After a summer of fighting with a contractor to properly complete my backyard deck and some other construction (beginning stages of garage to studio conversion), the work is done and I can finally enjoy painting on my backyard deck. This was my first happy little backyard sketch of three varieties of organic figs. I painted sitting on my cute new wicker love seat, bought for just $20 from neighbors who were moving away.
I may at some point share my lengthy rant about the way many contractors condescend, ignore, cheat and/or bully women clients, but it’s too nice a day to dwell on such things. I’ll just say that after talking to other women who’ve managed their own construction projects with male contractors, the problem is all to common.
But now the sun is shining, the wind and fog have disappeared and I have a little bouquet of roses waiting to be painted so I’m heading out to the deck!
The shadows and ridges in the grass (and what might have caused them) fascinated me so I tried to capture them before the light changed, which it does rapidly at sunset. At one point I had to stop drawing and just watch the glorious sunset over the bay and the way the fog moved in and out and back in.
View of the Chapel, the flat lands and the Bay from the cemetery, ink & watercolor 5x7"
The light was so odd when I painted this last one before it was too dark to see that the colors came out really pale. I tried over painting later at home and only ended up overworking instead, I’m afraid.
I’ve struggled with trying to paint the view from the hills to the bay many times. I either put in too much detail so it doesn’t read distance or get the proportions wrong. Someday soon I’ll challenge myself to paint it again and again until I get it.
This Old Band performing on 4th Street, 7x5", ink & watercolorWaiting in Line at Apple, Waiting to Play in Front of Peet's, 2 page spread
When the new Apple Store opened in Berkeley, I played hooky from my plein air group’s scheduled paint out and went down to 4th Street in pursuit of sketching opportunities and one of the free t-shirts Apple was giving out to the first 1,000 customers.
When I arrived an hour after the grand opening, the line was barely one block long and moving quickly. By the time I sketched a few people and balloons (above) I was in the store. I got my shirt, bought a gizmo for my gadget and went across the street to Peet’s Coffee.
This Old Band playing on 4th Street
I enjoyed an iced coffee at a sunny table on their front patio as “This Old Band” set up to play. The music was wonderful, with a sweet, sensitive, gentle feel to it including some Otis Redding, The Drifters and other great oldies played by talented musicians.
There were some interesting (?) conversations going on around me.
Peet's Patio People, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
This guy was actually sitting at a table with another woman beside him on his right blabbing away, but he seemed more interested in this one.
A chubby, balding, dorky-looking, baby-boomer guy sitting behind me pompously talked non-stop about his life as a rock star and the book he was writing about it. His wife never said a word, and the guy he was talking to was obviously someone he was paying to help him with the book, though he barely got a word in either.
After dropping dozens of famous stars’ names who he supposedly shared a life with, he admitted it was “Better to be a Has Been than a Never Been.”
My Tuesday night sketch group met at North Berkeley’s Monterey Market to sketch just before the produce store was closing. My friends started indoors while I stood and sketched the buckets of sunflowers in the parking lot, using a handy shopping cart as my table.
When the store closed at 7:00 they joined me in sketching the sunflowers. Then I walked around the block to the entrance of the wonderful Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. I saw this crazy Dr. Seuss-like plant along their fence and had to sketch it. Each fuzzy orange-red flower grows out of a stalk that comes up from the flower below it.
The next morning I called Berkeley Hort to ask about the plant. The guy who answered went outside to check and told me it is a Leonitus Lenorius or “Lion’s Tail,” a drought-resistant, sun-loving plant.
You can see Micaela’s market sketches here and Cathy’s market, melon and sunflower sketches here on our Urban Sketchers blog.
When I spotted llamas in a residential neighborhood backyard near the beach in Pacifica I took a few photos of them for painting later. In the process of this painting I experimented with a terrific new drawing tool, Accurasee, and put this llama through its paces.
I started with this watercolor sketch in my journal:
Backyard Lama, ink & watercolor, 5x5"
While sketching I edited out the apartment building in the photo and got some understanding of the subject. Then I put the sketch and my iPad displaying the photo on the table by my easel so that I could refer to both as I painted.
Blocking in the values
First I sketched in the llama on the panel (above) with thinned paint (hoping it was fairly accurate) and blocked in where I wanted the darks and lights in the painting.
Llama attempt #1, but drawing wrong
I thought I was nearly finished (above) but after a break from it, realized that the drawing was wrong: the face looked more like a dog than a llama and the neck was too short.
Then I discovered Accurasee, a free computer program for Macs and PCs (plus an iPhone app) that helps you be more accurate in your drawing or painting by using an innovative approach to the “grid drawing” method as a way to help you see. Accurasee adds a grid to a photo or scan of your drawing and you create a matching grid on or beside your painting. Then you use the grid coordinates to find the landmarks, height and width of objects in the composition.
You can read more about the history of gridding up here and see how much easier it is using Accurassee in these demos or read their user guide (pdf). (Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in promoting this product or this company, but I think it’s great!)
Photo after gridding in Accurasee
Accurasee offers a collection of clever drawing tools, including special measuring tape but I made my own using masking tape and marked off the inches:
Llama Attempt #2 Redrawn: Tape marked to match Accurasee grid
By mentally visualizing where the intersection of the lines would be, I redrew a little more accurately (though still not quite right). As they say on their website:
The ultimate goal is not to create a “dot-to-dot” drawing, but a proportionally accurate one. The Accurasee Method and tools are designed to be used as drawing aids, not a crutch. When used correctly, the Accurasee Method can quite literally train you to see more accurately.
Llama attempt #3, almost there
When comparing the painting to my watercolor concept I saw the ground was too dark so lightened and brightened it, worked some more on the face and neck and all around.
Eventually I just got tired of the whole production and decided that I’d learned everything I was going to learn from this painting, had nothing more to say, and called it done.
UPDATE: Julie asked how I was using the iPad vs my computer monitor and how I had it setup. Here is a picture:
Sketchbook and iPad set up by easel (plus messy desk and computer monitor)
I have in the past used my computer monitor to paint from but the iPad is handier because I can have it right next to the easel or on my drawing table and with two fingers I can enlarge (as in the above photo) or move the section I’m viewing or go back to seeing the full picture. I use the iPad Smart Cover which when folded back works well as a stand.
When I was sketching the lily pond at the cemetery the only camera I had with me was my iPhone. I took a few photos even though I didn’t expect them to come out well (which they didn’t since I was too far away). But I was able to get enough information from them to do two more little studies when I got home of the lilies in sun (above) and in shade (below).
Lily in the Shade, ink & watercolor, 5x5"
Sunday, just one week later, I returned to the cemetery with my good camera, looking forward to taking some good photos from which to paint and continue my water lily investigation. Sadly our recent warm weather had dried up half of the pond. I couldn’t get a single good photo and was uninspired to sketch the tangles that remained.
I’m surprised the cemetery owners don’t replenish the water in the pond. Although we’re supposed to conserve water, I know they water the lawns or they’d all be brown since it doesn’t rain in the summer here. What’s a few more gallons to maintain the lovely water lilies?
I guess I’ll have to wait until next spring or summer to continue my lily studies unless I can find another lily pond nearby.
When I was hiking with a friend in the large, beautiful, hilly cemetery near my house, we discovered a small pond full of lily pads and flowers. That afternoon I drove back up to the cemetery with my sketchbook and paints and set up my chair beside the pond. It was such a peaceful spot; quiet, serene and green.
Sorting out lily pads and flowers with Pentel Pocket brush pen
I took a break to figure out the shape of lily pads and flowers, filling up a page of lily shapes, first with my regular pen and then the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, until I understood the lilies.
The water was really confusing because of all the reflections of the sky, trees and shrubbery, and the quickly encroaching shadows since it was nearing sunset.
Sunset View Cemetery Trees, ink & watercolor 7x5"
When the pond was completely in shadow, I turned my chair around to face the other direction and do a quick sketch of a meadow glowing in the sunset, surrounded by shadows.
Emeryville Marina Chevy's Sign at Sunset, ink & watercolor
(Apologies for posting twice–forgot to include all three images the first time).
I noticed this palm tree-lined street when I was exiting Highway 80 in Emeryville and suggested it as a place for our Urban Sketchers group to meet. I guess the directions I provided to the spot weren’t very good because everyone else went down to the end of the marina and I sketched alone all evening.
Photo of sketch before I painted it
I knew we’d meet at Chevy’s Mexican Restaurant at 8:30 so I wasn’t worried. This was one of those really fun drawings where I started by deciding what I most wanted to fit on the page (the lamp post, palm trees, Chevy’s sign and water). I started with the lamp post because I could use it to figure out where other things lined up to it. And then I just kept seeing and drawing more and more until it was all in there.
photo of the scene (slightly different angle)
I painted the sketch just as the sunset was at its brightest and everything looked so pretty, pink and yellow. It’s such a lovely spot, and yet so urban, within a couple blocks of two major freeways and the entrance to the Bay Bridge. You can see Cathy’s sketches of the bay bridge and the freeway on our Urban Sketchers Bay Area blog.
I have a very tenuous grasp on time. I always think I can do more in the allotted time than is possible and then I end up rushing to avoid being late (usually unsuccessfully). This “time grandiosity” I suffer from also means I start the day, a weekend, or in the case of the drawing above, my birthday vacation, with a sense of infinite time. And then suddenly the time is gone and I’m shocked and dismayed.
I always thought of time as passing on its own until I read this article at the beginning of my birthday vacation, How to Actively Take Control of Your Time, which compares time to a tube of toothpaste.
Unlike a stream running or sand falling in an hourglass, toothpaste does not simply come out of a tube on its own – we force it out and use it up…Time does not fly by – rather, we push minutes, hours and days out of our finite toothpaste tube of life. ~ Sid Savara
So at the beginning of my vacation (back in June) I drew the tube of paint (seemed more appropriate than toothpaste) and marked off what I did each day. I paid attention to the choices I was making about how I squeezed out that day’s “paint.”
What about you? Do you choose how you squeeze out the hours of your life or do you feel like time is squirting by on its own?
Port Costa is a strange, tiny, rundown town and a popular destination for motorcyclists out riding the winding roads in herds on noisy Harleys. At the end of town, by the railroad tracks and behind their cracked and crumbling Post Office I sketched above, is the Warehouse Cafe, a seedy bar in a ramshackle warehouse with cheap, stiff drinks, a funky outdoor deck, and a surly female bartender (perfectly described in this collection of hilarious Yelp reviews).
Port Costa Bikers Saddling Up in Front of Post Office
The bikers roar into town, have themselves a breakfast beer or two and ride out. While they seemed like a bunch of tough, old burn-out guys with beer guts and women who looked “rode hard and put away wet,” they were very polite when I asked them questions about their (very expensive) bikes.
Bikers Lining up to Leave (Arrow is where I was sitting to sketch)
It turned out that the corner where I was sketching (red arrow in photo) is where they line up before tearing out of town in a caravan of ear-splitting noise, leaving behind a cloud of flying dust and gravel from the barely paved road. I had to pull my sweatshirt over my face and plug my ears every time a group tore off. My friend Beth Bourland posted some great pics of the day here including one of me so focused sketching I didn’t even know she took the picture.
Besides the bikers, it’s a fun place to paint so my plein air group meets there once a year. And then same thing always happens: we set up for our critique on the patio at the Warehouse Bar and just as we start to talk about the day’s work, they crank up the music on the outdoor speakers so loud that we can’t hear a thing and have to move all our stuff down the street to a quieter spot. Is it a coincidence? Does their music always go full blast at 1:15? Or are they trying to keep away the wrong sort of customers (us)?
Jana Bouc, Artist 