Category: Painting

Nasturtiums

(Click on image then “All Sizes” to enlarge)

I picked these for my Saturday morning watercolor class. Nobody wanted to paint them but me so I’m glad they lasted until today. I did the drawing in ink this afternoon and wish I’d paid attention to my niece’s suggestion to leave some of it unpainted as the ink drawing looked really cool. But of course when I returned to it this evening I ended up painting everything.

Today was a long one: I started work at 6:30 a.m. to help get things ready for a three-day institute for 150 teachers that started today. Then I picked up my new glasses (again) and the prescription isn’t quite right (again) so tomorrow I’ll be taking them back to the shop for another try (again). Then my sister and niece came over and we went through my house, collecting all my extra pots and pans, linens and houseware for Sophie’s 1st apartment that she’s moving into next week.

One of the nice things about living in a house with two of everything (including kitchens since it’s a former duplex, now a studio and a home)–is that there’s lots of storage space. I’m so proud of Sophie and happy to see her making a home for herself while she attends college in S.F….and sad because it means she won’t be around when I visit my sister or answering the phone when I call.

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Play: Meercats for Illustration Friday

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date August 13, 2006
19 Comments on Play: Meercats for Illustration Friday

At the Oakland Zoo this summer, the Meercats played continuously while we watched, chasing each other, pouncing, play-fighting, and kicking up dust. Meercats are actually from the mongoose family, not cats, but they play just like kittens.

When I saw that the word for Illustration Friday this week was “Play” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do anything with it. I knew that the IF site would be loaded with pictures of little kids playing or putting on stage plays and I was having trouble thinking of anything original. Plus I was worried I hadn’t been doing enough playing in my own life and wondered if I should just go outside and play instead of staying indoors trying to come up with an idea. But then I came across a photo I took of Meercats at the Oakland Zoo and decided to paint them.

I PLAYED with the image a bit too, adding the foreground and background Meercats to the picture that weren’t in the photo. I drew in pencil, then inked and added watercolor in Aquabee sketchbook (but probably should have used watercolor paper as I pushed the paper a little further than it likes to go).

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Rose in a bowl

I’d about given up doing any drawing today. I was tired from an intense week, felt a migraine lurking, had no creative energy and spent the day puttering, sighing, resting, and doing some filing of papers and sorting of photos on my computer. I was about to head to bed when I saw this rose floating in a little glass bowl that someone in my painting group had painted Wednesday night and decided to try a quick painting. I don’t love it, but I’m glad I did it. Ink and watercolor in Moleskine watercolor notebook.

Tags Pen and Ink

Other Art Blogs I Read Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Nightfall in my backyard

The light oval thing isn’t a flying saucer or the moon. It’s a domed skylight on the roof of a nearby building. I started drawing with ink but realized there wasn’t time–the light was going fast so I went directly to watercolors and painted as quickly as I could, in a small watercolor Moleskine notebook, racing the disappearing light.

I had trouble picking a subject to paint tonight. I’d recently bought a Fabriano Artists Journal filled with lovely colored paper perfect for colored pencils, inspired by this drawing and this one by Terri C. on her blog Painted Daisies and decided to give it a try. After a couple minutes I realized I’m just not a colored pencil person–I like the juice and flow of watercolor.

I tried finishing a painting of grapes in a glass bowl I’d started in a demonstration for my class but didn’t feel like painting from a photo. Then I looked out the window and saw bushes and trees silouhetted against the fading light I remembered these wonderful night paintings (to see them click here and here and here and here) by Allison on her amazing blog, 5 K Radius. So I tried doing my own night sketch looking through the window, not outside on a walk like Allison does, since my painting group was here and I didn’t want to miss any interesting conversations by going outside.

Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Magnolia & Newspaper

I was really tired tonight and didn’t think I had the energy to do a drawing but decided to go in the studio for one hour and just see what happened. I’d taken a photo of this magnolia on a walk in my neighborhood last weekend and sat down to draw it in ink in my watercolor Moleskine. One hour later, it’s drawn, painted and scanned and I really enjoyed myself and feel happy to have gotten in a little painting today.

My blog in the news:

Yesterday a reporter from the Oakland Tribune called to interview me about my blog for a piece about the growth of the “blogosphere.” It was a little surrealistic seeing my name and blog address in large bold type on the front page (!) of the paper today, though seeing my quotes (?) in print made me immediately want to edit them. In the online version they mistakenly left off the links to the blogs discussed but they’re supposedly fixing it. Click here to see the article.

Tags Pen and Ink

Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Lavender: Too Much Information?

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date August 7, 2006
15 Comments on Lavender: Too Much Information?

This is Spanish lavender from my backyard in a little lavender hand-blown glass vase (the vase is actually shaped like this–for once it’s not my drawing). I used my magnifying lamp to see the details and discovered teeny purple flowers with yellow centers on the bud-shaped thingee that the lavender petals come out of and that bud thingee is shaped like a mini pine cone. I tried looking up the actual names of these parts but the diagrams I found didn’t really apply to this flower.

While Googling for the plant parts I also uncovered the following “facts” about lavender on the web:

Lavender can be used to treat burns, rheumatism, muscular pains, neuralgia, cold sores, insect bites, head lice, halitosis, dandruff, vaginal discharge and anal fissure.

Pheramones cause people to be attracted to you and causes mother-baby bonding. Pheramones (like pretty much everything else except for weight) decrease as we age. That’s why men prefer younger women.

The same website also explains that too much washing causes divorce: “By the 1940’s, many Californians bathed or showered daily and washed away their personal pheromones, while most of the USA stuck to weekly bathing. California soon led the USA in divorce rates and family breakdown.”

The source of the name lavender is Latin lavare “wash.”

The combined odor of lavender and pumpkin (ewww!) were found to be a much stronger aphrodesiac than expensive perfume (they actually did scientific tests that get a bit x-rated so I’ll skip the details here).

Ink and watercolor in big watercolor Moleskine notebook.

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

1 Cactus, 2 Cacti Sketches

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date August 6, 2006
12 Comments on 1 Cactus, 2 Cacti Sketches

On-site sketch in 3.5 x 5.5″ watercolor Moleskine

Studio sketch from photo in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook

It was a sunny day in the 70s today and the outdoors was calling. Instead of spending the day in the studio as planned, I took my sketchbook and little paintbox for a walk around the neighborhood, looking for something that would be fun to paint. A few blocks away I found an amazing cacti and succulent garden. I did the top sketch above while sitting on a convenient tree stump but I had problems. My pen had gone dry so I tried drawing in pencil but it just didn’t have the magic that drawing directly in ink has. I found myself repeatedly erasing and starting over which is the problem with pencils–the thrill of just going for it with ink is gone and pencils want to be ever so perfect. So I started over again, drawing directly with the watercolors and (continuing to resist stopping at 75%) added a little more paint when I got home.

I did the second sketch above in the studio tonight from the photo I took there. I think I’m going to try a larger painting also–all the overlapping shapes, shadows, and prickly things are really fun to paint.

Photo of the cactus

Tags Pen and Ink

Watercolor

When Kip was Bingo

This is a picture of a special dog named Kip when he was still a pup. He used to belong to my wonderful neighbors who named him Bingo. (They will sound not so wonderful here, but they really are the most loving family I’ve known–they’re just not pet people.) With three children under 5 and no experience with dogs, Bingo was soon relegated to a life alone in the backyard. He cried a lot and ran in circles, but relished every moment he had with the children when they visited him in the yard.

I took him for walks when I could, gave the family a book on housetraining, and tried to help them understand what it meant to care for a puppy. Then I helped them understand that they’d made a mistake getting a dog, since winter was coming and the dog would not be allowed inside. I couldn’t bear to see him alone all the time, with ants in his food, and no place to poop but the patio. They agreed, sadly, but knowing it was right.

That’s when my friend M. decided to adopt him. She renamed him Kip and they became best friends. She took him to puppy school, and she loved him even though he ate her socks and had to have one surgically removed from his stomach. She treated him like the special little prince he is and I got to join them on walks at the Pt. Isabelle dog park near my house. Then they moved to a small town in Oregon and I haven’t seen him for a long time. I’m trying to plan a visit to them next month.

I painted this from a photo I took of him when he was just six months old. It’s watercolor on 8 x 12 watercolor paper. I stopped before it was overworked (yay!) or even finished — something I’ve been trying to do for a while. The background in the photo was entirely green grass. I wasn’t sure that’s what I want for a background so I decided to just stop and think about it and maybe experiment in Photoshop with some possible background compositions and see what works or just decide to leave it white. I think it needs something–shadows at least–so that he’s grounded and not floating. Any suggestions would be welcomed. You can see a larger version by clicking on the image which will take you to FLickr and then clicking on All Sizes and then Large.

Tags Dog

Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Souvenirs…of Life

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to “draw a souvenir from a place you’ve been.” This is a Tibetan Bell. I’ve never been to Tibet. My father bought it for me at a street fair in Jack London Square in Oakland on one of his rare visits from the many places he lived in the U.S. and Canada. I loved the sound of the bell and he was happy to buy it for me.

I’ve been missing him lately–sometimes when I’m drawing I get glimpses of the amazing cartoons he used to be able to draw on command and wish I could talk to him about drawing and art. He and my mother both painted for a few years when I was a kid and both were talented photographers. I highlighted my mother’s paintings from the 50s here a few weeks ago, but all of my father’s paintings were thrown away by his second wife when he left her for his third wife.

Searching my house for souvenirs to draw, I discovered that my only keepsakes represent different periods of my life and the people and pets I’ve loved. And even those are few: my grandmother’s pearls and glass butterdish, a spice jar with hair from long gone cats and dogs, the books my father wrote, my wedding ring in a little box I painted blue, a folder with my sons’ grade school essays and drawings, earings given to me by friends and family.

Of course I have my journals, drawings, photos and paintings–those are keepers of my memories too. But I wonder what it means that I have no souvenirs or tchotchkes from places I’ve been. Maybe just that I don’t like to dust.

Ink and watercolor in WC Moleskine. I know I said that for a week I would stop painting when I was 75% done, but I was too tired again tonight to notice, and so put in the background when I should have stopped. It was a lot prettier with just a shadow and an all white background. I did stop painting the bell before I thought it was done so that’s a little progress. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A little lemon

I had so many ideas of what to draw tonight but I was so sleepy that I had to pick something fairly simple. It was fun–so much fun that I kept at it longer than I should have so it got overworked. There’s always that question of “When is a painting done?” I’ve heard it said many times that one should stop when a painting feels 75% finished but I usually go to 125%. So for the next week, I’m going to try stopping at 75% and see how that feels.

I’m experimenting with uploading pictures to Flickr and then linking them as I did here. Flickr has options for posting a small image on the blog and a big one on Flickr that you are taken to by clicking on the image. If you have an opinion, I’d love to know whether you prefer seeing images this size on the blog or a smaller size with a click to enlarge option? Do you know any disadvantages to storing the image on Flickr?

Watercolor and Micron Pigma in WC Moleskine.

Tags Pen and Ink