Category: Sketchbook Pages

Desk Junk (Testing Noodlers Ink)

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 19, 2006
3 Comments on Desk Junk (Testing Noodlers Ink)

Desk junk

My painting group came over tonight, as they do most Wednesday nights. We were all sitting around the living room while I finished my awful Healthy Choice TV dinner (I’d barely gotten home before they arrived). Everyone was tired from working all day, and we were trying to get motivated to move to the studio. Finally Judith got up, singing loudly (and beautifully), and marched off to the studio so we all followed.

That lumpy brown thing is a sea-sponge that my quirky little calico cat, Fiona, likes to snatch off the table and wrestle with. Her favorite torture victims though, are my wonderful Smartwool Socks—which I have to hide from her or she’ll nab them, jump into the (empty) bathtub and wrestle them until they’re full of holes.

Yesterday I was bragging about how confident I am in my drawing skills now, so of course tonight I felt like I couldn’t draw well if my life depended on it, and nothing came out right. But in the interest of daily drawing and posting, here it is anyway.

I started this sketch to test whether Noodlers Ink would bleed when painted over with watercolor. First I drew the top left box and then I painted the yellow border over it. When I rubbed it with the brush the ink bled and washed off. The arrow points to that spot. I didn’t have the problem anywhere else on the page because I applied the paint with a light touch, letting the paint, not the brush touch the paper.

I used my new Lamy Safari fine-point fountain pen, which I’m liking a lot because it can do thick and light fine lines. What I don’t like about it compared to the Micron Pigma pens I usually draw with, is that it takes a while for the ink to dry so it’s easy to smudge if I’m impatient and it beads up a bit in the Moleskine sketchbook (this was in an Aquabee).

Tags Cats, Pen and Ink

Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor Wet Canvas

Wet Canvas WDE: Peacock

Peacock

This was my contribution to the Wet Canvas Weekend Drawing Event this week. He was drawn in ink and then watercolored in my sketchbook. There’s always great photos to work from there, but I’ve gotten so interested in drawing from life that I hadn’t been doing the WDE lately. Couldn’t resist trying the peacock though.

I used to think that getting a drawing right would take too long so I used to trace my subjects from enlargements of my photos onto watercolor paper. My time was limited and I just wanted to PAINT–I thought that was the fun part–and I had no faith in my drawing ability. Now, after only a few months of daily drawing, I feel confident enough in my drawing to start drawing directly in ink most of the time.

And I’ve come to value and enjoy pictures that are drawn, not perfectly, but with personality and feeling and verve. Of course it’s nice to be able to get it right, too, but the most important thing is the pleasure I get from the drawing and the understanding that comes from really seeing deeply the things I’m drawing.

Tags Pen and Ink, Wet Canvas

Drawing Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Wildflowers

I needed to slow down a bit today so after telecommuting this morning, I took a sandwich out to my backyard, read for a while and had a lovely half hour nap in the perfect high-70s breezy sunshine. In one corner of my yard I have a small patch of pretty wildflowers that my friend Barbara gave me in May as little unidentified seedlings. I think the bell-shaped flowers with the thicker green stems in the back are penstemons, but I have no idea what the red-stemmed more delicate ones are in front.

I did the drawing with a new brown Micron Pigma in my watercolor Moleskine and then added watercolor. I really like the way the brown pen lines look. When I started drawing I saw flowers, leaves, and stems. But with each minute of drawing I started noticing more–funny little buds, squigglies, sprouties, spirals, tiny fuzzy bean-like thingees, open mouths, pointy things, rough things, shiny things.

My favorite thing about drawing is when the words go away and it’s all about shapes and colors and light. Then whole worlds of detail and specificity open up where at first there was just one named thing, like “a plant.” Here’s a little close up detail view of the same picture (click to enlarge).

Tags Pen and Ink

Colored pencil art Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A bike ride for ink and coffee

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 16, 2006
11 Comments on A bike ride for ink and coffee

Peets Coffee 4th Street

I took a Sunday afternoon bike ride to Berkeley’s 4th Street, an upscale little shopping street in a formerly industrial zone by the railroad tracks, about 4 miles from my house. People come there to do some recreational shopping and to dine, and many dress up in show-offy clothes. I felt a bit dorky arriving in my hand-me-down, shiny black bicycling shorts partially covered by a big, old white t-shirt with a B. Kliban picture of a cat painting a messy picture on the front, a bike helmet and bike shoes.

I found the shop, Castle in the Air, that carries Noodler’s Ink (highly touted by artists in the Every Day Matters group as the only waterproof ink that won’t clog fountain pens and great for use in the Lamy Safari pen). The gentleman working there insisted that Noodlers is not waterproof and showed me his smeared sample of the ink that he’d brushed with water (in a cool little handmade book with samples of all their many, many inks). While he was persuasive and fun to talk to (being another art supply lover and an artist) I decided to buy the ink and try it for myself. My Lamy is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I’ll see whether the combination is as great as people say it is (and if it magically makes my drawings as good as theirs!)

Then I crossed the street to Peets Coffee, got an iced latte, and found a table in a hidden corner on their little patio. I drew this with my Micron Pigma (which IS waterproof) in my large watercolor Moleskine. I added some watercolor pencil and water with my water brush but decided to finish it at home with real paint since I didn’t have the right colors.

I also experimented with adding some overheard conversation fragments into the drawing. The guy in the middle with the sun glasses didn’t stop talking the whole time I was there, so many of my scribbles are from his stories about his herniated disk, learning to drive, rude New Yorkers (he’s one), Oprah’s show about women being embarassed to talk to their gynecologists, Italians, and on and on. Instead of being annoyed, as I might have been, it was fun being a spy and writing down bits of his blathering.

As I got up to leave I noticed an attractive man sitting at a table in the sun who was watching me and smiling. I smiled back and felt flattered for a moment until I saw him moving to my table out of the sun as I walked away.

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bedtime snack

Cookies and milk

Trader Joes ginger cat cookies and a glass of milk–a yummy little bedtime snack drawn quickly with ink and watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine–now I get to eat them and go to bed!

When Cody was here the other day he saw the big round plastic bin of cookies on the kitchen counter so he popped a handful in his mouth and ate them. Then he saw the label which said, “Cat Cookies.” Knowing I’m a sucker for every kind of kittie treat, he was sure he’d just eaten cat food. He was relieved when I told him they were just animal cookies in the shape of cats, and weren’t cat food. I’m convinced that the expensive stuff my cats eat is probably better than half the stuff I cook, anyway!

Tags Cats, Pen and Ink

Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

BART Commuters & Matisse

BART riders
Here’s the sketches I did on my 13 minute commute this morning and yesterday. I’m discovering that if I draw really slowly, even though the train car jiggles a lot, I’m able to do a better job of capturing a likeness.

Yesterday on the trip home, a young African-American man, slightly scented with marijuana, sat down facing me, our knees nearly touching. He had tightly braided cornrows and large, gentle but glassy eyes which he promptly soothed with eye drops. I really wanted to draw him and asked his permission–there was no way I could do it unnoticed. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

Then he reached over and took my Moleskine sketchbook from my hand, opened it to the first page, and carefully studied every page. A minute before we reached my stop he handed it back, still shaking his head slowly, saying “My life is all bad and….no, no….not drawing me…no.” (I couldn’t hear everything he said because of the rumble of the train). I don’t think he heard me either when I tried to say something encouraging. He was so young and already felt so hopeless about his life.

On a more positive note, when I opened my new biography of Matisse the first thing I saw was this drawing (click on it to enlarge):

With the tilted head and closed eyes, I thought “sleepy commuter!” and was excited becase it is so much like the kind of drawing I’m enjoying doing right now. I’m only on the second chapter of the first huge volume and I’m already captivated.

As a young man Matisse worked as a clerk in a law office and “treated the job as no more than a minor inconvenience, enrolling without his father’s knowledge in classes at the free art school installed a two minutes’ walk away in the attics of the ancient, crumbling Palais de Fervaques. Classes were held before and after work, from 6 to 8 in the morning and 7:30 to 10 at night.” He made the above sketch 50 years later of that law office’s front door. It reminded me of Danny Gregory’s drawings. I bet there are no art schools offering classes from 6 to 8 in the morning any more, and certainly no free ones!

Tags Pen and Ink, Subway drawings

Drawing Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Busby, Fiona and the bird

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 11, 2006
12 Comments on Busby, Fiona and the bird

Fiona-Busby-Bird

I walked into the studio to decide whether to draw something new tonight or just post the little sketches I did this morning on public transit. The kitties ran ahead, leapt onto my drawing table and chair, looked out the window and started making little chuffing noises at the birds in the tree outside my window. We all watched the birds gathering nesting materials from the ground and popping back into the foliage for a few minutes. Then I snuck away, grabbed my sketchbook and a Sharpie, and standing behind them, quickly sketched them with lots of redrawing lines and scribbles. The perspective and proportions aren’t quite right but I got the scene down before their short attention spans led them on to other mischief. With Busby (the big tabby) practically sitting on my sketchbook watching the brush as I painted (but without swatting it, like he often does), I quickly added watercolor.

Now I can get in bed and start reading the two-volume biography of Matisse that arrived from Amazon today.

Tags Cats, Plein Air

Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Almost a portrait

Cody

My son was here doing his laundry so I got him to sit and watch a Dave Chappelle rerun while I drew him. It’s a typical portrait–a picture of someone where there’s something wrong with the mouth (and the nose, and the chin). It’s close, and I might have been able to get it closer but time ran out when the dryer buzzer sounded and he was out the door.

Today was my first half-day Monday in my new 3 1/2 day work week. It was great to be able to make a big salad and then get in the studio right after lunch. I was organizing colors in palettes and finishing a plein air panting so didn’t get to start anything new but still really enjoyed the freedom!

Pencil in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook.

Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Where the mortuary used to be

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 9, 2006
6 Comments on Where the mortuary used to be

tractor
I was entranced by the fact that someone decided to park his tractor (or whatever this thing is called) on TOP of this dirt pile instead of in the quarter acre of space around it. I could just see this guy at the end of a long workweek deciding to have some fun and see if he could get his monster on top. The pile is about as tall as a one story building. There were three other tractors parked on level ground. Maybe he’s watched too many of those SUV and truck commercials on TV?

This pile is on San Pablo Avenue in Albany where there used to be a mortuary that had been for sale for ages. I guess nobody wanted to move in to a mortuary so they finally tore it down.

Ink and watercolor in my Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook, drawn and painted sitting in my car across the street.

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bay Trail Art

Today I rode my old bike (never did buy a new one) down to the Bay Trail and explored the Albany Bulb waterfront park where artists create sculptures from the driftwood and drift-trash that comes in from the Bay or was dumped there before it was a park. Oakland artist and author of a book about the art at the Bulb, Jason De Antonis and his friend Osha Neumann (a civil rights lawyer involved in preserving the park) were just putting the finishing touches on this dog sculpture and arbor (if you click to enlarge and look closely you’ll see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background). He also made this huge sculpture of a woman that greets you as you come over the hill on the path down to the water. It’s enormous–at least 3 times the height of a person.

I made several stops along the way to paint a bit of a huge fennel plant,