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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Other Art Blogs I Read Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Honda of El Cerrito: Sketching Cars

Honda of El Cerrito, Ink & watercolor
Honda of El Cerrito, Ink & watercolor

The El Cerrito Honda dealership was kind enough to allow our Tuesday night urban sketchers group to come and sketch in their showroom. There were chairs and tables for us to sketch and paint in comfort and interesting architecture and cars to draw. I remember boys drawing cars all the time but never thought that someday I’d go out of my way to draw cars too.

The artist Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez told me that she likes including cars in her paintings because they remind her of jewel-like candies. In this post she not only included cars, but got a passerby to stand and pose for her and included him in the painting!

 

Shark Honda, ink & watercolor
Shark Honda, ink & watercolor

I drew this car at the end of the evening and it was so close to me that it got way out of proportion and then started looking like a shark with whatever that thingee was on top. It’s good to develop the ability to see and draw cars because they’re everywhere, and leaving them out of a scene can look strange.

 

Artist Beth Bourland told me a funny story about this car sketch on her blog. She kept working on her drawing after the cars drove away. Some passerbys looked at her sketch and then at the empty street in front of her, and back at the sketch, wondering if she was seeing things.

You can see Cathy’s Honda sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog here.

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Berkeley Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

North Beach Pizza in an Old Berkeley IHOP

North Beach Pizza Berkeley, ink & watercolor
North Beach Pizza Berkeley, ink & watercolor

North Beach Pizza in Berkeley is housed in a former International House of Pancakes. Pizza is a sort of large pancake, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it served with maple syrup. We had a good time eating, chatting and sketching the night away, six of us in one cozy booth.

North Beach Pizza, ink & watercolor
North Beach Pizza, ink & watercolor

I drew the pizza before sharing it with Cathy and Micaela (her sketch is here on our Urban Sketchers site.)

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Building Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchcrawl Stanford Urban Sketchers

International Sketchcrawl #30 at Stanford University

Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor
Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor

It was fun to meet the South Bay members of our Urban Sketchers SF Bay Area group Suhita and John, and to meet some of the members of Sketchcrawl Silicon Valley at the Stanford sketchcrawl on Saturday. Cathy and I made the hour plus drive down there and met at noon. We started with lunch at the outdoor cafe with a view of the Rodin Sculpture Garden (sketched above at the end of the day after everyone left and it is my favorite because I love those funny, imperfectly groomed trees).

Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center
Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center

My first sketch was the one above, of a statue called “Faith” in front of the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Starting with “Faith” seemed good, since it helps to have a little faith that the sketching will go well.  By 1:00 there were about 10 of us and everyone went off to follow their muses with a plan to regroup around 3:00. I followed Cathy who knew her way around, since my muse, like me, has no sense of direction.

Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor
Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor

The sign on the building said “Memorial Arch and Court Erected by His Mother, 1898 in Memory of Leland Stanford Jr. Born to mortality May 14, 1868…” I ran out of room to record his year of death but he only lived until age 16 so his mother donated the land Stanford was built on to create a memorial for her son.

Chapel and courtyard
Chapel and courtyard

From a distance the front of the chapel appears to be glowing gold but when you get closer you can see it’s covered with a stunning mural made entirely in mosaic. Coming from an urban environment where things are crowded, noisy and grungy, Stanford was amazing. The Stanford campus is tremendously spread out (over 8,000 acres), with most buildings only one or two stories, but massive nonetheless. Everything is immaculately clean, with amazing gardens, gazillions of trees (well, officially 43,000), and quiet. At $51,000 a year for tuition, room and board I suppose one should expect a lovely environment!

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Art theory Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Photos Places

Sit Stay Cafe Girl Sketch in Oils

Sit Stay Cafe Girl, oil on panel, 10x8"
Sit Stay Cafe Girl, oil on panel, 10x8"

When I painted this oil sketch I had three inspirations: First was the Peggi Kroll Roberts video focusing on designing value patterns by simplifying and grouping values, even when the colors are different (e.g. the red umbrella and green trees above are very different colors but approximately the same values).

Curan: Afternoon in the Cluny Garden
Curran: Afternoon in the Cluny Garden

My second inspiration was the Curran painting above that I saw at the Impressionists show at the DeYoung Museum. I fell in love with this painting because of the colors, strong values and abstract qualities and brought home a print. Charles Courtney Curran was an American artist who studied with the Impressionists in Paris in the 1880s and then returned to the U.S. His other work I’ve seen online doesn’t appeal to me at all, too sugary and romantic.

Original photo reference with face blurred for anonymity
Original photo reference with face blurred for anonymity

I was also inspired by my reference photo (above) that I took at the Sit Stay Cafe at Pt. Isabel’s dog park where I was lunching, sketching and taking photos to test a new camera last summer.

The tired young woman was very kind about allowing me to sketch and take photos of her. She told me she also liked to paint. Since I didn’t ask for permission to post her picture online I blurred her face in Photoshop first.

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Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Plein Air Sonoma

Viansa Vineyard: Final Touches on Final Plein Air 2010

Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"
Foggy Morning at Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"

My plein air group had our last meeting of the season in November at Viansa Winery in Sonoma. I’d made a good start on the painting plein air, but it needed work. Today I got tired of looking at the unfinished painting and completed it (above), using both brushes and palette knife.

I’d set up my easel at the edge of the parking lot and had a great view of the vineyard. But there were so many interesting things to see that I included all of them in my original painting below (except maybe the cars and the birds and bees—that’s some progress I suppose).

Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air
Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air

There are some passages in the painting I liked, especially the top fourth, but there were some problems too: the strong yellow diagonal line leading you out of the painting, the bright gold triangle top right, the green line of bushes beside the purple road, both of which weren’t needed even though they were there in real life.

Viansa photo reference
Viansa photo reference

This is the photo I took at the beginning of the painting session. The sun and fog and clouds kept changing but the overall impression I had of the day was sunny.

A previous Viansa painting can be seen here. It’s nice to see the progress I’ve made since then.

 

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Berkeley Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

The Draw Your Food Diet (at The Junket and The Bread Workshop)

Turkey & Swiss at The Junket, Lamy Safari, Carbon Platinum Ink & watercolor in Moleskine Watercolor
Turkey & Swiss at The Junket, El Cerrito. Lamy Safari pen, Carbon Platinum ink & watercolor in Moleskine

Whenever we meet to sketch at a cafe we always try to sketch our food before we eat it and we always joke about what a great diet it would be to do that at every meal. It not only helps to slow down eating, but it also helps to speed up sketching! This leads to looser, more playful sketches which I think are more fun to make and to see.

Sonia and I met for lunch at The Junket, a deli in El Cerrito Plaza. My Turkey and Swiss Sandwich on a sourdough baguette (sketched above) was the best I’ve had in years. It was my second choice though, as we originally ordered Chicken Dumpling Soup. But when I saw them spooning it into a bowl, it had the consistency of gloppy, yellow gravy. I asked if it was cream-based (Sonia is allergic to dairy) and they said no, they knew it wasn’t because they reconstitute it with water. Um…no thanks. I switched to the half sandwich and Sonia got salad and we were happy.

Grilled Veges & Brown Rice at the Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor in Moleskin
Grilled Veges & Brown Rice at the Bread Workshop. Ink & watercolor in Moleskine

On our next Tuesday night sketch-out we met at the Bread Workshop. They had contacted me the week before to ask if they could use this previous sketch I did there to illustrate a newsletter they are sending to supporters and I gladly said yes. They reserved a large table for us with a view into the bakery so that we could draw the bakers working.

I wasn’t much up to that challenge as it was my first night out after being sick for two weeks and my sketching felt rusty. You can see Micaela’s wonderful sketch here and Sonia’s here and here. The food was fantastic: my grilled veges (above) were so flavorful!

 

Bread and Baker at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor
Bread and Baker at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor

This was the extent of my drawing bread and bakers. The Bread Workshop are advocates of sustainable foods and practices and ranked as one of the top ten greenest restaurants in the Bay Area. Everything I’ve had there has been delicious and they were playing great music that night, going from George Benson to Billy Holiday to Tom Waits in succession.

 

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Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Ranch 99 Asian Market Sketches

Soak Squid on Ice, ink & watercolor
Soak Squid on Ice, ink & watercolor

Ranch 99 Asian Market is a great place to sketch on a dark rainy night. The delicate pink of these cleaned whole squids on crushed ice was the first thing to grab my attention. I Googled “soak squid” to see if it was a variety of squid but from what I read, I think it was pre-soaked in milk or buttermilk for several hours to tenderize it.

Hanging fowl, ink & watercolor
Hanging fowl, ink & watercolor

Even though I’ve sketched their hanging fowl before, there were a greater variety this time including one on the right that I thought looked like a rabbit.

Eggplant and Bitter Melon, ink & watercolor
Eggplant and Bitter Melon, ink & watercolor

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the similar shapes but different colors piled beside each other. I was running out of time before we were to meet but still tried to draw each individual shape as they appeared rather than generalize.

Dragon fruit, ink & watercolor
Dragon fruit, ink & watercolor

The Dragon Fruit again grabbed my attention and one of these days I’ll get around to eating one. I fought the temptation to shop instead of sketching so didn’t bring anything home this time.

Categories
Albany Life in general Oil Painting Painting Places

Santa and Christmas Sleeping Rough in the Park

Santa version 6, oil on panel, 8x6
Merry Christmas Santa (version 6), oil on panel, 8x6

People are living in the park known as the Albany Bulb again. On a walk we saw more than a dozen homemade shelters, tree houses and tents hidden away in the brush, this one (below) complete with Christmas tree.

Christmas at the Bulb
Christmas at the Albany Bulb

Although I no longer celebrate Christmas with trees and gifts myself, I always like to get out my Santa (at top of post) that was given to me by a wonderful former student who died not long after in a motorcycle crash. The funny, cheery Santa always reminds me of the value of generosity and the transitory nature of life.

I hope Santa finds the homeless families living in the park and makes their Christmas bright. It can’t be much fun camping out in the mud, pouring rain and wind we’ve been having.

And I hope all of you are having a wonderful winter holiday too!

Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Sketching in the Bar at Spenger’s Fish Grotto

Spengers Bar #1, ink & watercolor
Spenger's Bar (beer & a cellphone), ink & watercolor

Last week two new members joined our Tuesday night sketch group and we had a great time sketching in the bar at Spenger’s, an old, formerly family-owned seafood restaurant filled with ship-themed objects including giant mounted fish trophies (which we learned are just plastic), models of old ships, steering wheels, ropes, etc.

Sonia Sketching at Spengers, Ink & watercolor
Sonia Sketching at Spenger's, Ink & watercolor

I tried several times to draw some of the mounted fish but mostly failed except for the one on the back wall above.  Then I drew the lanterns hanging from the ceiling (below), interested in the perspective and how they overlapped as they receded in space.  Then I used the rest of the page for a different view.

Lanterns, Martini & a Cellphone at Spengers, Ink & watercolor
Lanterns, Martini & a Cellphone at Spenger's, Ink & watercolor

I was drawing the guy in the foreground with the hat, cellphone and martini, when I noticed the man behind him kept smiling at me when I looked up. I wondered aloud whether it might be a bad idea to stare at men at the bar—would they think we were flirting with them?

Everyone around our table laughed as it turned out we were all intently drawing the same foreground guy. He was a good sport and when we all finished we showed him his many portraits.

You can see Cathy’s and Sonia’s sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog.

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Sketching at Pastime Hardware, El Cerrito

Wire Winding & Measuring Machine, Ink & Watercolor
Wire Winding & Measuring Machine, Ink & Watercolor

The crew at Pastime Hardware remembered us from our previous night there last year and treated us like honored guests. Cathy tackled the wall of spooled wires (see our Urban Sketchers site) but I fell in love with this ancient machine (above) for measuring long lengths of wire. Nobody there knew what it was called. Behind it is a rack of copper tubing.

Orion Key Grinding Machine, ink & watercolor
Orion Key Grinding Machine, ink & watercolor & collaged piece of Ace brown bag

While I sketched the key grinding machine, an employee swept nearby, preparing for closing. He showed me his dustpan full of gold dust, explaining it falls from the key machine. I’m still battling the stupid landscape-format Moleskine that makes drawing and painting standing up difficult (for me, anyway). I had to completely surrender to wonkiness on this one but was glad for the handy nearby stool I sat on for drawing the wire winder.

I’m also glad for some upcoming vacation during which I will bind a new journal and sketch like crazy to finish this one.