Category: Sketchbook Pages

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Definitions Drawing Flower Art Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

I Found a Bee

I Found a (dead) Bee, watercolor & rubber stamps
I Found a (dead) Bee, watercolor & rubber stamps

I found this pretty bumblebee in a parking lot yesterday. It was quite dead so I picked it up and carefully brought it home in a napkin to draw.  I set it on a few hydrangea blossoms under my magnifying lamp, trying to see all the details but it was really hard to differentiate all the various black fuzzy things. I guess a larger magnifier is needed.

I was thinking about saving it to study it some more, but when I researched preserving insect specimens I got a little creeped out. First you’re supposed to put it in a “relaxing chamber” if they have rigor mortis (ick, just typing that gives me the heebie jeebies) to soften them up a bit so you can spread them out and pin them on a board and then you have to keep them warm and dry (so they don’t get moldy I suppose).

For now I’ll put him (or is it a her?) back in its little jar and think some more about whether I’m really cut out for entomology vs. etymology which I love and is much less messy and gruesome.

  • Entomology: study of insects (from Greek entomos cut up) + logia “study of’” from logos “speech, oration, discourse, word”
  • Etymology: study of the history and origins of words (from Greek etumo “true sense” + logia (see above)

Yep, I guess I’d rather “cut up” words than insects! But if you have experience or knowledge about preserving dead bugs for drawing purposes, I’d love to hear your advice.

Categories
Albany Drawing Faces Ink and watercolor wash People Places Sketchbook Pages

Monday Night Sketchcrawl: Albany

Sketching San Pablo Ave to Peets
Sketching San Pablo Ave to Peets

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.

Old West Gun Room
Old West Gun Room

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.

Hotsy Totsy Club, Albany
Hotsy Totsy Club, Albany

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.

Categories
Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Painting Photos Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Blowin’ in the Wind in Benicia

Paddlewheel Benicia, ink & watercolor 9x12
Paddlewheel Benicia, ink & watercolor 9x12

“Da Group” (Benicia Plein Air Painters) met to paint at 3:30 today at a private boatyard in Benicia. The owner of the boatyard is a professional house mover so along with the numerous old boats docked there, his property also contains two wonderful old Victorian houses that he moved by barge to his property and will eventually fix up, planning to live in one, and use the other as an office. (The office is currently home to a huge flock of pidgeons, so he has his work cut out for him.)

He generously allowed us access to his property to paint. It it was so windy that I decided to sketch instead of hauling out my oil painting gear, even though there was a plethora of tantalizing painting subjects. This old paddlewheel boat was really fun (and challenging) to draw. I had my 9×6 sketchbook, a teeny weenie watercolor set (6 colors in a miniature Altoids tin, about 1″x3″), one paper towel, a water bottle, and a water brush. It was tricky holding onto everything so it wouldn’t blow away.

The other painters were braver, found more wind-sheltered spots to set up, and then painted whatever was in their line of sight. They were still at it when I left at 6:00 p.m., my eyes and ears stinging from the wind.

Here are some of the sights around and near the boatyard (click images to enlarge):

Categories
Flower Art Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Agapantha Fireworks over Hydrangeas

Agapantha Fireworks over Hydrangeas, watercolor, 9x6"
Agapantha Fireworks over Hydrangeas, watercolor, 9×6″

In honor of Independence Day I spent the day quite independently, doing a little gardening, a little cooking, and then starting the first of a series of  autobiographical paintings in acrylic on canvas.

I skipped the picnics and fireworks (except for hearing them boom in the distance and having to comfort my stressed out cats, and again just now, after 11:00 p.m., they’re illegally exploding  somewhere in my neighborhood). So I thought I’d sketch these agapanthas that looked a bit like fireworks exploding over the hydrangeas.

I like the idea of celebrating independence day with flowers rather than the sound of “bombs bursting in air” anyway.

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Healing Garden at Christ the Light Cathedral: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Healing Garden, 6x9", ink & watercolor
Healing Garden, 6x9", ink & watercolor (Kremer Pigments)

Hidden away behind the new, massive Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light is a “Healing Garden” for the victims of sexual abuse by priests. I knew it was there because I’d read about it when the cathedral was opened to the public, but had a hard time finding it.

I was having a stressful day at my office, which is just across the street from the cathedral,  and had gone looking for the garden at lunch. I thought that a few minutes in a healing garden would be restorative before tackling the afternoon’s work.

The “garden” is hidden away in a little corner behind the church, and consists of a small patio, about 10 feet in diameter, ringed by wooden benches arranged in a circle around what looks like a big cracked  rock. The only greenery in the “garden” are some small hedges in cement planters that support the slatted benches.

The healing I found in the garden came from sunshine and sketching, not from sitting next to the huge concrete cathedral, on a hard wooden bench, gazing at what turned out to be a sculpture of a big cracked rock, not an actual rock.

The plaque on the bench:  “This healing garden, planned by survivors, is dedicated to those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm, NEVER AGAIN.”

The plaque beside the sculpture:  “Some day, 11, 2000.  Masatoshi Izumi. Basalt.”

I get that the sculpture might represent how hard, broken, and cracked apart the lives of the victims must be. What I don’t get is how this could be called a “Healing Garden.” Where’s the garden? Where’s the healing?

I hope that survivors who visit and are able to find the garden do find it a healing experience.

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Sketching at Peets Coffee Pinole

View from Peets Coffee Pinole, ink & watercolor
View from Peets Coffee Pinole, ink & watercolor

It was 86 degrees but quite comfortable in the shade of an umbrella, on the patio at Peets Coffee in Pinole, where I sipped my iced latte and sketched this view of the parking lot and hills behind it. I’d dropped off a key at my son’s house nearby and then done my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s and decided I deserved a delicious  icy reward next door at Peets.

Mr. Fidget keeps moving
Mr. Fidget keeps moving

This guy never stopped moving, feet up on a chair, knees up, leaning sideways, feet under chair, flip-flops on, off. I was so happy when he put his feet back on the ground so I could finish the sketch. It felt good to slow down on a busy day and sit and draw, but when I checked my watch I realized my groceries had been baking in the car for nearly an hour. I packed up and added watercolor at home.

Categories
Drawing Faces Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Girls Just Wanna Be…. (Dredging the Past for New Series)

Finding Tina (top from memory, bottom from yearbook)
Finding Tina (top from memory, bottom from yearbook)

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.

Jana's senior picture and yearbook entry
Jana's senior picture and yearbook entry

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):

  • Teacher: 67  (90% said elementary teacher)
  • Graduate from college: 55 (and then get married: 30)
  • Secretary: 51
  • Airline hostess: 33
  • Beautician: 23
  • Nurse 21
  • Housewife: 20
  • Dental/medical assistant: 19
  • Commercial artist: 14
  • Social worker: 11
  • Psychologist or Psychoanalyst: 11
  • Travel the world: 11
  • Interior Decorator: 9
  • Dress designer: 8
  • Model: 6
  • Doctor: 6 (mostly pediatricians)
  • Scientist, mathematician, engineer: 3
  • Diplomat, linguist: 2
  • Bullfighter: 2
  • FBI/Secret Agent: 2
  • Probation officer: 2
  • Owner of Village of Pancake House: 1
  • Mortician: 1
  • Police woman: 1
  • Artist: 1 (and she is did it: Deborah Butterfield is famous for her sculptures of horses)
Categories
Art theory Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Monday Night Sketchcrawl: Shattuck and Vine, Berkeley

Vine Street Pumping Station, Ink and watercolor
Vine Street Pumping Station, Ink and watercolor

Cathy and I met at Shattuck and Vine to sketch, and started with this historic building, now a wine shop called Vintage Berkeley, converted from the former utility district’s Vine Street Pumping Station. Actually we’d started a little further up the street, but my sketch was terrible so no point in posting it.

By the time we finished drawing there, I was getting hungry so we looked around for somewhere to sketch and eat but that ate up sketching time too. We ended up at Dara Thai/Lao Cusine where we sat outdoors and sketched and I ate grilled calamari on shredded lettuce with cilantro sauce. It was warm, filling and delicious.

Dara Thai/Lao Cuisine, ink 9x6
Dara Thai/Lao Cuisine, ink 9x6

I didn’t get to finish this sketch because it got dark and cold…and because I spent so much time drawing details in the fancy roof of the little shelter. Despite hearing from great art teachers, “Simplify, reduce details, draw only what you see when squinting, see how much you can leave out,” I love details. That’s just how it is.

But the funny thing is that because I got so absorbed in the details on that one roof, I didn’t have time to draw all the roofs of all the shelters behind this one, which would have filled the whole page with details.

So maybe those teachers are right….?

Categories
Flower Art Gardening Plants Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Succulent Birthday Gift

Succulent Garden in a Bowl, watercolor 9x6"
Succulent Garden in a Bowl, watercolor 9x6"

My wonderful sister Marcy and niece Sophie gave me this little succulent garden in a bowl for my birthday, wrapped with twine with a little ticket for a card. When the plants outgrow the bowl she said I could just stick them in the ground and break off little pieces to stick back in the bowl.

They’re easy to care for: very little water and some sun. A week later they’re still alive and well; a good sign. I only have one other houseplant, an orchid I was given as a remembrance of my father’s passing. It’s been nearly 10 years and that orchid continues to thrive and bloom nearly constantly, despite my lack of a green thumb and tendencies toward plant abuse. (I tend to enjoy drawing plants more than caring for them, but I think that’s changing: I repotted my orchid last week and that was quite satisfying).

Categories
Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Baby Bird Steps Out

Baby bird steps out and I have questions
Baby bird steps out and I have questions

The day before the baby bird in the nest outside my window left the nest for the first time, his entire extended family of California Towhees chirped loudly all day, making a metallic “chip” sound, calling to him and to each other. The next day there he was, sitting in the tree on a branch near my window, looking right at me. He was bigger than I expected and was definitely having a bad hair day.

And now, quiet. No more constant activity of  bringing food, standing guard, warning off interlopers. The nest is empty and the chirping is over.  After watching them for days raised so many questions, which I scattered in my sketchbook among my 10 attempts to sketch the baby. My favorite was #8 when he turned his head to see mom bringing food and then opened wide to eat that yummy stuff.

I’d always thought birding was for boring old folks but now that I’m a boring old folk myself, I’m finding it quite interesting. Since my knowledge of birds is pretty limited, I initially assumed these guys were robins, since they sort of looked like them but without the red breast. Then I found the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds website where you can search by many different criteria to identify a bird, including their sounds.

That’s how I learned that these guys are California Towhees which I confirmed by listening to them here. If you click the link and go listen to their sounds, you’ll understand how I came to feel that a community of chirping Towhees was as annoying as a neighbor’s constantly barking dog. I’m guessing they were all calling to the baby, “Come out, it’s safe, we’re standing guard, come out, come out, and try your new wings!”

I’m glad the incessant metallic chip, chip, chip sound only lasted one day, but I miss watching the birds being busy in the tree outside  my window and so do my cats.