Category: Places

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Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Taco Bike at Fairyland and Japanese Garden at Lake Merritt

Taco Bike at Fairyland, ink & watercolor, 8x6"
Taco Bike at Fairyland, ink & watercolor, 8×6″

The $2.00 taco was delicious, made to order from the box mounted to Taco Bike. As I look at my sketch above I am wondering: there must have been a third wheel on the other side of the cart. Otherwise it would be impossible to ride and balance, no? And they did ride it in to the park.

My plein air group was meeting at Oakland’s Lakeside Garden Center, but when I parked at Fairyland across the from the garden I decided to start there. It is a small amusement park where children create their own amusement in storybook-themed play areas/structures.

Fairyland Parade and Sliding Hill, ink & watercolor 8x6"
Fairyland Parade and Sliding Hill, ink & watercolor 8×6″

I hadn’t been there since my kids were little; adults aren’t usually allowed in without kids but this day Fairyland was hosting the Childrens’ Hospital Anniversary celebration and everyone was allowed in. I tried to sketch a parade (above) as it zipped by. Behind the parade are children sliding on cardboard down a little grassy hill and balloons everywhere.

At the other end of Fairyland a radio station was emceeing the event over loudspeakers. They introduced a guy who performed annoying kids’ songs who was followed by blasting Latin music and someone shrieking “TURN, TURN, SHIMMY, WHOOEEE!!! WHOOP WHOOP! TURN, TURN!…” I later learned this was a Zumba demo.

Japanese Garden at Lake Merritt, ink & watercolor, 6x8"
Japanese Garden at Lake Merritt, ink & watercolor and white gel pen, 6×8″

All morning I’d felt a migraine coming on and the Zumba shouting was the last straw. I headed over to the Japanese garden in the Lakeside Garden Center. The peaceful setting and sound of the waterfall soothed my achey head long enough to sketch and paint the scene.

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Albany Drawing Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Sketch Rendezvous at the Rendez-Vous Cafe

Someone else feeling like me, ink & watercolor
Someone else feeling like me, ink & watercolor

I wasn’t feeling well the night we sketched at the newish Rendez-Vous Cafe-Bistro and it looks like I sketched my feelings onto my friend’s face. She was cheery and having fun but my pen gave her an expression reflecting how I felt instead.

Kid's Menu Spaghetti & Meatballs with my legs under table, ink & watercolor
Kid’s Menu Spaghetti & Meatballs with my legs under table, ink & watercolor

There was a guitar jazz duo playing lovely music and the waiter kindly let me order  spaghetti and meatballs from the kids’ menu since I just wanted a small portion. As you can see in the sketch above, after I sketched my food on the table I continued down the page, over the binding, and sketched my legs and feet under the table.

By the end of the evening I was feeling much better, as almost always happens when  I sketch, especially with such good friends.

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Kensington Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Street Light Battle and Dinner at the Gas Station?!

Kensington Street Lights, ink & watercolor, 8x6"
Kensington Street Lights, ink & watercolor, 8×6″

The little village of Kensington is battling over their streetlights. According to El Cerrito Patch, “A number of residents in the upscale community complained in late July when PG&E began removing the distinctive old streetlights on wood poles and replacing them with generic “cobra head” lights on shiny steel poles.” The replacement project was put on hold and community meetings planned to sort it.

I wanted to sketch the controversial street lights so we met on The Arlington, Kensington’s main street for our Tuesday night sketch-out. I found a spot to sketch where I could see all three of the street light types (though of course not so close together as in the picture above).

Kensington Chevron with Whip-Out Food Truck, ink & watercolor 8x4"
Kensington Chevron with Whip-Out Food Truck, ink & watercolor 8×4″

It got dark quickly so we sat outside the Sugar Cone Cafe at their sidewalk tables and sketched by the light from their windows. Across the street at the Chevron Station, people were lining up to get dinner from the Whip-Out Food Truck. It’s funny how food trucks have gone from being “the roach coach” that served awful food to factory workers to the new gourmet thing.

You can see some of the delightful sketches my sketch buddies Cristina and Ceiny did that evening of the festive cafe and the food truck on our Urban Sketchers blog. I give Cathy credit for the pool of light in front of the gas station that I added to my sketch after I saw it in hers (which I’ll link to when she posts it).

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Berkeley Drawing Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Happy Toesday: Random Bits

Streetlight on 4th Street Patio, Berkeley, ink and water, 8x5
Streetlight on 4th Street Patio, Berkeley, ink and water, 8×5″

When uninspired and all else fails, draw a street light. Even better when there are two lights on the same pole. And a sign.

4th Street Yuppie Dad
4th Street Yuppie Dad
My Big Foot
My Big Foot

Finished the street light and spotted yuppie dad waiting for tot and mom to do more shopping at the stores on 4th Street selling mostly expensive stuff nobody needs.

No street light? No problem. There’s always a foot. I put this foot sketch on a birthday card for my son with an apology for passing on the big, narrow feet that make shoe shopping so hard.

Thomas Livingston Antiques, Adeline & Ashby, Berkeley
Thomas Livingston Antiques, Adeline & Ashby, Berkeley

A quick little leftover sketch from sketching on Ashby and Adeline. The building is bright red and full of interesting details that will be fun to draw when I have more time.

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

San Francisco Opera at the Ballpark

Rigoletto: SF Opera at the Ballpark, ink & watercolor
Rigoletto: SF Opera at the Ballpark, 5×8″, drawn in ink then watercolor (and a bit of digital paint) added later. NOTE: Flags at half mast for slain diplomats.  Also, appalled by all the corporate advertising, I replaced their signs with generic ones.

My first trip to the S.F. Giant’s ballpark was for a simulcast of the San Francisco Opera’s production of Rigoletto. Our plan was to sketch this annual tradition where 30,000 people attend the opera for free and picnic on the field or feast on hot dogs, beer and garlic fries in the stands.

Public transit was jammed. I stood all the way to SF on the BART (the subway), then we transferred to a SF Muni streetcar so tightly packed my bag got closed in the door and my big feet barely had space to stand.

Continue reading “San Francisco Opera at the Ballpark”
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Albany Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Hotsy Totsy Club’s Hot Stewsdays

Hotsy Totsy Club at Sunset, ink & watercolor 5x8"
Hotsy Totsy Club at Sunset, ink & watercolor 5×8″

We started our Tuesday evening sketching outside the Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany. I had trouble with my watercolor Moleskine paper kind of pilling up when I tried to put another layer of paint on the shadow side of the funky building. Not sure why but that has happened to several pages so I’m glad to be finishing up the Moleskine and going back to binding my own sketchbooks.

Around sunset it got cold  so we moved inside.

Hotsy Totsy interior, ink & watercolor, 5x5"
Hotsy Totsy interior, ink & watercolor, 5×5″

We heard they had free hot stew on Tuesday nights (S’tewsday) and thought that would be a good way to warm up. It turned out they don’t serve it until 9:00 so Judith and I shared a hot toddy (as opposed to a Hot Totsy which the bartender explained was served on fire). It was pretty dark inside and hard to judge the colors we were painting.

I previously posted some snide comments about the Hotsy Totsy Club here, but it got new owners around that time who transformed it from a 72-year-old sleazy joint mostly populated by old drunks to a fun neighborhood retro saloon. Here’s an article about the club’s transformation.

We hung out and sketched until 9:00 when we were rewarded with the most delicious gumbo ever! Full of fat shrimp and all the other spicy goodness that is gumbo. Yum!

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Berkeley Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto Sketches

Earthly Goods, Shattuck & Vine, Berkeley, ink & watercolor, 8x5"
Earthly Goods, Shattuck & Vine, Berkeley, ink & watercolor, 8×5″

Back in the 1970s when Chez Panisse first opened, the neighboring area became known as Gourmet Ghetto, and it has continued in that tradition since then. The area is packed with wonderful foodie joints, fine restaurants and specialty food shops as well as boutiques like Earthly Goods (above).

French Hotel, ink & watercolor, 8x5"
The French Hotel has lost part of its neon sign. Ink & watercolor, 8×5″

The French Hotel (above) is in the same neighborhood and has a great espresso bar on the ground floor. A couple of doors down is the Cheese Board Collective, famous for their special pizzas that people line up for while being entertained by a jazz band and then eat, picnic style, on the center median strip of Shattuck, despite signs saying not to. (This previous post has funny video of people breaking that particular rule.)

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Berkeley Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Normandy Village (and losing sketches, sketchbooks, keys, my mind?)

Normandy Village Berkeley, ink & watercolor sketch, 8x5"
Normandy Village Berkeley, ink & watercolor sketch, 8×5″

This sketch of Normandy Village in North Berkeley got lost, passed by in my journal and never got posted. When I uploaded the image I was surprised to see a May date on my screen and went to grab my sketchbook to make sure that was right. Sometimes if I’m in the sketching “zone” I lose track of things like dates, and write the wrong month or year.

I couldn’t find my sketchbook. I knew I’d had it with me on at least one of my errands today because I sketched in it. I looked all over the house; no sketchbook. Then I went to grab my car keys to see if I left it in the car.  I couldn’t find my keys. I’m usually very organized and always put my keys in the same place but they weren’t there.

Finally I opened the front door to see if I’d dropped them (which doesn’t make sense because I obviously needed them to get in the house!) and there were my keys, hanging on the outside of the door in the lock. Duh! I’d left them there when rushing in the door to take care of an urgent need, shall we say.

I grabbed the keys, beeped the car door open but the sketchbook wasn’t there either.

Panicking, I made a second search of the house and found my sketchbook on my bed, hidden in plain sight.  I was going to sketch it sitting on the bed and post that picture right here, but realized I couldn’t sketch it while sketching in it. And the sketch was from May.

You can read about Normandy Village on my previous blog post here.

Categories
Berkeley Drawing Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Mr. Wong’s Giant Bonsai

Mr. Wong's Giant Bonsai, ink & watercolor sketch, 8x5"
Mr. Wong’s Giant Bonsai, ink & watercolor, 8×5″

The 90-year-old owner of this house on Allston and McGee in Berkeley has trimmed the bonsai trees in his garden for 50 years and they are beautiful. I enjoyed sketching from in front of his house while my sketch buddies took posts across the street and on the corner.

I have a whole bunch of paintings and sketches to post so I may keep my writing brief on some of them in order to get caught up. This is one of the brief ones.

Update: When Carol asked if “Giant Bonsai” is an oxymoron I looked it up. According to Wikipedia:

The purposes of bonsai are primarily contemplation (for the viewer) and the pleasant exercise of effort and ingenuity (for the grower).

Bonsai practice focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container. Bonsai does not require genetically dwarfed trees, but rather depends on growing small trees from regular stock and seeds. Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like pruning, root reduction, potting, defoliation, and grafting to produce small trees that mimic the shape and style of mature, full-size trees.

So apparently I was wrong to call these trees Bonsai since they are growing in the ground and while shaped like Bonsai trees, actually are full-sized trees. So it’s not an oxymoron, but I wonder if there is a word to describe this situation: “A full-sized tree cultivated to look like a miniature tree that is cultivated to look like a full-sized tree, only in miniature.” ????

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

Sketching the Northside While Chevron Refinery Burned

Northside Sketch - U.C. Berkeley University Library, ink & watercolor 8x5"
Northside Sketch – U.C. Berkeley University Library, ink & watercolor 8×5″

Last week Gail Wong, Urban Sketcher from Seattle was in the Bay Area visiting and we had the privilege of sketching with her. You can see Gail’s sketch, story and the photo she took of us that evening on the Seattle Urban Sketchers blog here. I loved getting to see her amazing work and it was fun sharing sketchbooks all around even though I was a bit distracted all evening, because….

As soon as I sat down to sketch I got an emergency auto-dial call on my cellphone from the county with this terse warning: “There is an emergency situation at the Chevron Refinery! Shelter in place. Close all doors and windows and turn off heaters and air conditioners. Do not go outside until further notice.”

There was a huge fire at the Chevron refinery and while I thought it was at least 20 miles away, my house is actually only 5.5 miles south (I checked Google maps). The air was clear where we were so I decided to worry about it later. Friends seeing the smoke or the news kept texting and phoning to make sure I was OK. The smoke could be seen from all over the Bay Area, but not where we were.

Fortunately, when I arrived home the air was clean with the usual fresh sea breeze and everything was fine. The smoke stayed very close to the refinery which was really fortunate (except for those living close by and people who buy gas since the price is going up for the West Coast area supplied by the now damaged refinery).

The county called me back at 1:30 a.m. and again at 2:30 a.m. to let me know it was now safe to open windows or go outside. Gee thanks, county! I would have rather slept through the night!