Category: People

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Drawing Faces Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Life: NOT as Seen on TV

NOT as seen on TV

Ink & watercolor (Larger)

“Life is what passes you by while you’re watching TV.” I used to have a little sign on my TV with those words, but back then it was a reminder to my kids, not to me. Now I need it for me.

I was chatting with my friend Lin [View from the Oak] about our struggles to find time for everything. Lin manages to paint or sketch every day, post it on her illustrious blog AND leave wonderfully encouraging comments on countless other blogs, all while working a grueling schedule and making time for her husband, offspring and grandbabies.

It occurred to me later that day: I bet Lin doesn’t watch TV! It turns out I was right. Other than the art videos she watches while on her treadmill, she rarely watches TV. She said that sketching IS her TV, her way to relax.

I used to be like that too but somehow, over time, TV has insidiously infiltrated my life. I turned to it as a way to relax when my brain was tired from thinking hard all day at work. But it puts me in a stupor so I just watch another show instead of doing something more satisfying (or just going to bed when what I really need is sleep).

Now it’s time to pull the plug! I may even cancel my cable and TiVo subscriptions and go cold turkey for a while. I bet that not only will I gain time and save money (on cable and TiVo bills), I might even lose a couple extra pounds, since watching TV often leads to snacking on empty calories while burning none!

Have you successfully quit TV? If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them!

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Art theory Faces Figure Drawing Oil Painting Other Art Blogs I Read Painting People Portrait Sketchbook Pages

Figure Painting Workshop Sketches

20080310_0131-Meri

20 Minute Sketch: Oil on panel 12×9″ Larger

I thought I would scrape off and reuse this panel but when I photographed it I found there was something about the rawness that I liked. It was the second sketch of the first day of my “Weekend Warriors” figure painting workshop with Randall Sexton, a talented and kind teacher. The model, Meri, was the best I’ve worked with…beautiful, voluptious, charming and a real professional. She is originally from Argentina and came to the SF Bay Area after working with artists in New York City for 10 years.

Below is another 20 minute sketch from day one. Again, I thought I’d wipe and reuse but since I kind of like the energy in it (and didn’t like the cheapo Aaron Brothers panel — way too smooth a surface) I think I’ll hang onto it. (Which means it joins the big stack of “learning opportunities” in my closet until I’m ready to dump them).

Oil on panel, 12×9″ (larger)

20080310_0136-Meri

Oil painting from a live model is sort of like plein air painting: time is limited and there are so many elements that need to be right (drawing, color , value, likeness etc.) for the painting to work. There is so much to see, discover, understand and interpret in 20 minute sprints of painting.

The model’s breaks between poses afford an interesting opportunity to walk around the room and see what others are doing. I was struck by how different each artist’s work was. There were some very accomplished local painters in this weekend class. I had the good fortune of setting up beside Iris Sabre, a local painter whose style and technique I greatly admire.

I started the larger painting below at the end of day one, with two 20 minute sessions. When we returned on Day 2 we had 3 more 20 minute sessions to “finish” up. This is nowhere near finished (but I wish I’d at least gotten around to fixing those giant hands!)

Oil on panel, 20×16″ (larger)

20080310_0125-Meri

This was the 20 minute warm up sketch at the beginning of day two:
Oil on canvas panel, 12×9″ (larger)

20080310_0128-Meri

This was the final painting on day two, about 2 hours and again, not close to being finished and suffering from chalkiness and my exhaustion:
Oil on panel, 20×16″ (larger)

20080310_0121-Meri

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Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

How NOT to Start a Workshop

Coffee spill

Ink & watercolor in Aquabee sketchbook (larger)

I’m taking a figure painting workshop this weekend from Randy Sexton in Crockett, CA. It’s two full days of painting a beautiful model both nude and clothed in exotic gowns. Although I was excited about the workshop, I was also exhausted and stressed after a very difficult week at work, topped off by spending Friday evening doing my taxes (ick!).

Early this morning I packed my oil painting gear into my rolling cart, stuck a big thermos cup of coffee in my backpack, and rushed off to Crockett. As I got out of my car I felt my back suddenly go into spasm. Across the street another workshop participant was unloading her supplies. As I waited for her I tried to stretch my back by doing a sort of Downward Dog yoga pose holding onto the handle of my cart.

I felt a searing hot pain go down my back. At first I thought it was another spasm and then realized it was hot coffee pouring all over my backpack, down the back of my light green shirt, and dripping onto my shoes. I’d forgotten the cup was in my backpack and worse, had forgotten to close it all the way.

I managed to enjoy the class today despite all of the above. We did multiple 20 minute paintings and then a couple 40 minute poses. It’s quite a challenge to do an entire oil painting in 20 (or 40) minutes from a model, but extremely good practice. Most of my pieces today were “scrapers” (scraping off all the paint to reuse the panel) but maybe tomorrow with longer poses I’ll have something worth saving (and posting).

Now to go take a painkiller and rest up for tomorrow’s class — which will start even earlier thanks to stupid daylight savings time!

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Art theory Dreams Illustration Friday Life in general People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Leap (year) * Illustration Friday

Leap

Four watercolors, framed together 24×32″ (Larger)

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Leap” in honor of leap year, this February 29, 2008. But the paintings and sketches in this post were actually made twenty years ago. They were inspired by two dreams recorded in a 1988 dream sketchbook (below) and a class in color theory I was taking at the time, based on Joseph Albers work. The images include references to the seasons; times of day/night; the elements of water, fire, earth, and air; and tarot symbols.

The dreams that night were showing me a choice I needed to make in my life. Then as now I was fascinated by computers/technology and art (a perfect combination for an art blogger, no?). But my dreams pointed out how the time and energy I was spending on the computer tied me in knots and stole from my creativity.

Here is the image from the first dream that night: A computer tech “boiler room” full of electronics, miles of wires, computers, monitors, and icky nerds frantically, obsessively, working non-stop at their computers with no time to even look up. It was a nightmare really…full of tension.

Leap-1988

In the next dream I left that scene and I was running free in a field and it felt really good.

Leap-1988-2

And then, from a quote I’d heard somewhere, this image and words.

Leap-1985

When I awoke I knew I had to make the choice for life, freedom, and art, and quit spending so much time at my computer.

I guess like anything else in life, it comes down to a matter of finding balance and making choices about what’s really important. If I remember to ask myself whether I’ll feel happier at the end of the day if I’ve spent my time drawing/painting or working on the computer, I usually know which to choose (Art!).

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Drawing Faces People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Quickie Subway Drawings on BART

20080227-BART1

I liked the earnest, patient look on her face and her Modigliani neck. I just wish she’d stayed aboard a little longer so I could finish her.

Now this guy was great. He went right to sleep, sitting facing me, our knees nearly touching, and mostly stayed asleep until we both got off at the same stop. Once he startled awake and caught me staring at him but dozed right back off. The guy sitting next to me watched me draw and gave me a big grin as I was getting off, acknowledging our secret from my model.
Red-haired sleeper with sideburns:

20080227-BART4

More sleepers:
20080227-BART7

Just waiting:
20080227-BART6

Too many earings:
20080227-BART3

No smoking: (and yes, I know his head’s too narrow but I think it rather suits him)
20080227-BART5

All are Ink on Strathmore Drawing paper

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Animals Cartoon art Drawing Dreams Gouache People Sketchbook Pages

Dreaming: Beaches, buzzards, buffalo…

A Llama appears

All are ink & gouache in square sketchbook

I started my dreams Friday night (after a really crazy hectic work week) with a strange series of beach scenes. First a llama appeared in the surf and splashed its way out of the water.

Shortly after that a gigantic fat buzzard with white fluffy feathers like a tutu zoomed down and picked at a dead seagull carcass.

Then a buzzard...

Then a herd of huge buffalo chased by hunky hordes of horseback riders goes thundering through the surf: first north then south, then out of the water and up a hill. Then a helicopter (in first image) lands on the water and loads up with my co-workers. Those who don’t fit get into a boat and leave too.

Then horses chasing buffalo

Meanwhile it’s my first day on the job in a different department and I’m trying to print notes for how to use my cellphone and I’m trying to make it 2-sided to keep it in my wallet but I mess up the pages and then discover I have no computer to print from anyway.

Then a woman comes over and says she needs to measure my head size. She tells me how much smaller my head is than hers and says, “that’s just one of those things that happen at our age.” I’m wondering if my head is shrinking* and I also don’t think she’s my age, but then I can’t tell how old she really is.

Head size

* Hmmmm, maybe that last dream is telling me I need a good “head shrinker?” (as psychiatrists are called in the U.S.).

At first I thought there’s no way I can draw these dreams: I don’t know what buffalo and horses and buzzards look like in enough detail to draw them. Then I wondered, if I can see them so clearly in my dream, maybe all I have to do is look at the images I see in my mind when I remember the dream. If I can see it, I should be able to draw it. (Hah!)

I started sketching hesitantly in pencil but quickly realized I needed to just go for it with my pen instead as I usually do. It’s so much more fun to be adventurous and just see what comes out of the pen.

I was able to capture the buzzard, llama and horses close to how I saw them in my dream though not the riders who were all studly stuntmen/Indiana Jones type, not these wimpy riders. But I was hopeless at drawing the buffalo.

Maybe when I finish working on perspective I’ll switch to buffalo (not).

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Drawing Dreams Life in general Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Dreams: Definitely not on the best dressed list

20080208-Macys

Ink and watercolor in 5.5″ square sketchbook (larger)

Last night I dreamt first that I was shopping in Macy’s and a snooty salesman looked me up and down and made fun of what I was wearing. He offered to help me dress better and recommended $100 flip-flops with made of thin green nylon (like they make sleeping bags from) with criss-crossed shoelaces that held the flimsy things on your feet.

“The latest thing,” he told me. I wasn’t going for it.

Carrying on the poorly-dressed theme, the next dream was that I was wandering around Los Angeles, looking for a bus to Santa Monica (a suburb of LA where my mother lives) wearing only a large (but not large enough) shirt.

20080208-shirt-only

(larger)

I wasn’t terribly embarrassed by this partial nudity, having gotten used to it from all the time I’ve spent in previous dreams completely naked in public.

In real life, I don’t go out naked, though I did spend a summer nude in the early ’70s when I was 22, camping with 6 friends at a beautiful spot in the Siskiyou National Forest, 10 miles down a dirt road from the town of Happy Camp. The temperature in the afternoons reached 117 so nudity seemed pretty reasonable.

Running by our campsite was the perfectly named Clear Creek which fed into a wonderful swimming hole surrounded by huge boulders, perfect for lying on and diving off of.

We were the only ones there during the weekdays but on the weekends the occasional truckload of Native Americans from the nearby reservation would come out to swim or a family might camp for the weekend. The guys in our group would put on bathing suits when we had visitors but us hippie girls stayed au naturel for the duration and nobody seemed to mind.

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Every Day Matters Faces Life in general People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

13 minutes, 4 commuters, politics and art books

Ink in 6×9 sketchbook (Larger)

On my way home from work tonight I intended to continue reading Hensche on Painting (about an American Impressionist painter and his teachings about seeing and painting color under the influence of light). But the BART train was full of fascinating faces and I had to sketch instead. There are four stops between my office and home. The person in the seat two rows ahead of me was replaced at each stop, which made for a wonderfully random assortment of models, with 2 to 4 minutes each to draw them.

Tonight my painting group was here and we talked about whether we were going to vote for Hillary or Obama. As I wrote that sentence, I realized that it doesn’t feel right to call her by her last name or to call him by his first name. I wonder what that means and if it’s unconsciously sexist of me? Or is that I didn’t know how to spell Barack and had to look it up, even though I’ve seen it a hundred times already? Or is it because when I think “Clinton” I think of her hubby?

Susie has been reading Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, about his life pre-candidacy and it has convinced her to vote for him. I’m going to download it from Audible.com and listen to it.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) is the California debate between the two of them, and although I don’t get CNN on my TV, they are streaming the debates live on CNN.com so I will watch it on my computer. Then I’ll make my decision and mail in my absentee ballot. (I like pretending that my vote actually matters.)

I’m just looking forward to the end of the Bush era and not having to run to turn off the sound when he’s on the radio or TV.

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Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Grateful for a flat tire!?!

Subway drawing - just a guy

Ink in 8×6″ Strathmore sketchbook (larger)

I’d planned to be in the studio with my painting group tonight, but instead got a flat tire, and spent the evening waiting for the tow truck guy to come change my tire. So all I have to post tonight is this guy I sketched on the BART train this morning.

I actually found the flat tire experience rather interesting for several reasons. At first it scared me because I heard a weird scraping, flopping sound and was afraid there was something seriously wrong with my car. I pulled over, and walked to the back where the sound was coming from and immediately saw the poor sad tire, all deflated.

I was surprised to discover I was feeling grateful instead of pissed off because:

  1. It didn’t happen a couple days ago when I was driving fast on the freeway to a painting class in Petaluma (an hour each way).
  2. It wasn’t a serious problem with an expensive part of my car.
  3. It wasn’t freezing or raining outside and I was in a safe area.
  4. I had a spare tire, a cell phone (and good reception), a battery charger for my phone in the car, and I’m an AAA member and they were sending help.
  5. I’d been warned that I needed new tires last time I had the oil changed, but I didn’t want to buy new ones because (a) they still had plenty of tread and were just old (I don’t drive much) and (b) that’s a boring thing to spend money on — I’d rather spend it on art supplies–but now I had proof the guy wasn’t just trying to sell me tires, they really do need to be replaced.
  6. There’s an extra paycheck this month because of 3 Thursdays so I’d actually be able to pay for new tires.
  7. It’s a problem that can be solved, unlike most of the other problems we face these days.

I spent the time waiting for the tow truck by calling my painting group to cancel the meeting and Costco to find out the price of a new set of tires (a lot). The truck arrived on time, but the guy couldn’t get the cover off my spare on the back of my Toyota RAV4. He kept trying while I scanned my car manual which I keep in the glove box (do they still call it glove box since nobody wears gloves anymore?).

There were no directions for removing the cover and the tow truck man about to give up and just pump some air in my tire and send me on my way.  The problem was that his fingers were too big to reach into the space between the tire cover and the car. I tried and found that my fingers were just skinny enough to grab the elasticized edge of the cover, stretch it and lift it up. Then he was able to use his strength to pull and we got the stupid thing off. What a dumb design!

He changed the tire, bending over with his big butt serving as a reflective warning device in the lights of the oncoming traffic. When he finished he said, “There you go M’lady” and told me I needed new tires. I asked where he recommended getting them. He looked at me with surprise and said, “Don’t you have a husband?” as if all women had them and shouldn’t have to bother themselves with tire shopping.

I said, “Oh yeah, I used to have one of those and he did take care of my car, but not anymore.” I thanked him and we went on our way, with me feeling cheerful and grateful, even though I have a headache, had a rough day at work, no dinner until after 8:00 p.m. and now have to spend nearly $600 on stupid car tires.

Did you know you’re supposed to rotate all your tires (including the spare) every 6 months or 7,500 miles (whichever comes first)?  I never did rotate these tires and they’ve been on my car since it was born in 2002. Oops.

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Drawing Dreams Life in general People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Dreaming of Haircuts & Flying to prevent gang violence

Dreamt I accidentally cut off my(?) long, bleached blonde ponytail

All are ink & Schmincke watercolor in square 5.5″ sketchbook
(Larger)

I dreamt that I accidentally cut off my long, bleached-blonde ponytail. I was horrified at first. But as I stroked my departed ponytail, I realized it was really damaged and straw-like from being bleached and that I still had nearly shoulder length hair so I’d be OK. Then I remembered that I don’t have thick bleached blonde hair, I have curly red-colored hair. The End.

Flying to prevent gang violence

(Larger)

I dreamt that I could fly by pushing off with my feet and then turning with my hips to change direction. Unlike my usual flying dreams, this time I was in a neat sort of capsule that came off of a carnival ride.

I saw these gangbangers (above) and thought that it might help them if I showed them how cool it was that I could fly. First they were going to rob me and then they were sort of impressed as I flew away.

Then….

I really can fly!

(Larger)

….I took off on a wonderful joy ride over the ocean, flying up and swooping down and around, having a blast! Flying is just so real and wonderful in my dream and when I wake up I am completely convinced that I can do it. My body knows exactly how to move to fly.

Or maybe I’ve just been watching too much of Heroes, a fantastic TV show that is available on DVD. I highly recommend it. It’s a lot better than most movies I’ve seen in the past couple years. The writing is amazing and I love that all of the plot twists and turns are foreshadowed by the paintings and graphic novel sketches of an artist who is one of the main characters. All of the characters are interesting and the story and visuals are fascinating. I’ve been watching it on DVDs from Netflix and sadly only have a couple more disks left until they release season 2 on DVD.