Categories
Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Pomegranate on Velvety Scarf

Oil painting on panel, 6x8"
Oil painting on panel, 6x8"

I am not a party girl. I much prefer my time with friends spent one on one. But today I was scheduled to go to two parties. I was supposed to be at a housewarming party in San Francisco anytime from 11-3 and then at my son’s housewarming party in Pinole from 3-6.

One thing after another delayed my departure, including my own procrastination (and ambivalence since I also wanted time to paint). Finally I was showered, dressed, face made up, the gift wrapped and I was ready to leave when my son arrived at the door.

I loaned him the folding table he needed for his housewarming party and gave him some advice about his achey back. Then I packed up all my junk for the party and the hike and sketching I planned to do in Golden Gate Park after I left the first party. (The latter being completely unrealistic time-wise, but I have only the slenderest hold on the reality of time.)

Walking out the door I looked at my watch and realized it was already 2:00. My GPS unit in my car said I would arrive at my destination at 2:30. I figured showing up for half an hour was better than missing it entirely and I took off. The traffic on I-80 slowed to a crawl and my GPS started showing more and more traffic delays. After driving for about 15 minutes and still not reaching the Bay Bridge, the arrival time had changed from 2:30 to 2:56, 4 minutes before the party was to end. I gave up, got off the freeway and went home.

That left me an hour to finish this little painting I started last week. Fortunately the Pomegranate held up for the week and if anything, got a little more character in its lumps and bumps.

But now I’m late getting ready for my son’s party. Fortunately my clothes are ready to put on, and I already gave him a housewarming gift, so I can just get dressed and walk out the door.

Categories
Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sketching at Martinez Waterfront Park

Martinez Hot Dog Depot, Ink & watercolor
Martinez Waterfront Park, Ink & watercolor in watercolor Moleskine, 5x7"

I arrived late and lazy (due to my efforts to decaffeinate myself) for our paint out at Martinez Waterfront Park today and decided to sketch in ink and watercolor instead of setting up my easel and oil paints. It’s a great park, with a marina full of boats on the bay, fields, trees, ponds, an historic train station and old train (pictured above), a nearby river and marshlands and much more. It’s right on the edge of the older part of town and the Amtrak train station is just outside the entrance to the park.

I sat on a very hard stone bench at the old train station about 20 feet from the tracks.  On the sketch above, I drew without much of a plan, just picking things I saw that interested me and sticking them somewhere on the page, drawing in ink and hoping it would all fit together somehow. I added the watercolor on site.

The two artists in the sketch were standing between the west and east Amtrak tracks. Every 15 minutes a train would roar by about 2 feet of where they were standing, sounding it’s horn so loudly it was painful, but they stood their ground like the dedicated plein air painters that they are.

Martinez Hot Dog Depot, Ink & watercolor
Martinez Hot Dog Depot, Ink & watercolor in Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, 5x7"

I turneda bit to the left at the end of the day and quickly sketched this wonky old Hot Dog Depot (named because it’s adjacent to the train depot. The perspective is all wonky but so was the building. It has a weird corner section where that second smaller window is. So the building isn’t a rectangle, it’s a pentagon (5-sided). I didn’t have time to worry about perspective as the group was convening for a critique and I had to hurry to finish this at all.

Categories
Life in general Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Toilet Paper Roll in Lovely Light

Toilet Roll in oils, 6x8"
Toilet Roll In Lovely Light, oil on board, 6x8"

You know how in movies when someone has a black eye they always say they got it from walking into a door? I could never figure out how that could happen until I did it myself last week during the night and then forgot about it when I woke up.

Yesterday I was trying figure out what a sore red bump on my forehead was—a sort of vertical red line. I thought of all kinds of scary possibilities, going from pimple to blood poisoning to brain tumor. Finally, this morning I remembered that when I was sick last week I was hurrying to the bathroom in the dark and walked right into the open door.

What I hit my forehead on was the narrow side of the door, not the front or back of the door. I’d always pictured people walking into a closed door and it seems like that would make it difficult to bump your face on, since your feet would hit first. But the side of the door was easy; my feet were on either side of it. Fortunately I don’t have a black eye, just a red stripe up my forehead.

About the painting:

With all the nose blowing and drinking vast quantities of fluids while I was sick, this was a sight I saw frequently over the past week.

My bathroom has a large glass block window that shines the most lovely morning light on the less lovely items in the small bathroom. Since it’s such a small room it would be hard to get an easel in there so I took a few photos and worked from them.

Categories
Life in general Photos

Now Hope Can Grow

From a dead stump new growth sprouts
From a dead stump new growth sprouts

Taking a walk, I saw these plants sprouting up from a sawed-off, dead tree.  What a perfect analogy, I thought, for the joyous results of yesterday’s election of President Obama. Maybe there is hope for this country after all.

I’m not too sure about my fine state of California however.

I’m pleased that we approved Proposition 2, to provide civil rights to some farm animals (poultry and veal calves must be provided enough room for them to stand, turn around or spread their wings—and what a disgrace that this must be legislated!).

But I’m dismayed that the state approved Proposition 8, to take away the civil rights of some people by outlawing same-sex marriage. I am so sad for friends whose weddings I’ve attended that now stand to be annulled by the state. They cherish each other and have built long lives together and are models for how to make a loving relationship work.

Categories
Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Summer Leftovers #2: Avocado & Apricot Pits

Avocado & Apricot Pits, Watercolor on coldpress paper, 6x8
Avocado & Apricot Pits, Watercolor on coldpress paper, 6x8"

I thought that these apricot pits and this avocado pit, still in a bit of it’s outer papery sheath would be a good subject for using my set of Kremer Pigments’ pan watercolors.  The Kremer watercolors are unusual in that they’re so highly pigmented, mostly opaque and mostly sedimentary. They are quite stable when applied: the colors don’t charge or bleed much into each other, unlike the more volatile quinacridone and other synthetic pigments.

But I found that those qualities make them less suitable for glazing because their opacity and and saturation mean that one layer hides the one beneath it. Half of the colors in my 14-color palette are muted shades of red, brown, gold, green; a few are more brilliant, but so richly colored that they have to be thinned way down to appear transparent.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not as familiar with how these colors work together as I am my regular palette of mostly Winsor Newton tube watercolors. It takes practice to have control over one’s media and I felt pretty out of control with these but enjoyed playing with them. I’ll try them again for the next summer leftovers.

Categories
Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Summer Leftovers #1: Rosehips in Watercolor

Rosehips, watercolor on hotpress paper, 6x8"
Rosehips, watercolor on hotpress paper, 6x8"

After yesterday’s major migraine adding insult to a weeklong cold/flu bug, I’m grateful to be back among the living today, even if still less than 100%. It seemed like a good day to start doing some watercolor sketches of the collection of thingees I’ve saved from the summer, including pits from all my favorite stone fruits, shriveled and dried things from plants now gone, and stuff I’ve picked up on walks. These rosehips were the most recent and most colorful; all of the other stuff is in shades of brown and more about texture than color.

Since I’ve gotten used to oil painting alla prima*, it’s interesting to switch to watercolor and slow down to let sections/layers of watercolor dry before each next step. It makes for a nice rhythm and prevents that mindless paint paint paint I run into with oils. Waiting for the paint to dry gives time to step away and and then return to see what’s needed with fresh eyes and a chance to think a bit before putting down the paint.

*Alla Prima: A style of painting where the painting is done in one session while the paint is still wet. From the Italian word which literally means at all at once).

Categories
Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

“The Onion” Writers as Seen on TV

Joe Randazzo, Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"
Joe Randazzo, Editor In Chief, The Onion. Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"

I’ve been sick with a doozy of a cold/flu all week and spent much of the time randomly channel surfing. When I saw the head writers from the satiric “Onion News Network” being interviewed by Charlie Rose I was struck by how each of them had such distinct and interesting characteristics that would be fun to draw.

Will Graham, Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"
Will Graham, Writer, The Onion. Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"

I set my TiVo to record so that I could draw them when I felt better. Finally tonight I felt well enough to sketch for a few minutes and replayed the show, setting it to pause when I found a pose I liked.

Carol Kolb, Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"
Carol Kolb, Writer, The Onion. Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"

Although initially I thought they all had such long faces, I have a feeling that the show might be recorded in a different format than my standard TV displays. They couldn’t all have such tall heads, could they?

Charlie Rose, Ink in sketchbook, 8x6"
Charlie Rose, Ink in sketchbook, 8x6

I’ve posted these in the order that I drew them. I was feeling pretty rusty with the first drawing at the top, after not holding a pen or brush all week. But I challenged myself to just start drawing with ink and let the sketches go where they would.

After a horrible week feeling really awful, it was such a pleasure to have a lull in the coughing and sneezing and enough mental bandwith to actually focus and draw.

Categories
Life in general Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Green Fig (Minus One Bite), Rock Tours, Guardian Angels

Green Fig, Oil on panel, 8x6"
Green Fig, Oil on panel, 8x6

I took one bite out of my last green fig and was treated to an explosion of taste and color so brilliant I had to paint it. I gave myself the length of a Tom Waits live concert podcast to paint it. I finished before the concert did. It’s still playing and is fantastic! It’s one of many of NPR’s “All Songs Considered Live Concerts” that can be listened to directly on their website or downloaded from iTunes.

The back up musicians are incredible (love that sax and drums) and there isn’t a boring or annoying song in the whole 2 hour performance. Of course Tom Waits is not for everyone. He trained his voice when he was young to make it sound like a gravelly-voiced old man and it stuck that way. His songwriting is eerie and strange and some might be offended by his more irreverent themes. “Glitter and Doom” is the name of his 2008 tour and it fits the music perfectly.

2007: The Oil Slick Tour

I’ve always been jealous of how musicians get to name their tours, like Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet Tour,” (yuck, gross) Elton John’s “Red Piano Tour, ” U-2’s “Vertigo Tour.” I love the idea that for a period of time you name your “tour.” I think I’m going to start having tours instead of years. I could call 2007 the “Oil Slick” tour, as I’ve worked hard this year to learn how to paint in oils, with lots of slipping and sliding along the way.

Now it’s time to plan my tour through 2008, and gather my roadies and back-up singers. Hmmm, what shall I call the tour? I’m thinking maybe the “Anchored Angels Tour” based on some helpful advice from two friends about completely unrelated issues:

Setting Anchor

I’ve been trying to get to bed earlier but my caffeine habit makes it hard to do that. So my friend Ree told me that she never drinks coffee after a certain time in the afternoon. She thinks of that time of day as setting an anchor, putting in to harbor for the day. Then she’s able to get to bed at reasonable time and wake up rested instead of being kept awake by the caffeine into the wee hours and waking up in need of another jolt of java.

Guardian Angels

Another friend said “Don’t fly faster than your Guardian Angel.” I loved that saying since I’m often doing a dozen things at once, trying to get more than is possible done, and can barely keep up with myself.

If I were rich I’d have a full time personal assistant/personal trainer/life coach/personal chef. But since I’m not rich, I have to do all those things for myself, and sometimes I can be quite incorrigible. So maybe if I adoped a Guardian Angel (and not just the wind-up Parking Karma Angel on my dashboard) she could tag along and fill in for that personal trainer/coach/etc. All available Guardian Angels, please apply within.

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Plein Air

Lake Anza Autumn Plein Air

Lake Anza Autumn, 9x12, Oil on panel
Lake Anza Autumn, 9x12", Oil on panel

I became the official bathroom monitor today at Lake Anza in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. Swim season is over; there are no lifeguards, entry fees, or snack bar and the lakeside entrance to the restrooms is closed for the season. The overhanging roof by the restroom entrance provided me a nice shady spot to paint but it meant that people kept walking up looking confused (and sometimes a little desperate) when they saw the locked door behind me.

I’d already found an entry to the bathrooms outside the swim area, around the back of the building so about every 15 minutes I told worried people how to find the restroom. I got to help nervous little girls, a group of German tourists, cyclists in shiny shorts, tan teenage girls in tiny bikinis, a hairy man wearing a huge gold necklace and Speedos, a picnicing Mexican family, a group of adults pushing a very ill teenage girl in a wheelchair hooked up to breathing tubes and tanks.

The latter group decided to set themselves up at a picnic table directly in front of me but when they realized they would be blocking my view, they picked up the huge table and moved it. The amazing thing about painting plein air is that people are so nice. Everybody who takes a peek always says something complimentary, even if the painting is total crap. And then they tell you about their [aunt, brother, friend, grandmother, etc.] who paints really good paintings, or how they can’t draw a straight line.

As the day grew warmer more and more people arrived, my original concept for the painting of an empty lifeguard stand on a deserted beach didn’t make much sense. So when this dad and little boy walked by I jumped at the chance to try putting people in a plein air oil painting. I also had an intention to focus on warm/cool color temperature relationships.

I struggled with the water — it kept looking like a meadow. The other painters in my group painted the water in variations of light blue-green and suggested I do the same to solve the problem. But I saw almost no blue in the water. It was gold and green and purple and orange and pink. Then every once in a while a breeze rippled the surface and a bit of sky blue reflection appeared.

After the critique I returned to my easel, painting and repainting the water for two more hours but by then the light had changed so much from when I arrived that I finally called it done and went home.

Here’s the photos of the morning and afternoon views of the same scene.

30 a.m.) photo
Lake Anza (10:30 a.m.) photo
Lake Anza (315 p.m.)
Lake Anza (3:15 p.m.)
Categories
Drawing Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Coffee With White Socks and Sales Lessons

Coffee & White Socks, 8x6", graphite
Coffee & White Socks, 8x6", pencil sketch in sketchbook

Trying to recover from a caffeine hangover headache this morning, and completely out of coffee at home, I walked (slowly) to Peet’s for a latte and a bag of beans to replenish my supply. While I was sipping and sketching this lady, two clerks from the nearby Trader Joes sat at the table next to me and held a training session that provided an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the grocery business for the always curious (and eavesdropping) me.

They took turns reading aloud from a document contained in a bright blue cardboard folder. I learned that the average checker completes about 200 sales per day and that that number is used to compare the productivity of workers. I learned about when and why they have to declare goods unsellable and that they then donate them to food banks, including flowers.

They pondered that one for a while, trying to figure out who would actually want unsellable flowers and what they would do with them. They concluded that food banks probably don’t need flowers so they must go elsewhere. But I was thinking the flowers would be nice to brighten the homes of the needy people getting the food.