using were too much on the pinkish side which made all the colors I mixed look much pinker and brighter than they really were so once the lights were off…mud.

Above, top left: my new Verilux florescent lighting. Top center: outdoors at noon. Below, top right: the lighting I was painting under originally.

I started researching lighting for easel painting, and after buying numerous different “full spectrum” and halogen lamps, I finally found a solution that worked: an overhead florescent light fixture designed for kitchens with 4 Verilux full spectrum florescent bulbs. The fixture has electronic ballast that prevents typical florescent noise and flicker. The light is amazing–very much like bright noon sunlight. Maybe even a little too bright, but I’m not sure because I’m slightly migrainey today, making my eyes overly sensitive. If it’s too bright I can swap out any of the bulbs for a warmer or cooler version, according to the lighting store where I bought it.

To test all the various lights I tried, I set my camera at “sunlight” and then took pictures under all the different lighting arrangements of the same image and they all came out terrible. With my new light and the camera set at sunlight, I took this picture and it is pretty accurate! Yay. A good painting light and a good photography light!

Here’s all the stuff that didn’t work:

an Ott floor lamp that gave virtually no light at all
a Verilux floor lamp that gave twice as much light (but twice nothing isn’t much) but the light was very blue and only from one side — nowhere near enough to paint by
an easel lamp designed for my easel that is attached at the top to the center post — tried it with a verilux full spectrum bulb, a screw in halogen, a GE Reveal bulb (these are evil–they make everything look beautiful but are way too pink and that’s what messed everything up)
a “Combo Lamp” clamped to the side of the easel — it has a circular florescent and a regular light bulb in the middle (these are what I use on my drawing table, one on each side and they work great for watercolor and drawing).
Halogen torchieres in the room already
A photo light stand with a variety of different bulbs in it
All of the above

Then after all that shopping, I had to do an equal amount of unshopping! Yuck. What a way to spend my days off. But thanks to my darling son who helped me hang the new light fixture in the studio, at least I have my new light all set up–just in time to go back to work.

Art theory Outdoors/Landscape Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Puerto Vallarta Aeropuerto

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date February 18, 2007
3 Comments on Puerto Vallarta Aeropuerto

The Control Tower at the Puerto Vallarta airport. A couple of guys in t-shirts in the open air tower were moving from side to side, looking around and then looking down at their computers (I assume).

The view from the waiting area of the runways surounded by grass, bushes, the mountains in the distance and some beat up police vehicles parked in the tall grass.

Ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook.
Click images to enlarge.

When I was leaving P.V. I was told to get to the airport 2 hours early. I got there even earlier than that and after a rudimentary search of my luggage and checking in, learned my flight was delayed an hour. The airport was hot and humid, with no air conditioning. I went upstairs and borrowed a chair from the burger joint to go sit by the window. When I tried to buy an empty cup to put water in for my paints they wanted $1.50 for the cup so I wandered over to the Starbucks and found someone with an empty coffee cup who was happy to give it to me. I washed it out in the bathroom and went back to my chair and finished the drawing.

I decided to go ahead through customs where they searched my carry-on backpack (and allowed me to take my empty cup and paints) and discovered another part of the airport that was air conditioned, modern, fancy and full of duty-free shops that might as well have been in NY or San Francisco. I found another window and drew the runway and then headed to my gate with a yummy ice cream on a stick coated with chocolate and almonds. I was both sad to be leaving and happy to be coming home.

Here’s a few more tips from the Judy Morris watercolor workshop:

Salting:

Morton Coarse Kosher salt works best
Tape paper flat to the table to avoid tilting and getting little star patterns…this technique is to get texture but not lighter starry areas.
Paint all of the salted areas of the painting first, finish all the salting, and then paint the rest of the painting.
Paint the area to be salted in little sections, areas no bigger than size of palm. The paint must be very, very wet. Pick up pinch of salt and rub between finger and thumb to drop it from about 10-12” above painting. Then paint next little area. Don’t let the shine go off the paint before salting and make sure there’s no clumps in the salt.
Leave little skipped white spots where you can add in a color from other areas of the painting to unify with them later when the salted areas are dry and the salt is removed.
Drop in darker paint along edges or between salt crystals or drop in a reflected color from adjoining areas (red into purple if neighboring area is red).
Blow off salt that falls into dry, non-salted areas rather than brushing it off to avoid scraping and damaging the paper.
Remove salt from salted areas by scraping that area firmly with a palette knife when very dry.
After removing salt, blot the salted area with a damp paper towel to remove any remaining salt or glaze the area with a light wash of yellow or another color to unify, soften edges and bring out a glow.
To glaze, use a flat 1″ brush and flick brush lightly in all directions, making x’s or asterisks.

These are her instructions…I’m just passing them along and I think this is the last of the PV drawings and notes from the workshop I’ll share.

Tags Pen and Ink, Puerto Vallarta

Plein Air Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

More Puerto Vallarta sketches

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date February 16, 2007
12 Comments on More Puerto Vallarta sketches

Watercolor in Canson 7×10 watercolor book
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Ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook

I struggled with painting this fountain that was outside our classroom. There was no direct light because it was in a roofed courtyard and there was a bright fuschia pink wall behind it and a bright yellow-green wall on its right side. Before I painted the background, the fountain looked great. Then I painted the wall bright pink and it overpowered the fountain so then I tried painting over it which didn’t work so I washed off as much of the pink as would come off using a damp brush, and then painted over it with yellow ochre. The second version is with the background removed in Photoshop, cropped and lightened a bit to try to recreate how it looked originally. Which do you prefer?

One good thing that came of doing the drawing was that I recalled a tip I’d heard somewhere: to make a cylindrical object like a fountain or a vase appear symmetrical: draw a light vertical line down the center first and then measure each section (measuring its width on one side by sliding your thumb down the pencil to mark the size) and then comparing it to the other side or just eyeballing it.

I drew the grocery picture in the supermarket a couple doors down from my hotel. A workshop friend and I were there to get photos developed at the in-store 1-hour photo booth (thank goodness for my Spanish–without it they would have printed all 104 pictures on my SD card instead of the 10 I wanted–I had to talk them through how to do it on their machine since there was no self-serve). We stood in the produce aisle with our pens, sketchbooks and little paint kits drawing and painting as fast as we could while shoppers and employees ignored us. The worker was standing on a raised rail changing the prices. Half of the price tags listed comparisons to Walmart prices to show shoppers they were getting a good deal. It’s not the charming street market I hoped to sketch, but they did have great fresh rolls in the bakery and organic lettuce and rotisserie chickens that I used for lunch sandwiches all week.

Tags Pen and Ink, Plein Air, Puerto Vallarta