Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper (in sketchbook)
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After I chopped vegetables for a salad today I looked down at the little triangular rubbish container/drainer in the sink. It was full of cucumber peels, red bell pepper core, radish ends, and mushroom trimmings. I thought it was pretty enough to paint. So I did. Happy Labor Day to everyone who has the day off today. Now back to my fun struggles with oil painting…
Peet’s Coffee. Larger
All are drawn in ink and painted with watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
Yesterday was Sketchcrawl 15 and I joined a friendly, talented group of artists (including Oakland artist Carrie, Sonoma county artist Natalie, Cathy from East Bay Plein Air Painters, and fellow art-bloggers Martha, Vern and Pete) on Berkeley’s Fourth Street to sketch. We had a good time sketching in nice weather, and met up again at the end of the day at Brennan’s Pub for drinks.
Brennan’s used to be a favorite hangout in my late 20s — a place to meet friends for drinks and partying back in the day. I hadn’t been there in at least 20 years so it was fun to see it was still virtually the same and to have a yummy Irish Coffee for old times sake. I learned today that Brennan’s will be demolished in the near future to make room for a new development but they will be moving to a historic, former train depot nearby.
Lilly. Larger
“Good Afternoon. Could you help me please?” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?” “Thank you Jesus.” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?”
Martha and I sat on a bench across the street from Hear Music so she could draw their storefront. Just to my left was this cheerful and charming (and repetitive) blind woman soliciting money from the shoppers in this upscale area. For the half hour we sat there she continued her chant, while her sweet but old, grizzled male friend gave her quiet little cues about who was walking by, what they looked like and what they were doing. She was excited we were sketching her. I gave him my card and promised to send a copy of the finished sketch, which he liked. She also allowed me to take photos and I plan to do a painting of her as she was quite beautiful (which you can’t tell from my sketch, sadly.) We put a few dollars in her begging bowl (a quart-sized yogurt container).
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The last sketch of the day in the little courtyard behind Sur la Table. Martha went inside and drew kitchen goods.
This is the first sketch of the day I did while we waited for everyone to arrive. I painted it later at home from little color notes I penciled in to the sketch. Pete did a fabulous drawing of Spenger’s using a blue Copic fine liner and watercolor, so please be sure to visit the Berkeley Sketchcrawl website to see his drawings and Martha’s, and the cool photos Martha took of everyone sketching.
Ink in moleskine sketchbook
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It seems like only yesterday that we had the annual sexual harassment and discrimination training for managers but it was actually last October which I was able to check by doing a search on my blog for the drawings from that meeting. At first I was annoyed since I had so many other things to do, but then I realized I could sit there listening and sketch–not a bad deal getting paid to spend the morning sketching.
I think the progression of the drawings above is interesting. The first one I did was the guy on the left in the picture directly above. It was a weak first attempt at the same guy next on the right. As I progressed to the right, each person’s likeness got a little sharper until I think I really nailed the last guy on the right. Then I turned to the next page and did the drawing at the top of this post. I was really pleased with it as I think it came pretty close to capturing the gentleman. The last thing I drew was the cup. There was a bad attempt at another face under it which I turned it into my coffee cup with some extra scribbling.
What was even more interesting was that at this sexual harassment training, all the men sat together on one side of the U-shaped table and the women sat on the other two sides. (There’s more women than men at this educational non-profit since most staff come from the female-dominated teaching field.) Maybe the men were just enjoying the rare opportunity to share a little male bonding at work.
Watercolor on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico hot press paper
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This week’s Everyday Matters’ challenge is Draw a Peach. I’ve been eating at least one juicy sweet peach a day all summer. I start the day with a peach cut up in a bowl of cereal for breakfast and have one cut up in plain yogurt for an afternoon snack. This variety is so huge that breakfast looks more like a bowl of peach than a bowl of cereal.
New sketchbook
I made myself a new sketchbook and this painting is the first page. Here’s a photo of the sketchbook:
I didn’t have the inclination or patience to learn actual bookbinding for sketchbooks like Martha and Kate nor the budget to have them beautifully custom made for me like Laura’s. So I came up with a quick, inexpensive way to do it (mostly) myself. I tore two sheets of watercolor paper–one hot press and one cold press–in half and then in half, etc. until each piece was about 7 3/4″ by 5 3/4″. Then I sorted so that every other page is hot press/cold press, and brought the stack to Kinkos (a U.S. photocopy shop). I had them punch and bind it with a spiral wire thingee and a frosted cover and black back for which they charged about $6.00. The paper is way better than the Moleskines and Aquabees I’ve been using, the dimensions are more to my liking, it’s bound on the short side so can be used more easily in landscape format and the spiral binding lets me fold pages under (which means not easily drawing across two pages, but I rarely do that anyway).
The day after I made it I read about the way Miguel makes his own sketchbooks, using a Filofax (day planner) cover and punching three holes in the paper with a special Filofax punch. I’ll try that next, since I have a similar kind of day planner with a nice leather cover that I’m not using and could convert to a sketchbook. The only problem with that method is that when you finish the pages you remove them and box them and refill with new paper. The finished pages don’t remain an intact sketchbook.
Oil on panel, 12×9″
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Yesterday I went out painting in Alameda with my plein air group. The view was delightful, the people were warm and friendly (both the group and the natives), the weather was nearly perfect and the city had actually blocked off a lane on the bridge (for construction–not for us) which gave us a perfect area to paint.
And I had nothing but problems. I’ve been reading several different books on oil painting and they all contradict each other. So I went out to paint with my head full of different approaches and with a goal to stop hoarding paint and put a lot on the canvas. Needless to say, the painting was a mess. After two hours I packed it up and watched a more experienced oil painter at work. I immediately saw where I’d gone wrong and decided that after the critique I’d go back out to the bridge and start over. But my feet hurt and I was hungry and the wind had really picked up so I decided to take a photo and paint at home using my first painting and a photo as a reference. One more problem…I’d forgotten my camera so had to use my cell phone’s crummy camera.
Here’s the photo which tinted the sky purple (which it wasn’t):
Micron Pigma Ink in small Moleskine notebook
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I attended my first school board meeting tonight to join with about 70 people from my neighborhood association to speak out against the planned school for expelled students in a former elementary school in my neighborhood. Many residents, including several who are teachers and/or work with disturbed kids spoke passionately and persuasively. One of the five board members who’d attended our previous meeting spoke eloquently about why it was a bad location for these students (including the fact they’d be coming from the opposite end of the district and there’s no public transit within a quarter mile of the school).
When I first sat down a woman in the next seat who was there for another cause and was very experienced with the school board meetings told me it was a done deal–the school would be put there, period, the end. Fortunately she was very surprised and wrong — the board voted against putting it at this site. YAY!
Since my painting group was supposed to meet tonight, I invited them to attend the meeting and bring sketchbooks. Only my dear friend Judith (who I can always count on to be enthusiastic about joining me to do whatever kind of odd things I cook up) said yes. While I did the sketch above, Judith did the drawing below (I love her lines!):
Ink and watercolor pencils in large Aquabee sketchbook
Copyright Judith H.
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Except for my butt hurting from sitting in the metal folding chair for nearly two hours, it was a great night. It really felt like a miracle to have swayed the board and kept this scary, poorly planned school away from our humble but proud little neighborhood.
Watercolor in large watercolor Moleskine notebook
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I worked on an oil painting portrait all afternoon and evening with frustrating results. So I decided to do a quick watercolor sketch to comfort myself. I actually ended up doing this onion twice. The first version was yucky and overworked so I gave myself a few minutes more for one more try. Now I’m off for some bedtime reading about portraiture in oils and some sleep.
Ink and watercolor in HandBook Co. Journal notebook
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I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the toilet in the “cat bathroom” (my second bathroom where I keep the cat litter box). I took the lid off the tank and was watching the ball thingee go up and the flapper go down when I flushed it. My cats are fascinated with water and immediately had to crowd in to watch too. Busby jumped up on the sink and put his paws on the edge of the toilet tank so he could see and Fiona jumped on my back and watched from over my shoulder. I so wished there was someone there to take a photo of the three of us peering into the mysteries of the toilet tank. I tried to draw it instead.
Busby (the tabby cat) loves to watch a flushing toilet, though fortunately doesn’t flush it himself like this cat on YouTube. Fiona (the calico) often stands in the bathtub and meows for me to turn on the faucet so she can drink from it. Both of them used to sleep together curled up in the bathroom sink when they were kittens. I was never able to use the cat training technique of spraying them with water from a plant mister because they actually like the water. When I take a bath they hang out with me, walking back and forth on the edge of the tub, splashing paws into the water, playing with the bubbles. A couple times Fiona has slipped and fallen into the tub and then gone flying out of the bathroom spreading water all over the house.
Ink in Moleskine notebook
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When I finished drawing these people at the neighborhood meeting, I realized I’d compressed the space so that people are crammed together much more than they actually were. I wish I would have thought to capture some of the angry expressions as people spoke instead of everyone just looking sort of bored.
Tonight there was a neighborhood meeting to protest the placement in my neighborhood of a school for “high risk” middle and high school students who’ve been expelled from public school. Many are on probation for committing crimes. They plan to stick the kids in a former elementary school just two blocks from my house that is currently used as an adult school for classes like Yoga, Spanish, Ballroom Dance and English as a Second Language. Nearly 100 neighbors showed up at the meeting and spoke out vociferously against the plan. It looks like it could go either way at this point. Somehow the district slipped this plan through without Board approval or community notification but now it will be on the next board meeting agenda.
I sure hope we’re successful in fighting it since just last month the board approved (against the neighborhood association’s vote) to allow a public alternative high school to move into what has been until now a small private elementary school with a focus on Japanese language (and well-behaved children) that is just two blocks the other direction. Even though that high school’s brochure claims to be all about group hugs, yoga and community service, the idea of 150 teenagers just a block away is not at all appealing.
When I was house hunting I was always a little wary of neighborhoods that the realtor claimed had strong neighborhood groups because I figured there was a reason they needed one. But in the Bay Area, with some of the most expensive housing in the country, I feel fortunate to have been able to buy my own home at all. And this is a wonderful neighborhood with the best neighbors I’ve ever had and now I’m glad for the strong the neighborhood association.
Oil on RayMar panel, 12 x 9″ (Click to see larger)
This is my first “official” plein air oil painting that I did at the Berkeley Marina this morning where I joined a group of local plein air painters. I’m so thrilled to have found them. We met at 10:00 and then went off to to paint in different spots, getting together again at 1:00 for a lively critique. I got some very useful suggestions (e.g. adjust the bottom line of the boats is straight across the canvas so adjust to more of a diagonal slantig down to the left). I noticed that very problem when I was working out my preliminary thumbnail/value sketches but I momentarily forgot about artistic license and left it as I saw it instead of changing it for a better composition.
Although I felt shy about being so unskilled at oils and plein air painting I felt very welcomed by the group. It was a beautiful sunny (but cool and windy) day in Berkeley with the usual assortment of nuts, hikers, bikers, families and local characters passing by who all stopped to offer supportive comments or tell me about an artist they know or have seen before. I was so pleasantly suprised — not one person said, “Ewwww! What a bad painting!” or laughed at me. I didn’t worry about that with watercolor but somehow with an easel and all the trappings I felt like I stood out more.
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This is my new Guerilla Painter 9×12″ Pochade Box Plein Air Easel set up and I love it! It holds almost everything needed for painting plein air and is sturdy and super fast and easy to set up. I’ve never been so impressed with a company’s customer service as I had at Judson’s Plein Air either. I had a million dumb questions in trying to decide whether to buy this “cigar box” style easel or a french easel or a Soltek (which I couldn’t afford anyway) and when I called (twice) I spoke to Monica, who patiently answered every question, gave great advice, way above and beyond the usual which was so appreciated by this novice plein air painter.
The box is incredibly well made, really beautiful and makes setting up to paint, painting and carrying wet canvases a cinch. They also offer watercolor and pastel and acrylic versions of this box in various sizes. The tripod has a quick release so you just set the box on it and it clicks into place, and is very sturdy. It has separate adjustments for height and leg spread (far apart for windy, rough, or uneven conditions). It comes with an attached “stone bag” (the black thing at the bottom) for putting something heavy on it to weigh it down (only necessary for gale force winds, I’d think because it was windy today and nothing budged or wiggled). Their Mighty-Mite Brush washer jar is also wonderful. It fits in the box and doesn’t leak like every other container for mineral spirits I’ve found. The palette is in just the right spot as is the canvas with this box. I bought the plastic covered palette accessory which is a good addition. As someone who really appreciates good tools, I couldn’t be happier.
In the picture above on the right is my shopping cart I use for carting my plein air supplies around. It’s pretty practical although stuff can fall out the open spaces and picking it up is tricky since it tries to fold in on itself. I’ve ordered two different closed wheely carriers and when I get them will compare them all and pick the best for my purposes.
Above are the tools I used to make my preliminary thumbnail composition and value sketches. I recently discovered wonderful Copic markers–they’re fabulous — no smell and they blend and go on like silk. This handy composition/value finder can be opened to a marked setting for the size of paper or canvas. Then you close one eye and look through it to decide what to put in your composition. It’s middle gray so that you can also compare colors to it to determine if they’re darker or lighter. I used its opening to trace the rectangles in my Aquabee sketchbook so that the thumbnails would be the same dimensions as my canvas.
Jana Bouc, Artist 
