So here it is December and we’re still having beautiful sunny days that barely require a hoody to keep warm. It’s great being able to sit out on the patio at Peet’s and sip coffee (decaf these days) and sketch. But it just feels weird. Where’s the rain, the cold, the frost, the storms, the cozy days indoors?
Is your weather weird too? Take the poll below.
When we sketch at Saul’s Deli, a favorite during the dark winter Tuesday nights, I often feel overwhelmed by the complicated architecture with diamond patterned floors and maybe 70 booths and tables. So I started with something easier: what was on the table. Immediately I screwed up the ellipse of the glass but am learning to say, “that’s OK” and just move on.
After I ate I started drawing people. The place was packed since it was Thanksgiving week and there were many guests in town. I asked the waiter if it was a problem we were hogging three tables and he said we were doing him a favor by lightening his load.
These guys were having a good time and I enjoyed drawing them. Then for some reason I drew some other people on the same page but tried to hide them when I painted it since they didn’t belong there.
I messed up her lips and tried to fix it and made it worse. I’ve noticed my sketching has suffered a bit lately from neglect as I’ve been working on some 16×20 oil portraits and all my drawing efforts have been on the paintings. It’s amazing how quickly I lose sketching fluency without daily practice…so I’m back to it now.
I love zucchini muffins so was excited to find a recipe for grain-free version made with coconut flour. I got carried away grating zucchinis in my ancient Cuisinart food processor before realizing the recipe only called for 3/4 cup. Oops. But it turns out there are many other good uses for grated zucchini
The muffins turned out really well. I set them on a rack to cool and left the room. When I walked back into the kitchen an hour later I found muffins scattered about the floor with the tops chewed off and surrounded by crumbs. Bad Kittie Fiona!
I should have known to hide them from the little calico carboholic instead of leaving them out to tempt her. She once stole a box of Ak-Mak crackers and somehow dragged it under my bed to eat them. She’s even chowed down on dry spaghetti noodles and Cheerios.
I rescued the rest of the muffins and set them on a plate to sketch (above). Then I ate one with a cup of tea. Yum!
Picante was quite crowded on our Tuesday night sketchcrawl. Sonia arrived early and saved us a booth but since I was last to arrive, my seat faced the wall, without a view of anything to draw. I decided to wait until after I ate to find a spot to stand and sketch the tortilla maker. She was amazing, in constant motion, pulling dough from the bowl, rolling a ball, placing it in the wooden press, squeeze, put on grill, move the tortillas around, squeeze another.
My dinner was delicious: fish tacos served on Maria’s freshly made corn tortillas and drizzled with avocado sauce. Yum! Picante is one of the best Mexican restaurants in Berkeley with a friendly, festive atmosphere and delicious food made with high quality ingredients.
Thanksgiving is an autumn harvest holiday, celebrated by eating as much of the harvest as possible in one day. It’s also a time to consider all we have to be thankful for. When I published blog post #1000 last week, that milestone also made me pause and reflect on gratitude.
One important thing I’m grateful for is you, my wonderful blog readers/friends who give me so much encouragement and support and who so often say exactly what I need to hear when you leave comments.
Thank you for your inspiration, humor, advice, encouragement and for taking the time to share a few moments of your day with me. I treasure the friendships I’ve made via blogging. Some have led to in-person friendships, others have remained virtual, but all are incredibly valuable.
Along with the rewards gained from sharing my work and my thoughts, blogging has helped me to improve and grow as an artist and has led to many artistic and personal discoveries along the way.
I feel so lucky to live in a time when artists around the world can share, inspire and learn from each other. So I offer up a thousand thanks to all of you!
A few blog stats: Since I started JanasJournal in May 2006, I’ve published 1,103 posts, which received 10,120 comments, and almost 1 million “hits.” Meanwhile WordPress’s excellent spam catcher has caught and deleted 90,000 spam comments. Whew!
The title is true: both the tea and the sketches were awkward. It was a warm November evening during our weird extended summer and the doors to the patio were open. But that didn’t diminish the smell of frying food and the annoying sound of constant chopping from the small kitchen. I totally botched the perspective when I drew the tables. The little girls look like they’re floating but they were sitting on a bench, also drawn awkwardly.
At the Imperial Tearoom, they serve the tea Gaiwan style: the loose tea floats in a cup with a lid but no handle (foreground above). To drink it, you’re supposed to tilt the lid and drink from the cup using the lid as a strainer. Awkward.
I’d recently given up caffeine so selected some sort of ginger, ginseng and weed concoction. Fortunately it tasted yucky so it didn’t matter how hard it was to drink. I was really just there to sketch, but the sketches turned out mostly yucky too. I added gouache to the teapot above at home to try to fix the anemic painting I’d done on site and to the saucer below to try to hide all the trouble I had with ellipses that night.
When I ordered my tea I didn’t see prices on the menu, just the teas to choose from. When I paid the bill, I discovered the stupid cup of tea cost $6.00!
On a previous sketch night at Petco, I chose pretty little birds as my subject. This time I went for the creepy, crawly things. This little lizard was very cute and I imagined he wanted to go home with me. I’m sure my cats would have enjoyed him very much. The baby corn snakes (bottom corner above) were really weird. They moved as one and appeared like a multi-headed scramble of strings.
These little mousy girls were also cute, but it’s just so odd seeing animals being sold as pets that would otherwise be considered vermin. Sketching caged animals in the pet store is always disturbing to me, but is also an interesting drawing challenge.
The rats seemed pretty happy in their glass box, with no need to earn a living and food, shelter and entertainment available on demand. They were interesting to draw but the smell in the rodent area was quite unpleasant (to put it nicely). Fortunately it was time to meet up and share our sketches which we did in the scent-free aquarium accessory department.
At the book publication party for my friend Barbara’s wonderful new book, From Tree to Table: Growing Backyard Fruit Trees in the Pacific Maritime Climate
I’m not a confident cook, but the recipe sounded simple and very delicious: figs tossed in olive oil and fresh thyme and broiled, then set atop a toasted baguette spread with gorgonzola dolce cheese (soft, sweet blue cheese), and then drizzled with a bit of honey and a sprinkle of thyme.
They were fabulous! A perfect combination of flavors and everyone loved them. I’m glad I took a picture (above) before they were all gone. I served them on plates I made many years ago when I was a potter.
This is the baby fig tree that Barbara gave me last spring. I’ve sketched its progress from stick, to growing three leaves to now (above) with three skinny trunks. I’m going to use the pruning section in From Tree to Table (and a little help from Barbara) to learn how to prune it so it just has one trunk, once it drops its leaves for the winter….if winter ever comes…we’re still having warm summer-like weather half the time and fruit trees are so confused.
I did this a few weeks ago when I needed to do a warm-up sketch in oils to get back in the flow after not using them for a while. I tried to work quickly and not go back over areas. I had fun and like the colors.
The scent of bay leaves perfumed the air as I sketched the John Muir House in Martinez. I love details and although I hear often that “good” art demands simplifying, I give myself a treat and break that rule whenever I please.
I intentionally drew the house with the top smaller than the bottom because that’s how it appeared to me, sitting close and looking up. Later I realized the palm trees also appeared to tilt in towards each other at the top. Drawn parallel, they make it look like the house is tilting back away from them. Oops.
I took a break between drawing and painting to explore the house and climb up to the attic lookout/bell tower. The view from there incongruously includes not only the lovely grounds with fruit tree orchards and gardens, but also the nearby freeway. You can see my friend Cathy’s sketches of the John Muir property (and the freeway) on our Urban Sketchers blog here.
John Muir is known as the father of our National Park system; he convinced President Roosevelt to protect Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon and Mt. Rainier as National Parks. My son Robin has been hiking the High Sierra John Muir trail in sections for several years now and has taken some amazing photos, including the one above. You can see more of the photos he took this year in the remote wilderness on the trail here, and here (including his cute dog, Nilla who was one tired pooch on that trip!)
Jana Bouc, Artist 
