Jana Bouc, Artist

(G)OLD Teeth

Watercolor on Arches 140 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper, 18×14″
(To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes)

This shop near my office in downtown Oakland makes sets of snap-on gold teeth (also known as “grills”) for people who like the idea of walking around with their teeth covered with jewelry. I loved the juxtaposition of the old guy walking by their sign with the missing “G” so I took a photo and finally got it painted.

For those of you who have never heard of people buying and wearing these things, you can see some pictures here (scroll down the page there). I don’t get it. Spending big money to get what looks like really fat shiny braces that make it hard to talk or eat and cause drooling seems like a deeply bizzare perversion. The whole culture of hip-hop/rapper/gangstah bling-bling with the prerequisite ostentatious display of wealth to me just seems like an advertisement saying, “I am an ignorant person with no class, taste, common sense or social conscious.” There are so many better things that could be done with money than wear platinum, jewel-encrusted teeth.

And the trend isn’t just for rappers; here’s an article about suburban teenage girls getting them to wear to the prom. When I was out delivering some flyers for the neighborhood association on my block last week I met a family that moved in a couple of months ago. The teenage son was extremely polite and friendly…and he was wearing a set of big gold teeth.

Tags People

Oil Painting Still Life

Enough already!

Oil on canvas board, 16×12″
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I’ve been working on these two oil paintings for way too long and I officially call them done. Now it’s time to move on. I learned a lot, including that it’s really hard to photograph them, especially at night. The one above is based on a couple of photos I posted here when I first started working on this piece. It’s been through soooo many changes and I’m so done with it!

Oil on canvas, 12 x16″
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For the painting above I’ve since done value and compositional sketches to improve on the reference photo (all posted here) but I’d already started this painting and so kept on plugging away until it was finished. Now I can start over with the better composition. Towards the end I was just making up leaves and making more negative space to try to help the composition. The colors and values are better in real life. The painting looks kind of dull and yellowish in this photo.

Now I have 16 brushes to scrub and clean before I can go to bed and it’s already midnight. That’s what happens when you paint up until the last minute before going out for the evening. I really wanted to finish both paintings before going out but I suddenly discovered I only had 10 minutes to get dressed, put on makeup, and feed the cats before Michael was supposed to arrive so I locked the kitties out of the studio and just left everything. We went out for pizza and then to see The Queen (I’m a Helen Mirren fan). Then I came back and finished the paintings. I’m tired.

Flower Art Monoprint

Magnolia Monoprint 1

Monoprint; Gamblin oil-based etching ink on Arches 88 paper, 6×8″
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I made two different monoprints of this image, applying ink to the glass plate and then wiping it away and drawing in it to make the design, working from the same drawing for each. I’m just posting one for now but I’m going to add watercolor to each of them with two different color schemes. I’m too tired tonight to add the color but now that the ink is dry I thought I’d go ahead and post one in black and white. Tomorrow I’ll add the color to both monoprints and post the colored versions.

I successfully delegated one of my most dreaded monthly work projects to a colleague this week who did a great job with it, and saved me hours…no days…of misery and made it look easy. I’m so delighted by this and also by our hiring a new support person today which means being able to delegate even more projects to our support team. I’m hoping that will mean not having to work quite as hard so that I still have some energy and a little brains left for artwork and play when I get home in the evenings.

Drawing Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

An Art Lesson on BART

Ink in small Moleskine

This morning I got on BART and spotted the guy on the left at the end of the car in his knitted Cat-in-the-Hat hat, except that he looked more like Mr. Natural from R. Crumb Comics than the Cat. I only had a couple minutes to draw him and then a bunch of people got on and I couldn’t see him anymore so I started drawing the hand of the guy sitting beside me holding a tiny iPod.

After a few minutes he smiled at me and then started helping me, pointing out where lines that I was drawing as curved were really straight and where I needed to add shading. My stupid pen ran out of ink so I pulled out another, with brown ink. He recommended I try UniBall pens (which I like but hadn’t used for sketching). He was clearly a talented artist and a wonderful teacher — his recommendations were right on and offered with great gentleness, kindness and caring. I asked about his art and he told me was formerly a graphic designer but now worked for Apple in “technology not art” and only rarely does his own art anymore and then only digitally with a Wacom tablet and Painter.

I’d been surprised by how crowded the San Francisco BART train was since I’d been quite late leaving for work. It was already around 9:45 but many more people than usual were getting on at each station. My “art teacher” turned to his friends behind us and as they chatted about Apple products I realized that all these people were on their way to MacWorld, which was opening today in San Francisco. I was sad to bid him farewell when I got to my stop. He was the kind of person I would love to have as a friend or a teacher and I’m sad I never even found out his name.

Tags Pen and Ink, People, Subway drawings

Flower Art Still Life Watercolor

Opinion please?

I need to design a postcard announcement for the show I’ll be having the month of March in the newly rennovated Art Deco Cerrito Theatre‘s cafe called the It Club and their meeting room on the other side of the lobby. I couldn’t decide which of these images to put on the postcard and decided to ask for your help. If you have an opinion please use Comments (above) to vote for the image you think would look good on the postcard.

The opening will be on Friday, March 2 from 6:30 – 9:30 in case you’re in the area and want to come. I’ll post an invitation a couple weeks before but since people have asked I thought I’d include it now. Here’s the images:

Grandma’s Orange Juice Squeezer

Pink Rose

Bearded Iris

Birthday Tulips

Tomato in Green Bowl

Watermelon (not for sale, limited edition print available)

Rose in a Bottle (Just sold, but limited edition print available)

Thanks for your help!

Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Fridge sitter

Ink & watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook

This is Busby’s favorite perch. He sits on top of the stereo speakers that are on top of the fridge, somehow flying up there via a leap onto the counter, then the microwave then the fridge, then the speakers. The speakers are separated so some of his belly is suspended between them. I tried to teach him not to jump on the counter, but teaching cats anything has always seemed pretty hopeless.

Today was another cat fun day. Sometime last night while I was sleeping Fiona (not pictured…this is Busby) stole a package of dried split peas off the kitchen counter, carried them under my bed (where she also stores other booty such as Q-tips and pushpins and my favorite Smart Wool socks) and ripped open the package, scattering piles of those fun little pea pellets everywhere. I vacuumed them up (have to remember to empty the vacuum bag) and the rat-a-tat-bam-bam-bam sound of them being sucked up scared Busby so much he went and hid most of the morning. He’s found a really good new hiding place — I searched the whole house three times and never found him.

I was working on finishing an oil painting today. I don’t know why I force myself to finish things that have no chance of being successful, but I do learn from the process and every now and then I manage to rescue a painting and make it work. In this case I’m getting the chance to learn how to exploit the brushstrokes and thick rich paint that show in oils instead of trying to make oil paintings flat and smooth and detailed like watercolor. It’s amost as hard a transition as starting to use white paint. It’s just really foreign after years of painting with watercolor.

Tags Animals, Cats

Drawing Flower Art Photos Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Starting Over

Graphite in 6×9 Aquabee sketchbook
(To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes)

I’ve been struggling with an oil painting of this image …

and finally realized that it wasn’t working because I hadn’t first done a value study and compositional sketches. So tonight I set aside the painting and started over with this sketch to simplify the image and study the values. I took the photo on a rainy day in December when the sun suddenly broke through and lit up these roses I’d just clipped from the garden that were still blooming despite the December storm.

As much as I love to draw, sometimes I’m impatient to get to the fun, juicy painting and so I skip the preliminary studies. Once in a while that approach works, but more often it ends up feeling like I’m wandering and lost in a maze, with no end in sight.

But if I start with a study or two first to determine what really interests me about the image, how I can simplify it, where I want the focus to be, where the lights and darks are, what I want to exaggerate or de-emphasize, and what colors I’m REALLY seeing, then I have a much better chance of success and hence a lot more fun with the paint. I might still get lost along the way, but I know my destination and how to get there.

I wonder if I should have one leaf overlapping the front of the bottle. If you see any compositional problems or have suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them. Sometimes I find it so hard to see the problems in my own work. Just looking at now in the post I can see I need to lengthen the stem on the top left rose as it looks a little too short to me.

I’m going to start over, using my new sketch as a reference so I can focus on the light, and the colors in the bottle which was what interested me in the first place. If I don’t get tired of it, I might try it in oil, acrylic (bought some acrylics today) and watercolor, just for fun.

Tags Pencil drawing, Photos

Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Busby “Buzz” Berkeley – Illustration Friday

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 5, 2007
11 Comments on Busby “Buzz” Berkeley – Illustration Friday

Pencil sketch/study for monotype. Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook.
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I’d been planning to work on sketching my cat Busby, also known as Buzz, to prepare for doing a monoprint of him today so it was convenient that today’s Illustration Friday cue is “Buzz.” Here he is! My next step is to do the drawing again with brushpen and ink, trying to work out making it just black and white. I want to see how extreme I can take it — how few lines and shapes are needed. But that will be tomorrow because…

Tonight is the opening party for my brother-in-law Tim’s show of his photos about building (and burning) the temple at Burning Man (photos) last year. So it’s off to the Lucky JuJu Pinball Art Gallery in Alameda, CA to party instead of painting. Here’s one of Tim’s temple photos:

Photo by Tim Englert

While I was online tonight….

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 4, 2007
2 Comments on While I was online tonight….

I set aside tonight to try to catch up on visiting blogs, responding to email and reading this week’s Everyday Matters posts. While I was visiting Andrea and Andrea‘s blogs I noticed through the slightly open door to the bathroom that Fiona (my calico cat) was playing in the bathroom sink. I didn’t think that was too odd since she slept in the sink all the time as a kitten. When I got up to make some tea I discovered she had somehow opened the medicine cabinet door and pulled all the q-tips out of their little container and scattered them about in the sink. She loves to chew on q-tips and her other favorite bad thing is to get on my drawing table and pull pushpins out of my bulletin board and then play with them which really scares me.

This little mess was a perfect metaphor for my day, which was all about little frustrations and annoyances. I spent way too much time standing in line at the post office to mail a CD with files of some paintings to a London publisher who’d requested some images for a book on flower painting. Once I reached the counter and waited for the incompetent postal employee to sort out how it’s done, she determined I’d have to start all over with their packaging, not mine, a contact phone number and a form to fill out, which meant a trip upstairs to my office for the phone number and another wait in line.

Stupidly I had no pen or paper so couldn’t even sketch while waiting and instead just stood their anxiously since I should have been in my office working. Oh well. It eventually got sent and I stayed way late at work to make up the time. I would have sketched the Q-tips, but I really want to get caught up with computer stuff tonight.

Tags Animals, Cats, Photos

Drawing People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings

Subway and Cafe Sketches

Today was back to work and back on BART. These folks (above) were my entertainment on my morning ride. These sketches are all in my little Moleskine.

I sketched these people (above) at Saul’s Deli after dinner while waiting for Michael to return from the men’s room.

These folks were at Peets. I like walking up there from my house, getting a latte, doing a quick drawing and walking back home. It’s a one-mile walk and a pleasant destination. I had trouble with the guy’s wife because she kept talking and moving. He just sat there without moving anything except for his wonderful bushy eyebrows.

Tags Pen and Ink, People, Subway drawings