Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Sketching in the Bar at Spenger’s Fish Grotto

Spengers Bar #1, ink & watercolor
Spenger's Bar (beer & a cellphone), ink & watercolor

Last week two new members joined our Tuesday night sketch group and we had a great time sketching in the bar at Spenger’s, an old, formerly family-owned seafood restaurant filled with ship-themed objects including giant mounted fish trophies (which we learned are just plastic), models of old ships, steering wheels, ropes, etc.

Sonia Sketching at Spengers, Ink & watercolor
Sonia Sketching at Spenger's, Ink & watercolor

I tried several times to draw some of the mounted fish but mostly failed except for the one on the back wall above.  Then I drew the lanterns hanging from the ceiling (below), interested in the perspective and how they overlapped as they receded in space.  Then I used the rest of the page for a different view.

Lanterns, Martini & a Cellphone at Spengers, Ink & watercolor
Lanterns, Martini & a Cellphone at Spenger's, Ink & watercolor

I was drawing the guy in the foreground with the hat, cellphone and martini, when I noticed the man behind him kept smiling at me when I looked up. I wondered aloud whether it might be a bad idea to stare at men at the bar—would they think we were flirting with them?

Everyone around our table laughed as it turned out we were all intently drawing the same foreground guy. He was a good sport and when we all finished we showed him his many portraits.

You can see Cathy’s and Sonia’s sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog.

Categories
Art supplies Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

My Oil Painting Breakthrough: Striving Pears and Peggi Kroll-Roberts

Striving Pears, Oil on Gessobord, 6x6"
Striving Pears, Oil on gesso board, 6x6"

My friend Kathryn Law wrote on her blog about the workshop she took with Peggi Kroll-Roberts and about Peggi’s instructional DVDs. The videos focus on the things I most wanted to learn, especially creating strong value patterns and making rich painterly brush strokes, along with loosening up and having fun. I ordered the videos and watched them. Wow!

The Buddhist proverb, “When the student is ready the teacher will appear” is so true. I had to have tried and given up on so many other approaches to oil painting to become very clear on what I didn’t want, what I did want (working with the freedom and looseness I have when I sketch) and what I needed to get there (all the things Peggi teaches).

Watching Peggi demonstrate and explain what she’s thinking and doing as she does it is such a rare ability in painting teachers in my experience. Her videos answered many questions I’ve had for so long. I’ve read dozens of books and gotten great advice from artist friends, but until I watched Peggi’s videos, I just didn’t get it.

I’d almost given up oil painting in frustration but now… Yippee! Oil painting is fun again!

About the painting:

While bosc pears aren’t as pretty or colorful as other types, when I saw the way they were sitting in their container, one seeming like it was “striving” to reach, copy, or catch up with the other, I had to paint them. I used the techniques/tools I learned in Peggi’s videos and really enjoyed the painting process (and the results).

Categories
Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Sketching at Pastime Hardware, El Cerrito

Wire Winding & Measuring Machine, Ink & Watercolor
Wire Winding & Measuring Machine, Ink & Watercolor

The crew at Pastime Hardware remembered us from our previous night there last year and treated us like honored guests. Cathy tackled the wall of spooled wires (see our Urban Sketchers site) but I fell in love with this ancient machine (above) for measuring long lengths of wire. Nobody there knew what it was called. Behind it is a rack of copper tubing.

Orion Key Grinding Machine, ink & watercolor
Orion Key Grinding Machine, ink & watercolor & collaged piece of Ace brown bag

While I sketched the key grinding machine, an employee swept nearby, preparing for closing. He showed me his dustpan full of gold dust, explaining it falls from the key machine. I’m still battling the stupid landscape-format Moleskine that makes drawing and painting standing up difficult (for me, anyway). I had to completely surrender to wonkiness on this one but was glad for the handy nearby stool I sat on for drawing the wire winder.

I’m also glad for some upcoming vacation during which I will bind a new journal and sketch like crazy to finish this one.

Categories
Drawing Faces Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting People Self Portrait Sketchbook Pages

End of Journal Self-Portraits

End of Journal Self-Portrait #1
End of Journal Self-Portrait #1

Some day I’ll sketch a flattering self-portrait. Some day I’ll follow the “rules” of portraiture and get features the right sizes in the right places. But not today. Today I just look and draw and see what happens.

I always save the last few pages of my journals to do a self-portrait and look back over the pages and write an index of what they contained.  I look in mirrors as little as possible, so it’s weird to spend quality time with my reflection and seeing what’s wrinkled since last time I looked.

End of Journal #2 (Ick!)
FAIL: No Likeness

When I woke up I had a curl standing straight up on top of my head which fell onto my face as the day progressed. That reminded me of this poem my grandmother used to recite to tell this curly-haired, often naughty granddaughter:

There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.

End of Journal Self Portrait #3
End of Journal Self Portrait #3

The best part of drawing this one was using the Black Pentel Color Brush Pen (not waterproof) for my curls and sketching the puffy down vest. I have tidier eyebrows than I drew but it’s ink so there you go.

Categories
Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Tomatoes Try Again

November Tomatoes Again, Oil on board, 9x12"
November Tomatoes Again, Oil on board, 9x12"

After wishing I could hit “rewind” to get the tomato vines/stems and patterned cloth back in the November Tomatoes oil painting, I realized that I could just paint them back on thanks to the wonders of oil paint.

For reference material I used the photo of the original painting and the tomato vine/stems that I’d snipped off but still had (having saved them for my cats to play with). I experimented first in Photoshop, “painting” stems on the photo of the previously “finished” painting to try to come up with a design that carried the eye around and not out of the painting.

Then I mixed up some stem colors and had fun swirling them on the painting. I worked a bit more on tomatoes, shadows, added some color and reflections in the bowl and painted the background again.  I think it’s a happier picture now, and one that presented me with many learning opportunities. So I’m happier moving on too.

Categories
Drawing People Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings Urban Sketchers

Bundled Up and Busy on BART

 

Bundled up and Busy on BART, ink sketch
Bundled up and Busy on BART, ink sketch

 

I’m wrapping up the last of my sketches in my last handmade sketchbook with these two subway sketches and next time, my end-of-journal self portrait. I didn’t get around to binding another journal one in time and so switched to a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook as a stopgap.

 

Wheelchair Rider with Rear View Mirror
Wheelchair Rider with Rear View Mirror

The Moleskine would be perfect if only it wasn’t in horizontal format. I hate the way two-page spreads become very long and skinny. Trying to sketch in it vertically is awkward to hold. Working in it for a few weeks has given me the incentive to get a new book bound ASAP!

 

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Painting

Ripening: Tomatoes and Me (The Spirit of Watercolor vs. Obedient Oils)

November Tomatoes in Raku Bowl; oil painting on board, 9x12"
November Tomatoes in Raku Bowl; oil painting on board, 9x12" (click to enlarge)

UPDATE 12-11-10: I revised this painting again and it’s posted here.

At the end of the season we harvest the crops (or in my case, tomatoes). The last green stragglers are picked from their shriveling vines and set near a window to ripen. And that leads me to think about my own ripening as an artist; reflecting on which artistic pursuits have borne fruit, and which are still hard and green despite my best efforts.

After working in a realistic style in watercolor for years I began to explore other media, eventually focusing on oil painting, determined to gain comfort and competence with it. The path felt wide and long because I’m attracted to so many painting styles, from classical realism to impressionism and even expressionistic figurative work.

But as I get closer to competence with oils (while still far from mastery) I’m beginning to narrow the path and here’s why….

Oils vs. Watercolor

I found that trying to paint in oils in the same detailed, realistic style I enjoy so much in watercolor felt like work, not fun. But why, I wondered.

Continue reading “Ripening: Tomatoes and Me (The Spirit of Watercolor vs. Obedient Oils)”
Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Tormey, CA: Plein air oil painting

 

Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"
Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"

 

It’s nice to remember those sunny summer and fall days when painting outdoors required sunscreen, not rain gear. Back in October I painted this view from the former refinery “company town” of Tormey. Now Tormey is just a couple blocks long on the edge of the Tosco Oil Refinery near Crockett. At the end of the main (only?) street  is a small paddock with horses and goats. It was a fun place to paint.

I did 75% of the painting onsite and finished it in the studio from this photo:

 

Reference photo for Tormey, CA
Reference photo for Tormey, CA

Now it’s another rainy Sunday here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but after a great walk in the hills between showers, I’m happy to be in the studio working on several paintings in progress.

 

Categories
Albany Animals Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Urban Nature: Swimming Rats, Smiling Cats

 

Sunday Morning Nature Sketch, ink & watercolor
Sunday Morning Nature Sketch, ink & watercolor

 

It was a rainy Sunday morning and at first glance out my window the world looked gray and bleak. Then a flock of seagulls swirled by in the clouds and I looked a little closer. A dove sat nestled on a wire, a few ants straggled along my windowsill, a bee sniffed around a flower–a rose–beautifully blooming in November! The more I looked the more I saw and sketched. My cat Fiona joined me in looking out the window so I sketched her too.

 

Swimming Rats and Ducks, Pitt Brush Pens
Swimming Rats and Ducks, Pitt Brush Pens

 

A couple of days later I drove my car to the Toyota dealer in Albany for an oil change (and free car wash). They offered a ride home but though chilly, it wasn’t raining, so I decided to walk the 3 miles instead. I stopped along the way to watch the egrets and ducks in the creek next door to the Pacific East Mall.

I was stunned to see a big rat swimming across the creek. Then another rat swam by and disappeared under the concrete bridge. I sketched (above) while I waited for another rat sighting to take a photo. And then…

SCREEEEEECH…. KABOOM! I heard tires screeching and looked up as a driver on Pierce Street tried mightily (but unsuccessfully) to swerve and avoid crashing into the car of an old Chinese man who had suddenly turned left in front of him to enter the Asian mall parking lot.

 

Swimming Rat and Duck, photo
Swimming Rat and Duck, annotated photo

Then an old Chinese woman stopped to talk to the ducks. She told me that she brings them bread every morning. I asked her about the rats and she said, “Oh yes, they live under the bridge” we were standing on; she didn’t mind them eating her bread too.

 

Categories
Animals Bay Area Parks Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Oil Painting Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Thanksgiving Turkey Leftovers

Thanksgiving After Dinner Sketch, ink & watercolor
Thanksgiving After Dinner Sketch, ink & watercolor

Most of the year my sister Marcy’s dining room is her art studio, and the table is full of art projects in process. For thanksgiving dinner she graciously hauled all of her studio stuff into the spare room and set a beautiful table for ten, complete with grandma’s china, table cloth and candles. When dinner was over the table’s real purpose called out to me and I sketched and painted by the warm glow of the candles.

The next day in honor of our turkey feast, I painted wild turkeys from photos I’d taken last summer on an evening walk in Tilden Park.

Turkey, oil on panel, 6x6"
Turkey, oil on panel, 6x6"

I started with oils but found it frustrating, especially on the small panel (above) so I switched to ink and watercolor in my sketchbook (below).

Tilden Park Turkey, ink & watercolor
Tilden Park Turkey, ink & watercolor

The turkey guy above was strutting his stuff, showing off for a lady turkey. When she ignored him and wandered off down the path, turkey dude and his buddy followed behind, shaking their tail feathers, still trying to get her attention.

Stayin Alive' Turkey Walk
Stayin' Alive Turkey Trot

I imaged the turkey dudes strutting to the song “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees that starts with:

“Well you can tell by the way I use my walk.
I’m a woman’s man; no time to talk…”

OMG! Those tightie whitie pants! Here’s last year’s Thanksgiving Leftovers post (same table).