Category: Sketchbook Pages

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

As Seen on TV

TV2-web

Original pen and ink version below
60-minutes-web

When I finished telecommuting at about 8:00 tonight, I sat down to a microwaved Lean Cuisine and turned on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes which I’d TiVo’d. I watched for the few minutes it took to eat my yucky TV dinner and then decided to do my daily drawing from the TV.

Since I mostly just paused the TiVo on the pictures that interested me with no sound, I can’t tell you much about the show or the people I drew except that it was all scary–the first guy in the drawing is Abu Jandal, who used to be Bin Laden’s body guard. He wants his son to grow up to be a terrorist martyr just like his daddy. The rest of the show was about the rapidly increasing global warming and Bush trying to rewrite the science and play down the warnings. So two of the other guys are scientists who are speaking out and the third is supposed to be Clinton who tried to get the scientists to make the problem sound even worse than it is. The cutest guy of all is a penguin whose environment is slowly disappearing due to global warming.

I drew this with my Lamy Safari pen, Noodlers Ink and my Aquabee sketchbook. The pen kept seeming like it was running out of ink. I think the pen does best on hard smooth paper, not on this. Or maybe it’s the angle I hold it–not upright enough perhaps. But it always seems like it’s not putting down enough ink or it’s putting down too much. Maybe it just takes more practice. The Micron Pigma is definitely easier to use but doesn’t give the variety in lines that the Lamy does.

Update: Next day I’ve added watercolor and deleted in Photoshop two lumps that were supposed to be seals. Which do you like better?

Categories
Drawing Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sunday in Barbara’s Garden

Barbara-garden-web2

Barbara and I took a great hike in the North Berkeley hills this morning near her house, and looked at people’s gardens and interesting (and bizarre) architecture. When we got back, her garden was so glorious in the noontime sun that I had to postpone lunch and sit down and draw.

It’s overflowing with beautiful flowers and healthy vegetables: spiky cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes (those funny little orange things on the left that look like pumpkins in my picture), corn (at the back), and in the foreground, a huge “volunteer” butternut squash that she didn’t plant.

The weather was perfect, with the bright sun taking breaks behind the clouds so it wasn’t too hot or cold. Compared to my house near the freeway, her garden is so quiet, with only the lovely Sunday sounds of birds, “beneficial” garden insects, breezes on the wind chimes, a neighbor playing lovely violin and her dog Gertie stretching and yawning in the sun.

With the abundance and variety of vegetation and her mosaics and ceramic sculptures, there’s another painting just waiting to be made every few steps. Drawing the amazing leaves and tendrils on the squash plant would have been enough to make me happy, but I decided to try to capture the whole garden today and then come back again and again to paint her garden over the summer.

Micron Pigma, watercolor in WC Moleskine.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Espresso Roma Berkeley

Espresso Roma Cafe Berkeley

I picked up my new chartreuse glasses at the optician’s yesterday, but when I put them on I felt a bit off-balance. I have a difficult prescription with lots of astigmatism and even a tiny error in the lens can really affect my vision. I decided to go next door to Espresso Roma before leaving the Elmwood district and try drawing a bit to test them out. I had a little trouble reading the menu on the wall when I ordered my latte and felt clumsy walking to the table and getting out my drawing stuff.

These guys sat there a long time drinking vino and resolving the fighting between Israel and Lebanon. Drawing seemed harder–it literally felt like I couldn’t see straight, I had to tilt my head to line things up. Fortunately these guys didn’t notice that I was repeatedly staring at them, trying to focus my eyes.

Instead of taking the glasses back to the optical shop, I decided to go home, wishfully thinking maybe they just took getting used to. My vision wasn’t any better today so I had my eye doctor check them out. Sure enough, they weren’t made right and need to go back to the lab, which means I have to drive all the way back to the optician’s. Grrrrrrr.

Even though I go through this almost every time I get new glasses, I always remember how lucky I am to have access to medical care and that I can (eventually) get exactly the right prescription.

Lamy pen, Noodlers ink and watercolor in WC Moleskine. Confession: I erased a couple ink lines in Photoshop before uploading. (My faulty vision gave the middle guy what looked like a giant feather coming out of his forehead from when I first started drawing him. He’s recovering nicely from his featherectomy.)

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Poor little spoon

Spoon bigger

I did this spoon tonight in my WC Moleskine but I’m not crazy about it. I wanted to vege out and go to bed early, but convinced myself to just quickly paint one little serving spoon in order to have something to post today. But I was too tired and so is the picture I produced. It’s overworked, which is just how I feel too tonight, at the end of my work week.

I did a drawing this morning on the subway but felt it was too sketchy and experimental to post. I’m going to continue with my commitment to draw or paint daily, but I think I’m going to give myself one day a week to not post when I’m too tired or don’t think what I’ve done that day is ready for primetime.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Richard and Florio

Richard & Florio the Parrot

My good friends Judith and Richard have a wonderful parrot named Florio (formerly known as Flora until they discovered she was a he). Florio’s a great bird. When I visit and talk nicely to him he blinks his eyes and dilates his pupils, looking so pleased to be told he’s a good bird. If we ignore him he squawks loudly until we include him in the conversation. Judith prepares lovely meals for him with lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. Judith and Richard are both great cooks. I wish I was lucky like Florio to have them preparing my meals every day, too.

I got the photo I painted from by accident. I borrowed Judith’s camera when we went to the zoo last month (I stupidly brought mine without its memory card) and when I downloaded her card to my computer, this picture of Richard and Florio was on there. The photo is strange and blurry with a weird glow from low light, but as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to paint it.

I did this in my 5 x 7.5″ watercolor Moleskine, first drawing with a Micron Pigma then adding watercolor, during my painting group’s weekly session at my studio to paint and talk art (and life). While it doesn’t exactly look like Richard, I think I captured a little something of him, and had a lot of fun doing it.

Categories
Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Tired feet and sleepy brain

Tired feet
I stayed up way too late last night working on yesterday’s pretty bowls of fruit so today all I could muster was a not-so-pretty drawing of my big feet. I was drawing laying down in my recliner with my feet up on a pillow on top of the foot rest using a Lamy Safari in my Aquabee Deluxe sketchbook. It wasn’t working very well because the pen was tilted in the wrong direction so gravity wasn’t helping the ink come down and the paper was too coarse for the pen to write smoothly. But I was too tired to get up and get different paper or pen, so there you have it. Tired feet, tired brain, off to bed.

P.S. Those are sweatpants I’m wearing–the fog’s back and so is the sea breeze so it’s comfortably cool in my neighborhood tonight.

Categories
Colored pencil art Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Summer Fruit in Watercolor & Inktense Pencils

fruit-wc-webOne hour sketch of a little bowl of summer fruit in watercolor (above)

Fruit-Inktense-web

Same sketch in Inktense watercolor pencils (above)

I finally tried out the Inktense pencils I got last week. They remind me of the really special coloring books I treasured when I was a kid that look normal until you paint on them with water and then color magically appears. With the Inktense pencils, the drawing is about 50% lighter before you add the water. First I tried doing self portraits with them and they came out ghoulish and awful–more like clowns or wanted posters. So I decided to try the Inktense with some bright summer fruit–a more appropriate application.

Once I’d done the ink drawing in my large watercolor Moleskine, I liked it so much I decided to paint it both in watercolor and the Inktense colored pencils. It’s so much fun to draw directly in ink this way– it teaches me about acceptance, I think, in just taking what I get and not fretting if it’s not perfect (a favorite mantra: You don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful and neither does your drawing!).

Since I wanted to use the same drawing twice, I scanned it and then painted the 1st drawing in my Moleskine with watercolor. Then I printed out the scanned drawing, and using a lightbox, traced it onto the next page of the Moleskine. I colored the second drawing in with the Inktense pencils and then brushed on water. One trick to controlling the Inktense pencils with water is to not use too much water and to frequently rinse the brush and slightly dry it. Otherwise you pick up too much pigment and smear it around where you don’t need or want it. Also, even though the pencil looks pale, apply it lightly or you end up with way too much pigment.

Inktense are fun, but they won’t replace my trusty watercolors. I know the Inktense drawing looks brighter and more vibrant, but it seems all tarted up to me somehow.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)

Hydrangeas

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to sketch fresh flowers. These hydrangeas are from my hairdresser’s shop, Circle Salon in Kensington, CA. The shop is always filled with multiple bouquets of her stunning home-grown flowers–all of them more interesting than anything you’d find at the florists. Julie’s an amazing gardner and a great hairstylist too. For the series of Saturday watercolor classes I’m teaching, she’s letting me visit the shop on Fridays and take home some nice specimens for the class.

I wish my garden produced such beautiful flowers, but it takes more than wishing and I don’t seem to have the time, energy, or willingness to use chemicals required here in the fog belt of the San Francisco Bay Area, to do more than wish and water.

I drew directly from the flower with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine.

Categories
Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Happy Birthday Robin

Robin bike

Today’s Robin’s 31st birthday. Lately his life’s been an uphill climb, working very long hours for a good cause. But as long as you’re still climbing, you’re not over the hill… so there’s still lots more to look forward to. I’m so proud of all he’s accomplished. He’s really quite amazing.

I can’t help thinking back to his birth and my life as his mother. I’ve grown along with him, starting with the discovery upon his birth that I had to quickly become a grownup. I could no longer be the free-spirited, hippie artist, selling my batiks and ceramics in the daily street fair on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue (much like San Francisco’s more famous Haight-Ashbury), hitch-hiking here and there, following my whims.

Before he was born my silly idea was that I’d strap him onto my back like a papoose and continue making pottery, up to my elbows in wet clay. Instead I was up to my elbows in mashed carrots, baby spit-up, poopy diapers, and piiles of laundry…and then it was time for another feeding…another diaper… He slept little and neither did I. But we survived and he thrived and 31 years have flown by. Motherhood…wouldn’t trade it for anything!

(Ink & watercolor in Moleskine watercolor notebook)

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Hot Seat Quick Draw

Quick draw

These are some of the people riding BART with me this week. The guy above was great–he stayed in one position for several stops so I had the chance to draw more than just a face.

The sketches below from the previous day were a practice in drawing quickly. The flashing sign on the elevated, outdoor BART platform said “San Francisco Train in 3 Minutes” when I arrived. For fun, I did a quick contour drawing of two nearby trees and then began to fill in some of the tree’s interior shapes. The train came before I could finish.

I got on the train, looked around, and picked my first subject (I was going to say “victim”), a Latino man in a seat by the door. I captured his face but two minutes later he got off at the next stop and an Indian man got on and took his seat. I drew that guy, but he too got off at the next stop two minutes later. Next in the hot seat was an elderly, grizzled, African-American man. I drew his face and hair and same story, off at the next stop. He was replaced by a nice, apple pie sort of lady….who got off at the next stop. And so did I. It was time to start the work day and I was in a good mood and feeling perky after a fun session of 2-Minute Hot Seat Quick Draw.
Hot Seat

Everything was drawn with a Lamy Safari fountain pen and Noodlers Ink. The top sketch was in a Moleskine sketchbook, the bottom in a Strathmore Drawing sketchbook. I seem to have five or six sketchbooks going at once these days.