When I’m sketching on BART on my way to work in the morning I’m always so delighted by how different each person’s features are. Yes they all have the same features but so many different nose tips, foreheads, lips. Some days everyone I can see is in profile like above.
Other days I can only see lots of backs of heads and a foot or two.
And then it’s all about the hair style (or lack thereof…hair…or style).
Monday night Cathy and I did a little sketching around San Pablo Avenue between Albany and El Cerrito, not the most inspiring of locales it turns out. It amused me that the palm tree above had an Available for Lease sign just in front of it, though it was actually a space in the building behind it (that I didn’t draw) that was for lease. The other pics above are of the Albany bowl and inside Peets Coffee where we ended the evening.
We started at the Old Gun Room, a still-functioning, historic gun store that is terribly out of place and time. I was having trouble paying close attention to detail last night, and drew the N in “Guns” on the sign backwards, as well as adding an extra wagon wheel in the fence. I think I did a better job last time I drew and painted the Gun Room when I painted it on site.
I like the way the Hotsy-Totsy sign came out, though I’m not sure what happened to the perspective: I KNOW I couldn’t have seen the top of the sign. But I was really hungry at that point and was having even more trouble paying attention to details. By the way, the Hotsy-Totsy Club is anything but! It opens around 7 a.m. (need I say more?).(UPDATE: the club has new owners and a new clientele and a fun retro vibe; see my newer post here).
Cathy likes to sketch on site in order to capture more images, and then adds paint at home. I don’t usually do that, preferring to paint on site, but tried it last night. After I’d done all the cross-hatching on the windows and door area, trying to shade them, I looked at what Cathy was doing and saw that she just does the outlines without any cross-hatching when she’s going to paint the images later. I think that makes more sense and allows the watercolor to do the shading rather than the incongruous scribbly ink that was too dark.
We decided that next week we’ll go somewhere pretty and away from traffic, like the Berkeley Rose Garden.
I was sketching and looking at my high school yearbook in preparation for a series of paintings I’m starting. I was surprised by the low expectations so many of the girls in the yearbook had for themselves compared to today’s young women. I started counting how many “hoped to eventually” to become beauticians, secretaries and airline hostesses (flight attendants). Even my high school best friend Tina’s yearbook entry said she aimed to be a beautician (not to denigrate those important jobs, but there are so many more options for women now.) Maybe it was the elaborate, sculptural hairstyles back then that made so many of us want to be hairstylists?
When I read the tender, poetic inscription Tina wrote in my annual, I decided to try to find her again. We’d lost touch with when I moved away a year after high school and have unsuccessfully searched for her for years. Today I found her 86-year-0ld father, just by typing his last name and the city where we lived into the people finder on YellowPages.com! He promised to give her my phone number and then filled me in on her life over the many decades since we last were together.
When I filled out the form for my blurb I was trying to be funny: “Hopes to marry a millionaire…especially liked the people, weekends, and vacations.” But there was some truth in it too. I was so done with high school and wasn’t looking forward to having to grow up and get a job, either.
OK, so maybe I was procrastinating and avoiding the nice blank canvas waiting for me… but, (not counting the girls who said they just wanted to be happy, or didn’t mention their goals at all), here is my tally of career goals for San Diego’s Crawford High class of ’66 (I put the odd outliers in red):
First, a quick note that I was interviewed for the fascinating Tools Artists Use website. Although it often ends up sending me shopping, I love to see the tools other people use to make their art. If you’d like to read the interview about my favorite art supplies and tools, just click here.
OK, so to celebrate the return of the my sketchbook, here are a few sketches from the past couple weeks that are happily no longer lost forever.
He looked like an old sailor man to me, wishing he was on a boat, not the subway.
While I was waiting for the ear, nose, throat doctor I copied the information from his wall chart and sketched the assortment of stuff on his shelf. I became fascinated with the names of the parts of the mouth and throat (I’m easily amused).
Defining Inspiration:
I noted in particular the “Epiglottis” and wondered if the word had anything to do with the word ” Epicurean.” Even more interesting was a depiction of an open throat, described on the chart as “Inspiration” which I supposed means “breathe in.” It made me think about inspiration in art and how, when feeling uninspired we try to force something to come out when perhaps it’s more a matter of simply opening and allowing it to come in, instead.
I had my sketchbooks out to share with my painting group buddies at the end of a nice Friday night dinner together at Jimmy Beans in Berkeley…
so I added one more sketch (above).
And one more subway drawing. He was mesmerized by his cellphone but I see now that the sketch looks like he’s playing with his beard or rolling or a joint. (Are they still called joints?) I heard American Idol judge Randy Jackson call a song a joint on the show tonight, so maybe not.
I’m so happy to have my sketchbook back!
This is the beginning of my contribution to International Fake Journal Month (read on for more about this). To participate, I’m filling a journal this month as a woman who doesn’t know who she is and is trying to find out. (Maybe she’ll learn how she lost her memory too.) I started by Googling “Who Am I” and clicked the first link, a YouTube video by Casting Crowns which inspired the rose and waves besides my pondering self.
Then I checked iTunes and found more than 100 songs named “Who Am I.” I shall play detective, listening to each song, reading the lyrics looking for clues to who “I” am. I’m looking forward to Snoop Dogg’s “Who Am I” day. As I write and draw what I learn, I’ll fill the journal and by the end of the month may have discovered my true identity.
International Fake Journal Month
Roz Stendahl of Roz Wound Up and The International Fake Journal Month blogs is one of my favorite artist bloggers. This month she introduced a quirky and wonderful concept: The Fake Journal. The idea is to create a journal for a month, where you take on a new persona, and fill that journal with the writings and sketches of that person as he or she evolves. To learn more about Fake Journal Month and Roz..
I’ve been desperate to get back to sketching and was determined to do some today while I was out for a walk doing errands. Just as I sat down to sketch, cup of coffee in hand, it started raining. I didn’t care. Little drops of rain splattered on my paper, making interesting texture where they met the ink.
I’d forgotten my watercolor kit at home and was annoyed until I looked at the cup of coffee in my hand and thought of how much I liked sepia washes that Pete Scully sometimes adds to his sketches. I dipped my finger in the coffee and began finger painting.
Then it was time to head home and get ready for a special 10-year-old’s birthday party. I’m the antithesis of a party girl these days, preferring quiet time alone or in one-on-one time with friends. But last night’s dinner party and today’s birthday party were both “command performances” so I gave myself the push I needed to show up.
The intimate, sophisticated dinner party for 6 last night was a joy; the other diners brilliant, funny intellectuals beside whom I felt like a peanut brain. But I adore them all and it was an absolute delight. What a contrast to the non-stop activity and noise of kids loaded up on sugar and then cooped up indoors because of the rain today.
I spent the last hour of the 4-hour birthday marathon trying to sketch the jumping-bean children. They were nice kids; a junior United Nations representing as many nationalities as there were guests (and there was a dozen of them, I think).
I’m happy to be home now with no plans for the next couple days besides painting and sketching.
My artwork, that is. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and planning for my next art projects, but other obligations have taken up my art time and energy. All I’ve done the past few days is the watercolor sketch from a trip to the U. C. Berkeley Botanical Gardens (above) and the BART subway sketches below. The aloe was drawn and a bit of wash added on site; then I messed with it some more at home. There were so many wonderful options for sketching there, but my companions weren’t interested in sketching so I didn’t want to make them wait for me.
I’m quite sure this woman knew I was drawing her and I think she intentionally held her pose for me. I started with her feet because they interested me and I didn’t think I’d have time for anything more. But because she held still I continued on up her legs and eventually ran out of room when I got to the top of her head. She gave me a big grin when I got off and I gave her one back. It was a cool little acknowledgment between us.
I’m going to start keeping my “business cards” handy when I subway sketch (those cute little Moos with bits of my artwork and blog address on them) and hand them to people I’ve drawn as I get off the train (if I have the nerve).
These two women weren’t really seated this close. I just used the space on the page that way.
Sometimes I forget that people from my “day job” read my blog. I was in a meeting last week and one of the participants began the meeting by mentioning that she’d seen my sketches from the previous meeting we’d attended and immediately recognized some of the people in the sketch. What a compliment that was! (Thanks A. B.!)
Riding our subway known as BART the other day, I sat down beside a young man who was talking to his friend in the next seat. I asked if they wanted to sit together and they made a joke about not liking each other (actually it was a racist joke that shocked me at first when I thought they were serious—they were of different races ). So I sat down and took out my sketchbook like I usually do. The guy beside me insisted I draw his friend and his friend immediately struck a crazy pose for me to draw.
I said I only had 5 minutes before I was getting off but they egged me on. I drew as fast as I could (in ink—what was I thinking!) and was making a pretty bad job of it—talk about pressure! Then I had to get off and we all had a good laugh about the bad sketch (see below). I asked if I could take his picture and he agreed, continuing the pose as I quickly snapped a photo with my iPhone and then jumped off the train as the doors were closing. Here’s the photo that I put on my computer monitor across the room to draw the sketch above in my sketchbook last night:
And here’s the original sketch done on BART, along with a few others from this week:
Now, about feeling like a Zombie… I’ve been doing prep this week for a colonoscopy this afternoon. I’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, except sugary clear liquids and the gallon of “Go-Litely” (hah! what false advertising!) and very little sleep due to drinking the first half gallon last night and then “Go-ing” all nite, thus the only “Litely” was my sleeping! And for the three days prior, I was told to eat none of my usually healthy diet: no vegetables, no fruits, no whole grains. Just white bread and meat, basically. The procedure isn’t until 2:00 so until then, I’ll be under a pile of blankets in bed trying to get warm and watching a movie on my laptop.
Zombie signing out…
Do you dream in full color? I dreamt I spotted the most beautiful woodpecker, and in my dream I noted that it was in gorgeous golds, ochres and siennas. The woodpecker, aside from it’s unique coloroing, looked just like the California Stellar Jays I see in my neighborhood, complete with peanut in mouth and nothing like a woodpecker. (Not that I’ve ever seen a woodpecker, although I have heard them).
Then I spotted another beautiful bird with, as I noted in the dream, a lime-colored Mohawk. Actually, in the dream I think I called it a “faux-hawk” because there’s something about the way”faux-hawk” sounds that pleases me. This bird made horrible Peacock noises.
The next dream carried on with the odd colored top-knot theme. The long, black, silky, beautiful, Latina hair of the girl next door had been bleached white and then died mint green so she’d look more like the Disney mermaid princesses she seems to like so much.
These were all done with gouache in the large Moleskine watercolor notebook.
I enjoy sketching on BART, our subway system (which has been in the news since New Year’s Eve when BART police shot and killed a defenseless, unarmed young man which was captured on cellphone video and led to protests and rioting in downtown Oakland). BART’s headquarters are in the building where I work in downtown Oakland. To keep people safe inside, the building has been on “lock down” the past couple of weeks, with I.D.s required to enter the building to keep those of us working inside safe. There’s been no trouble though, with way more media and police around than protestors.
On BART this morning, this old man made a great model. He barely moved and had the most gigantic ears I’ve ever seen.
This would probably be better if I darkened all of the area around her but I liked her pointy nose.
Jana Bouc, Artist 