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
The $2.00 taco was delicious, made to order from the box mounted to Taco Bike. As I look at my sketch above I am wondering: there must have been a third wheel on the other side of the cart. Otherwise it would be impossible to ride and balance, no? And they did ride it in to the park.
My plein air group was meeting at Oakland’s Lakeside Garden Center, but when I parked at Fairyland across the from the garden I decided to start there. It is a small amusement park where children create their own amusement in storybook-themed play areas/structures.
Fairyland Parade and Sliding Hill, ink & watercolor 8×6″
I hadn’t been there since my kids were little; adults aren’t usually allowed in without kids but this day Fairyland was hosting the Childrens’ Hospital Anniversary celebration and everyone was allowed in. I tried to sketch a parade (above) as it zipped by. Behind the parade are children sliding on cardboard down a little grassy hill and balloons everywhere.
At the other end of Fairyland a radio station was emceeing the event over loudspeakers. They introduced a guy who performed annoying kids’ songs who was followed by blasting Latin music and someone shrieking “TURN, TURN, SHIMMY, WHOOEEE!!! WHOOP WHOOP! TURN, TURN!…” I later learned this was a Zumba demo.
Japanese Garden at Lake Merritt, ink & watercolor and white gel pen, 6×8″
All morning I’d felt a migraine coming on and the Zumba shouting was the last straw. I headed over to the Japanese garden in the Lakeside Garden Center. The peaceful setting and sound of the waterfall soothed my achey head long enough to sketch and paint the scene.
After twice starting and wiping off an oil painting of these Gerbera daisies, I switched to studies in ink and watercolor to understand them better. The sketch above is my 4th attempt and below are all four sketches in reverse order.
Happy Boy Farms Tomatoes, Oil on Gessobord panel, 12×12″
Happy Boy Farms Tomatoes, Oil on Gessobord panel, 12×12″
My friend Barbara said this painting made her want to lick the tomatoes right off the panel. That was her positive feedback when I got stuck and asked for advice at an earlier stage of this painting. The constructive criticism was harder to hear but helped me get to the final painting above. The earlier stages of the painting and her advice are below.
Preliminary thumbnails and watercolor sketch
When I set up the still life I hung a light yellow-green cloth as a backdrop and piled the tomatoes into a thrift shop silver basket. I thought I’d use the folds in the cloth to divide up the green background.
The little village of Kensington is battling over their streetlights. According to El Cerrito Patch, “A number of residents in the upscale community complained in late July when PG&E began removing the distinctive old streetlights on wood poles and replacing them with generic “cobra head” lights on shiny steel poles.” The replacement project was put on hold and community meetings planned to sort it.
I wanted to sketch the controversial street lights so we met on The Arlington, Kensington’s main street for our Tuesday night sketch-out. I found a spot to sketch where I could see all three of the street light types (though of course not so close together as in the picture above).
Kensington Chevron with Whip-Out Food Truck, ink & watercolor 8×4″
It got dark quickly so we sat outside the Sugar Cone Cafe at their sidewalk tables and sketched by the light from their windows. Across the street at the Chevron Station, people were lining up to get dinner from the Whip-Out Food Truck. It’s funny how food trucks have gone from being “the roach coach” that served awful food to factory workers to the new gourmet thing.
You can see some of the delightful sketches my sketch buddies Cristina and Ceiny did that evening of the festive cafe and the food truck on our Urban Sketchers blog. I give Cathy credit for the pool of light in front of the gas station that I added to my sketch after I saw it in hers (which I’ll link to when she posts it).
Jana Bouc, Artist 