Category: Watercolor

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Drawing Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

For Labor Day – My Office: EDM #82

Labor Day - My office

I drew this from a photo I took of my office when I was leaving work for the long weekend Thursday evening. Since this week’s Everyday Matters challenge #81 was “Draw your art workspace” and I’d already drawn my studio the week before, I decided to draw my work workspace instead.

I’m lucky to have a lovely view of Lake Merritt and Fairyland Park. But I’m unlucky to always have to keep my blinds closed and never see the view (unless it’s raining) because the glare from the lake makes it impossible to see my computer and the heat coming in the windows makes it feel like a sauna.

…and I’ll be seeing it all too soon tomorrow morning.

Noodlers Ink, watercolor in Raffine almost 6×9 sketchbook.

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Safe (Safe Version)

Safe-bears-web

Nice and safe and cozy. Now scroll down to the Risky version of “Safe” or click here to see it.

I originally drew this as a little pencil sketch in a notebook on BART yesterday. Today I scanned and enlarged it, and printed it on a sheet of paper I pulled out of my Raffine sketchbook. Then I inked over the printed pencil lines and painted it with watercolor. (I don’t like working in this Raffine sketchbook because the spiral binding is too big and it annoys me but I’ve discovered I can put the pages back when I’m done painting them. I know this would be considered sketchbook heresy to some but it works for me.)

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Safe (Risky Version)

Snake-Unsafe-Safe
It’s best to use protection if you’re going to get close….

(I’m noticing from the comments that some people don’t get what the protection is…Is it my drawing that makes it hard to tell it’s a condom? Should I redraw to make it more obvious? Did you get it? )
I drew the snake on the left in ink in my sketchbook, painted it with watercolor, scanned it, and then in Photoshop, added a new layer and painted in the “protection.” I placed the two images side by side in a new Photoshop file.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Streetlights (Everyday Matters #81)

Streetlights

Ink & watercolor in 9×12 Aquabee Sketchbook (Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink).

Last week’s Everyday Matters challenge was to draw streetlights. The one on the left is on the corner of Carlson by Nation’s Burgers in El Cerrito. I spotted the middle one while taking a lunch-break walk along Lake Merritt in Oakland. The lamp on the right is on the Albany end of Solano Ave.

I drew the one below in my little Moleskine sketchbook with a Micron Pigma this morning while I was on the elevated platform at the BART station waiting for the train. It was right at eye level.

lamp

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Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

View from Moeser Lane

moeser-lane-web.jpg
Click image to enlarge

I was driving down Moeser Lane on my way home from Blake Gardens and as usual was amazed by the view and had to pull over and paint it from the front seat of my car. Moeser Lane is a very steep street that heads straight uphill from my house (in the flatlands near the S.F. Bay) and ends at The Arlington in El Cerrito (which means “little hill”–hah!) . Moeser Lane has a colorful history, having once been a tramway carrying rock from a quarry located near the top of the hill.

Painted in watercolor on a Sennelier watercolor block sized 10″ by 4″ — perfect for such a widescreen landscape.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Mom’s Home from the Hospital

Mom and Me Again

I tried doing yesterday’s sketch again, this time starting first in pencil and then adding watercolor. It looks a lot more like her and this time our heads are the same size. Yesterdays drawing was the last page in my Aquabee sketchbook and today’s is the last page in my first Moleskine watercolor notebook.

Here’s the original photo:

mom-photoIMGP2983

Mom’s glad to be home from the hospital and I’m glad she’ll have will nurses and home health workers and my sister looking in on her. Hopefully the meds will do their thing and she’ll be able to go back to her normal life without any ill effects.

I also wish her normal life were richer, and filled with more interesting things than constant TV (including favorites the Home Shopping Channel, Court TV and General Hospital), sorting coupons and miscellaneous detritus of a lifetime, and the occasional dinner at Carrows or Norms Deli with friends or family. She used to enjoy painting and photography and collage and travel and walks on the beach.

It makes me sad to see how her world keeps shrinking and her strength and energy for doing new things are fading. And it scares me to see how easily and naturally that can happen as one ages. And it makes me want to stay strong and healthy; always learning and enjoying doing the things I love.

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Mom’s in the hospital

Mom and I

(Geez this is a terrible drawing–it gets worse every time I see it.)

Since I was thinking about my mom a lot this week, I decided to draw her from a photo we took at the beach on my last visit. I drew directly in ink, and strangely, my mom came out much bigger than I. I’m sure there’s all sorts of psychological reasons for this that I won’t go into here. Note to self: don’t draw wrinkles with a pen–they look like stitches. It’s a bad drawing, but it’s what’s in my sketchbook today so here it is.

My mother had a T.I.A. (trans ischemic attack — like a stroke but much briefer and less damaging though can be a precursor to a serious stroke) last Friday and my sister who lives near her took her to the Veterans Hospital in West L.A. She was in the Waves (the Women’s Navy) during WWII so she’s entitled to veterans benefits. Mom enjoys the special treatment she gets at the VA since she’s one of the few women in a hospital full of men. She was fortunate that there was no permanent damage and they’re giving her medication that should prevent future attacks.

My mother treats the hospital like it’s a fine hotel with room service. She didn’t like her bed and insisted they bring her a new mattress as she felt hers was too old and lumpy. The nurse said they’re all the same and mom said, “No, I’ve stayed her before and I had a better bed last time.” So they delivered a better mattress. They told her she could go home at 4:00 today but she said she was too tired and would go home tomorrow so they said OK. She told me it was because she knew they were serving pizza and cheese cake for dinner tonight and she didn’t want to miss it. She’s planning on staying at least through lunch tomorrow.

Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink, Moleskine watercolor notebook.

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Drawing Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

What kind of tree am I?

Pink and Bright Orange Tree?

Please CLICK image then “All Sizes” to enlarge

I don’t know what kind of tree these came from, do you? Actually I drew the parts of two identical trees that are next to each other in my neighborhood. The only difference is that one has impossibly pink flowers and the other has impossibly bright orange flowers. I planned to draw both but discovered I was allergic to them and in order to finish more quickly combined their parts in one picture. Then I had to take a Claritin.

When I asked the neighbor if I could take a cutting from his tree to paint he said I could take the whole tree. He hates them because they bloom all year and constantly drop horrible stuff on his car: sticky sap, sticky little orange stringy parts of the flowers, and the hard seed pods (I know I’m using all the wrong names of the parts, sorry). He showed me the huge stump of the one he’d already cut down. Looking at the mess I had to clean up on my drawing table, I know what he’s talking about.

But the bees and hummingbirds love these trees. In the afternoon its swarming with bees and in the early evening it’s filled to capacity with chirping hummingbirds. I hope he doesn’t cut down the others. They’re stunningly beautiful and our neighborhood doesn’t have enough trees. Here’s some photos of the tree parts:
_DSC0189pink-DSC_0729pink tree

orange-DSC_0727 _DSC0187

Drawn with Lamy Safari Pen, Noodler’s Ink & watercolor in Aquabee Super Deluxe sketchbook

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Plein Air Watercolor

Blake Gardens, Kensington, CA

Blake Gardens

Painted on site in watercolor on 9 x 12 Arches watercolor block.

I finally got back up to Blake Gardens today with two hours before closing. My plein air painting supplies live in an old lady shopping cart in my car. I dragged that thing all around the Blake Gardens estate looking for a spot to paint that wouldn’t be too cold and windy as it was a foggy day in Kensington.

A woman taking photos stopped to see what I was doing. She’s an oil painter who paints there often so I asked for her advice. Landscape and plein air painting never really interested me until this year, and I’ve only begun exploring it. While it initially feels humbling, even embarassing, to allow myself to be a beginner and ask for help, it’s also very freeing.

She saw that I was doing pencil thumbnail sketches in a sketchbook to get started and she suggested using a Sharpie instead, blocking in the main shapes on a full page instead of doing thumbnails. She was right–that helped a lot. Then I did a quick pencil sketch on my watercolor block, picked up the biggest brush I’d brought–a 1″ flat (something I rarely use) and dug in and started painting.

The funny thing is that the scan has better contrast, value range and color saturation than the original. I’m going to make a printout of the scanned image, and using that as my reference, enhance the original painting to match the scanned version. It showed me how to make the painting better–isn’t that cool?!

So my moral dilemma is this: which is cheating more, to post the scan-enhanced version before changing the painting, or to change a plein air painting by working on it in the studio? I guess then it’s not a plein air painting anymore? What do you think?

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Drawing Flower Art Other Art Blogs I Read Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Orchid cartoon

orchid

Non-artists, today’s post will probably be boring, sorry.

I’m reading two books about art right now, “The Unknown Matisse” (the first half of a 1,000 page biography) at the recommendation of Laura, and “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” by Scott McCloud at the recommendation of Nora, who’s studying to be a graphic designer.

I’ve been working on my drawing in two directions: One is to be very specific and really draw what I see, not using the symbol of the object. The other is to learn to simplify and find the essence of the thing/person/animal and exaggerate it to make it more interesting and to be able to do wonderful cartoony drawings like Mattias, Paula, and Sparky, for example. I was asking Nora lots of questions about how illustrators create the characters they draw and she recommended reading Understanding Comics.

It’s written in comic book format and inspired me to try drawing my orchid in cartoon panels. With it’s long spindly stem, flower at the top and big leaves at the bottom, the orchid is awkward to compose on a page, so drawing it in panels was ideal. Conveniently, a pretend Discover credit card arrived in the mail today–just the right size to use to outline the panels.

The orchid is painted in a Raffine sketchbook, which was recommended as having great paper for 1/3 the cost of Moleskines. I’m not thrilled with it. It’s wire binding is huge, making it difficult to scan (gets shadows), the cover is flimsy, and the pages are smaller than my preferred Aquabee 6×9 Super Deluxe sketchbook which is about the same price, has about the same quality paper and smaller binding. I did learn a cool Photoshop trick to get rid of the shadows though: I used the Dodge tool set to Highlights at 50% with a large sized brush and it erased all the shadows without changing anything else.

I traced the panels using my trusty old Sharpie, but didn’t like the way the ink spread on this paper so switched to the Lamy Safari fine point to draw with. I’m liking the Lamy more and more for drawing and the Sharpie less and less. Then I added watercolor, but before painting the dark background (Daniel Smith Indigo) I scanned the drawing and added dark backgrounds in Photoshop to see if I liked it. I did, so I went back and painted them.