Category: Berkeley

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Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Places Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Bad Day…Good Day…Bad Day

Sylvia Painting at Berkeley Marina, Ink & watercolor
Sylvia Painting at Berkeley Marina, Ink & watercolor

First the Good Day: I had fun sketching this artist painting at the Berkeley Marina during our paint-out today. Unfortunately that fun was sandwiched between two Bad-Day things.

The second Bad Day thing is the worst: I came home from the paint-out and discovered that my Gmail account got hacked and sent spam to everyone in my address book. UGH! I researched the problem and took all the recommended steps to fix it: changed my Gmail password (and am now halfway through changing all my other passwords), checked all my security settings, ran 2 virus checkers and 2 malware checkers which all came up negative.

If you received  one of the spam messages, please accept my apology. And if you clicked the link or replied to the message, then just to be safe, please change your email password too.

The first Bad-Day thing was that on my way to the paint-out there was a big accident just beyond the exit I needed to take to the Marina. Traffic wasn’t moving and people started getting nasty. First they started driving on the shoulder of the road, trying (unsuccessfully) to get to the exit and off the freeway.

Then big SUVs and pickup trucks started driving up the curb onto the dirt, turning one pre-exit lane into 3 lanes of cars squeezed together, jockeying to get ahead of each other. Then two SUVs ran into each other, blocking things up even more. Of course all three lanes had to funnel back into the same lane at the exit ramp but those pushy guys got off first.

Berkeley Harbor Patrol, ink & watercolor
Berkeley Harbor Patrol, ink & watercolor

I was really upset because our plein air group had hired David Savellano to lead a watercolor sketching workshop for us and I was missing it! I was so frustrated just sitting there watching beastly, rude drivers instead of enjoying art and sea air at the marina. Finally, inch by inch I made it to the exit and arrived half an hour late to the demo.

Naturally, I had a little trouble loosening up when I did the boat sketch above, but after taking a lunch/attitude adjustment break, returned for more, determined to get loose and just play. The sketch at the top of the post was the result. During the critique David gave me great reviews for both sketches which made my day and believe, me, I really needed that on a day like this!

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Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Places Shop windows Sketchbook Pages

Sketching Solano Ave. in the 1700s and 1800s

La Farine Bakery, ink & watercolor
La Farine Bakery, ink & watercolor & piece of business card

Not the years 1700s-1800s, but the addresses. We started our Tuesday night sketchcrawl at La Farine Bakery (above), 1820 Solano Ave., Berkeley and two and half hours later we’d traveled only one block, ending at Kirin Restaurant, 1767 Solano Ave. Berkeley. It’s amazing how many interesting details there are to be seen and drawn on a street I’ve walked hundreds of times.

We only had 15 minutes to draw in the bakery since they were closing but the workday was just beginning for the baker who was tantalizing our noses with the mesmerizing scent of carmelizing sugar and butter. People rushed in and out, buying their bread for dinner. This lady (above) was in and out in less than two minutes.

Then we headed outside and were captivated by the art deco signage on the Powder Box Beauty Salon which will probably be gone soon since they are moving around the corner.

Powder Box Beauty Salon, ink and watercolor
Powder Box Beauty Salon, ink and watercolor

The wall is maroon tile and I spent way too much time drawing all the lines to indicate tile and then goofed when I drew the car parked in front of the building. I didn’t pay attention to how things lined up and accidentally parked the car on the sidewalk, halfway into the store.

This shop reminds me of one we used to pass on the way to my grandmother’s house when I was a kid. I used to get so annoyed at that shop’s name: “Lipstick Beauty Salon,” because it didn’t make any sense, and that started my life-long pet peeve of dumb business names.

Of course this was before the internet and the REALLY stupid business names that seem to be required for the web. They all sound like baby talk to me (picture a baby prattling, “Google, twitter, hulu, lulu, vimeo, gowalla.” (All successful web-based companies.)

Sue Johnson Custom Lampshades, ink & watercolor
Sue Johnson Custom Lamps, ink & watercolor

The sun had set and all the lit lamps at Sue Johnson’s shop were glowing in the windows. I’d never noticed the wonderful Spanish tiles and other decorative elements above the store windows, including a delicate mural of ivy leaves that I forgot to draw because I got so interested in the tree.

We finished up at Kirin Restaurant when it got too cold outside. Cathy eats there regularly so felt comfortable asking the host if we could come in and sketch and he graciously agreed. (That’s my cartoony version of Cathy on a bar stool, still wearing her gigantic. arctic puffy down jacket and signature baseball cap.) The kitchen is visible behind glass walls.

Kirin Restaurant, ink & watercolor
Kirin Restaurant, ink & watercolor
Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Places Sketchbook Pages

Sketching Shattuck & Vine, Berkeley

Vine Street Produce Store Roof, ink & watercolor
Vine Street Produce Center Roof, ink & watercolor

The best part of sketching tonight was running into beautiful Martha, who promises to rejoin our Tuesday night sketchcrawls again in a month or so. By then it will be light and warm enough to sketch all evening in comfort. The sun was setting and it got cold while I sketched the roof of the Produce Center above. I could see a crowd lining up for pizza at the Cheeseboard Collective where a jazz band was playing. I could hear the music but wasn’t close enough to smell the pizza, just the scent from all the local dogs who’d visited the bush behind the concrete bench where I sat in front of Bank of the West.

Vege Food Restaurant, Vine St., ink & watercolor
Vegi Food Restaurant, Vine St., ink & watercolor

I wouldn’t have thought to sketch this old vegetarian Chinese restaurant (above) until Cathy suggested it as a subject. I’d never noticed the interesting second story before. It was fun to draw quickly (Cathy was nearly done with her sketch when I started) and loosely (using my Lamy Safari while wearing fuzzy gloves for warmth which kept smearing the ink and caused the pen to keep slipping).

Continental Mark V, ink & watercolor
Continental Mark V, ink & watercolor

It was nearly dark when I started the sketch above, but I couldn’t resist this wonderful old car from the time when big was better. I wish I’d drawn it across the centerfold instead of fitting it on one page because I see I’ve compressed the width, especially the front which was just as long as the back. But I feel pretty pleased, considering I drew a car (not a subject I’m “good” at), in the dark, with a fountain pen held in thick fuzzy-gloved fingers.

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Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Places Plants Shop windows Sketchbook Pages

Tuesday Night Sketchcrawl on Solano

Nature map, ink and watercolor
Nature map, ink and watercolor

After having a rough day, I met Cathy in front of the Northbrae Church at the top of Solano in Berkeley to sketch. I considered staying home, feeling crummy, but knew if I went out sketching I would start feeling better. So I sat on some steps and drew a sort of map (above) of all the nature around me to get warmed up.

Next I sketched the street signs in front of my parked car (below).

Parking at Northbrae and Ferrari Foods, Ink & Watercolor
Parking and Ferrari Foods, Ink & Watercolor

Then we walked a block north to Solano and sketched the interior of Ferrari Foods (above), which was closed. One worker was inside cleaning up. When he finished and turned off the lights we walked around a bit looking for our next target, realized we were freezing and moved indoors to Cactus Taqueria.

Don't Play With the Fountain, ink and watercolor
Don't Play With the Fountain, ink and watercolor

Despite the sign on the fountain telling parents not to let their children play with the fountain, children wandering around while their parents finished dinner in the family-friendly Mexican cafeteria found it irresistable. One tot helped himself to a nice long drink of water from one of the streams while the young man sitting beside me yelled “No!” and asked around whose kid it was, dismayed to see him drinking the recycled water. Nobody responded and the kid eventually wandered back to his family, who seemed unworried.

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Berkeley Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Places

Sketching at Bread Workshop, Berkeley

"Packing bread," ink & watercolor & collage
"Packing bread," ink & watercolor & menu snippet

The Bread Workshop is a combination café and artisan bread bakery in Berkeley. They focus on seasonal, sustainable, organic, healthy and delicious foods served in a comfortable atmosphere.  From our table we had a view of the small team of bakery workers, hustling to get hundreds of loaves of bread packaged and ready for next morning delivery to local restaurants.

Sawyer and Oven, ink & watercolor
Sawyer and Oven, ink & watercolor

We sat beside a table of young medical students (including the above guy named Sawyer) who were studying and discussing gastroenterology and what symptoms equaled which diseases—not the most appetizing dinner conversation, but interesting nevertheless.  The back of the large “Inferno” oven faced the café and was sparkly clean and  decorated with little lights beside a bulletin board.

Bread and Snacks Counter, ink & watercolor
Bread and Snacks Counter, ink & watercolor

I stood in front of the counter where you order (above) to sketch and then painted it at our table. This was really fun to draw.

Dinner at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor
Dinner at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor

My grilled chicken breast had been marinated in a yogurt sauce first and it was spicy and delicious, the grilled veges were fresh and tasty and they even had brown rice.

A great evening of sketching and dining!

Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Life in general Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages

Sketching on a Stormy Night at Au Coquelet

Au Coquelet, Ink & watercolor
Au Coquelet, Ink & watercolor

It was a dark and stormy night when Cathy and I met at Au Coquelet Cafe to sketch while listening to people debate the existence of reality and/or study English in Chinese.

I started by sketching the guy in the middle with black hair and just kept on going, seeing more and more stuff to draw. At one point he walked by our table, saw what we were doing, pulled out his cellphone and took photos of our sketches of him. That was a first! But it seemed a fair trade.

A group of four (perhaps retired professors from the university) seemed to have gathered for the sole purpose of defining reality, or proving it’s existence, or both, punctuated regularly by “huh?” “what did you say?” as one of the gents was hard of hearing (but not hard of “talking” as he blathered on and on).  On our other side were Chinese college students studying English, but mostly in Chinese, with the occasional English phrase thrown in such as “I am a pretty girl” and “I am eating an apple” (which she wasn’t).

Au Coquelet is a perfect place to sketch.  It’s large, open very late, has a couple of rooms,  and counter service only so you don’t have to worry about waiters.  There’s lots of wood, bricks, brick-a-brack and plants, design left over from the hippie days.

I have fond memories of sketching there on another stormy night, New Year’s Eve 1997, when I was supposed to be in Yosemite National Park but had canceled the trip due to rain. And it was good I didn’t go: the next day Yosemite had the worst flooding in 100 years, with roads and bridges so damaged that people were stranded there for weeks without sanitary facilities or food.

So with no plans for the evening, I headed up to the café to draw people who did have plans, partygoers coming in before and after their parties. After a while, a tall, handsome artist sketching at another table came over and joined me. We sketched together and talked, and ended up dating for a few months until I decided that the tales he told were too good to be true.

Categories
Berkeley Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Pyramid Alehouse Sketches

Blackened Salmon at Pyrramid Ale House, Ink & Watercolor
Blackened Salmon at Pyramid Ale House, Ink & Watercolor

Pyramid Alehouse in Berkeley is a lively, fun place for good food, good beer and sketching too. My blackened salmon was delicious and a real challenge to wait to draw and paint before eating. After dinner we planned to sketch the brewery area visible from our table. But mid-meal they turned the lights off in the brewery so we went upstairs to check out the view.

Pyrmaid exterior & "Brainstorm" Players, ink washes and watercolor
Combined 2 partial sketches (one exterior, one interior) with a pasted in bit of event calendar

Upstairs there was a crowd of people playing Pyramid’s version of trivial pursuit “Brainstormers Pub Quiz,” with an announcer reading off the challenges that teams try to solve. The teams with the most points win more beer.

I assume there is an honor system that prevents people from getting the answers on their smartphones. I couldn’t play trivial pursuit unless answers like, “You know, it was that guy who was in that movie with that blonde…” would win a prize.

Kitchen from above & Beers on Tap
Kitchen from above & Beers on tap, pasted in stuff

While we were upstairs I (tried to) sketch the chef in his galley kitchen. The perspective was challenging. Then we went downstairs to the bar area. I loved the whimsical handles on the taps, each reflecting some feature of the specific beer. They had 17 beers on tap that night.

I just noticed my color-scheme on these pages: they’re all predominantly beer colored.

Categories
Art theory Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Berkeley Firehouse Part II: Cathy’s Sketches

Hazardous Materials Truck Exhaust Hose,
Hazardous Materials Truck Exhaust Hose

When we go on our Tuesday night sketchcrawls I learn so much from seeing how Cathy approaches sketching, with her years of experience and vision as a graphic designer. This sketch is a good example of the way she designs a page, including both the detail and the context, while connecting elements to the edges of the page.

Firefighters' Jacket Rack
Firefighters' Jacket Rack

Cathy’s sketches often display groups of objects in interesting patterns. She also edits the subject to make a better composition, in this case removing a few jackets to simplify. She first draws a group of objects as one shape as in contour drawing and then adds the interior lines. Again in this sketch above she shows the context as well as the detail, so that it’s not just a rack of jackets and helmets, but with the bit of fire truck you know they’re firemen’s jackets. Notice also her wonderful sketchy and free lines, which she achieves by holding the pen closer to the end than to the point.

Engine No. 2
Engine No. 2

I love the way she got so much detail in the fire truck above but loosely, and with good perspective. Most of her sketches also include informative notes about the subject, placed in a location that adds to the good design. When I asked Cathy how she starts a sketch she said she always tries to start with the thing that interests her most to make sure it fits on the page and that it gets on the page. (It’s so easy to start drawing and run out of page before you ever get to the thing that attracted you first).

Engine No. 2 Side View

More cool details: all the gizmos on the side of the truck.

Gizmo close up
Gizmos close up

When she was sketching this (above), one of the firemen told her that when they are learning their equipment they also sketch all the gear and label it to help them study.

Boots and pants
Boots and pants

Here’s her version of the ready-to-step-into boots and pants.

Cathy sketches with ink in a spiral-bound 4×6″ Strathmore 400 Drawing notebook, focusing on making as many quick sketches as she can. She makes tiny pencil notes over the sketch about color to use when she adds watercolor later in the studio.

All images copyright 2010 by Cathy McAuliffe, used with permission.

She sketches with ink in a 4×6″ Strathmore 400 Drawing Paper pad, focusing on making as many quick sketches as she can. She makes tiny pencil notes over the sketch about color to use when she adds watercolor later in the studio.
Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Sketching at Berkeley Firehouse, Part I

Fire Truck and Parking Receipt, ink & watercolor
Fire Truck and Parking Receipt, ink & watercolor

The Berkeley Fire Station #2 was the scene of our Tuesday night sketchcrawl two weeks ago. Cathy had requested permission for us to visit and sketch and they generously gave us access to the station, the vehicles and equipment. The firemen live at the firehouse during their long shifts and since it was a quiet night they came around to see what we were doing.  They all told us how much they love their jobs and were extremely helpful, earnestly answering all of our questions.

Fire, Flag, Boots Ready, ink & watercolor
Boots & Overalls Ready; Flag Flying

We loved seeing the boots and overalls, ready to jump into, by the doors of each truck (above). I know the requirements are very stringent for becoming a firefighter, but do they also have to qualify as centerfold models? These guys were simply gorgeous: tall, strong, handsome, and really nice too. (If only they would have posed for us!) Firefighters have one of the highest rates of job satisfaction of all careers.

Tiller Truck, ink & watercolor
Tiller Truck, ink & watercolor

This little Tiller Truck caboose steers the back of the fire truck while the steering wheel at the front steers the front wheels. We learned that a Fire Truck is “a big tool box” where they keep all their gear such as Jaws of Life and the Fire Engine carries the water and hoses.

Fire Helmet, ink & watercolor
Lieutenant's Helmet, ink & watercolor

I held off posting these sketches because I’d been really frustrated with the messy, helter-skelter way I laid them out in my sketchbook and the ones not posted that were just ugly (but which I made good use of, writing my notes to self for improvement on top of them). When I looked at Cathy’s sketches I really liked the way she approached the subjects and designed her pages. That set me off on a learning process that I will write about next time when I post her sketches from the evening.

Categories
Berkeley Outdoors/Landscape Places Sketchbook Pages Virtual Paint-Out Watercolor

Tie-Dye on Telegraph: Virtual Paintout Berkeley

Telegraph Avenue Tie-Dye, ink & watercolor
Telegraph Avenue Tie-Dye, ink & watercolor, 4.5x6"

This month the San Francisco Bay Area is the locale for the Virtual Paintout (we paint from a Google Maps street view image). At first I was disappointed; I live in the Bay Area so I wouldn’t get to explore new territory like last month when we painted Corsica.

It seemed a little silly to paint from a map picture instead of from life but having just spent the afternoon on Telegraph Avenue, it seemed a natural subject. This tie-dye T-shirt stand is practically a permanent fixture on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft.

Although it’s right across the street from the University of California Berkeley campus, I don’t think I’ve seen a student wearing tie-dye since around 1975. Even old hippies don’t wear tie-dye anymore. So who buys these things?

I felt like painting in oils, but watercolor seemed a better medium for this subject. So I printed out the image (which I cropped from the original Google snapshot) and then sketched and painted the scene in my sketchbook. Here’s the original map and image on Google.