At the end of each journal I like to do a self portrait or two and write a little wrap up about my life during the period that journal was active. I blurred some of the writing so I could say what I wanted without worrying about “over sharing” personal stuff.
Self Portrait with Froggie Journal B-2, ink & watercolor
I was inspired by Raena’s wonderful self-portraits to try sketching standing in front of a mirror instead of just sitting down and drawing my face. While I didn’t get a real likeness I did get two images that capture how I felt and saw myself that day. And even better, I was willing to take a chance, draw in ink, leaving the “mistakes” and accept that while my sketches weren’t as “good” as I wanted them to be, I was OK with letting them exist as a point on a journey.
John Deere & Porta John on my corner, Ink & watercolor
They’re tearing up all the streets in my neighborhood which were already horrible. There are so many potholes I often drive with one wheel on the center double yellow line since that is the only part of the road not in shreds.
The city had deferred maintenance for the past couple years, waiting for funds to replace the water lines (requiring street demolition) and then finally to pave them. The federal money finally arrived (thanks Obama!) and now the workers are out in force ripping up all the streets (in between their lengthy breaks every hour to stand around, smoke, snack and shoot the bull).
This seemed a fitting image for one of the last few pages of my journal since I’d done some tearing up and rebuilding of my own (figuratively) during the months it was in use. (More about that next time.)
I was sitting on a corner near my house sketching this near sunset when a nice, ordinary, family man who lives on that block (with a perennially messy front yard), wandered over to see what I was doing, reeking of marijuana. He showed me a wooden burl bowl he’d just carved and we talked briefly about the joy of creativity and then he wandered off again.
P.S. Not that anyone cares, but I was curious what this tractor thingee was called so I looked it up. It’s a backhoe-loader, a fun word to say out loud. It sounds like a line in a country western song.
Berkeley Rose Garden & Rose Practice, Ink & Watercolor
When my plein air group met at the Berkeley Rose Garden last Saturday I arrived even later than usual: at noon, only an hour before the session was to end. I found a spot to sit and quickly sketched and painted the complicated, terraced rose garden, finishing just in time for the 1:00 critique.
Berkeley Rose Garden, Ink & WatercolorRose Grid, Ink & Watercolor
After the critique I took some photos of the roses that most intrigued me, while guys set up white chairs for a wedding there later in the day. Once home I made a grid in my journal, and displaying the photos on my monitor, tried to understand their design and draw them.
I’ve bound my next journal and named it “Rosie” and want to decorate her with a rose design so this was practice for the rose I’ll draw on the cover. I’ve finished my journal “Froggie” but still have a bunch more pages to post.
I’ve updated my blog template. What do you think of the new design?
Berkeley Bagels was closed but their café tables and chairs were conveniently chained to the sidewalk, creating a nice spot to sit and sketch as the sun was going down a couple Tuesday nights ago.
I had so much fun drawing as more and more of the landscape revealed itself to me. First I was just going to draw the umbrella , but then there were the chairs behind it, and the next table and umbrella. The telephone pole appeared and had to be drawn and then the elevated concrete BART tracks and the electric pole behind it. When a BART train streaked by I added it, trying to remember what I saw.
Corner of Gilman and Northside, Berkeley
I sketched this standing in the street on Northside, my back to Berkeley Natural Grocery. The street lamp must be left over from some previous incarnation of the corner. There are two of them, standing incongruously on each side of a funky little car repair shop. It took so long to draw the lamp that my sketchbuddies were ready to move on before I could draw the buildings on the next corner beyond the fence so I just threw in some paint for the sunset and the “distance.”
I’m enjoying using the stronger color I can get from adding some more opaque colors to my palette, such as cadmium orange, cad red light and cerulean blue. I used to have a “rule” about using only the most transparent colors but after working with oil paints I wanted to be able to get some of that “body” in my watercolors too.
After much trial and error I figured out just the right steps and ingredients to make delicious yogurt and so of course had to sketch the process. I wanted to make my own yogurt so that I could get the mild, creamy flavor I like without adding more plastic to the landfill; I already have a lifetime supply of empty yogurt containers.
Ingredients for 7 cups:
48 oz. Organic 1% Milk
6 oz. yogurt at room temperature (I like Clover 1.5% Plain Yogurt) or use 1 cup from previous batch
2 T. Organic powdered low-fat milk (optional)
Pour 48 oz. of milk into Pyrex casserole dish, or pot (if using stove)
Cook until 180° F. (almost boiling, 15 minutes in my microwave)
Remove from microwave and allow to cool until 110° F. or room temperature. If skin forms on top, use a fork to skim it off.
Turn on the yogurt maker* and put the jars in place so they can pre-warm.
Pour a cup or so of the milk into the 1 quart measuring cup.
Whisk the 6 oz. container of yogurt (should be at room temperature) and the powdered milk (optional) into the milk in the measuring cup.
Pour the milk/yogurt mixture back into the big bowl of milk and whisk all until completely blended.
Pour the mixture into the individual jars.
Put the dome lid on the yogurt maker and set timer for 8 hours.
When it turns off, place lids on jars and put in the refrigerator to cool.
When cold, eat as is or add fresh fruit.
Yum.
*The Waring Pro Yogurt Maker comes with reusable plastic containers but I replaced them with 1 cup glass canning jars which are more appealing. I eat the yogurt right out of the jars, wash them and use them again. The Waring helps to make the process simple: it has a timer and holds the yogurt at the right temperature for the number of hours you set it to run and then it turns off. The longer it “cooks” the more tart it becomes. But you don’t really need equipment to make yogurt; you can use a thermos, an oven pilot light or even a crock pot, but for consistent results the Waring is great.
Another rainy Tuesday night, another indoor sketching session for the Tuesday Night Sketchers. We emailed back and forth today, negotiating for an agreeable place to sketch. Finally Picante came to mind and everyone agreed it was perfect, with their great food and friendly neighborhood feel.
Usually we move around sketching from different viewpoints, even within a restaurant. But with four of us tonight ( Micaela joined Sonia, Cathy and I) we parked ourselves in a comfy booth to eat and ended up staying in the same spot all evening. I started by drawing the iced tea in front of me and then turned to the right and drew the bar 10 feet away, putting it behind my tea. In reality, Sonia was sitting across the table from me and she was behind my tea.
Everyone else made several sketches but I spent the whole evening on just one. It felt luxurious to take my time and savor each visual discovery, line and color. But then I felt a bit sheepish when I realized it was 9:00 and everyone else was done and waiting for me to finish so we could do our end of evening show and tell and go home.
Toby, Orange Maine Coon Cat, watercolor, 6.5" x 8.5"
This morning a watercolor student brought a photo of her Maine Coon cat and a couple of paintings she’d made of him. Her paintings were delightful and full of personality but she wanted to learn more to enhance her cat-painting abilities.
I thought it might be fun to play a sort of duet with paint, sitting side by side, painting together as if at a piano. I set palette and water between us, pinned the photo to the bulletin board in front of us, and we set up our boards with watercolor paper. I did some “thinking aloud” to demonstrate how I consider various options (glazing, wet-into-wet, layers or direct painting, etc.) to make a plan of attack before starting out. Then I tested out a couple of ideas on a piece of test paper and finally demonstrated one step at a time as she painted along.
We got about 2/3 of the way through painting the kitty before our session was up. I think my student got the help she needed to successfully complete her painting at home and I enjoyed finishing mine this afternoon.
I took some liberties with the background colors as you can see from the reference photo below and I’m not sure you’d necessarily recognize Toby from the painting but I sure had fun painting him.
Reference photo of Toby
Maine Coon Cats
I was curious about the Maine Coon breed (thinking erroneously about raccoons) and found some interesting tidbits. Maine Coons can be the size of small dogs, weighing up to 20 pounds, and are highly intelligent, playful and friendly, with big tufted feet. The legend says that British Captain Charles Coon sailed up and down the New England coasts in the 1800s and took some of his seafaring cats with him when he came into port. Those cats mated with resident felines and people referred to their offspring as “Coon’s cats.”
My best friend Barbara ordered baby chicks by mail. She’d built a little hen house from scrap lumber and had it all ready for them. So she was surprised when the bundle of chirping chicks arrived with instructions to keep them indoors at 90°F for several weeks. Instead of being in the garden when we came to sketch they were living in the upstairs guestroom/studio in a big box with a heat lamp.
We were greeted at the garden gate by Gertie, her big, old, sweet Sharpei/Mutt.
Gertie the Garden Greeter
I tried to get her to pose for me but she was a bit unclear on the concept.
Garden path at sunset with cactus sculpture. Ink & watercolor
Barbara’s garden (photos from previous post) is abundant with flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, wild birds, her ceramic sculptures (the 3′ tall cactus above is actually made of glazed ceramic), her mosaics and the fabulous scent of healthy growing things. It’s a small garden in North Berkeley, but feels like a visit to the country far from urban stress. Her next door neighbors are musicians and so our sunset sketching was accompanied by birdsong and live music playing softly next door.
Elephant, sun/moon plate and potted bamboo
One of Barbara’s many garden still lifes. Every few steps in her garden (and in her jewel of a cottage) there is another such treasure, but she is the best treasure of them all!
On Solano Avenue in Albany to do an errand I looked up and saw the bell tower of this church against the very blue sky and was sorry I’d accidentally left my sketchbook and paints at home. Fortunately I did have my little camera and took a few photos I could paint from.
The title of the painting is actually the name of the church. According to their website this 100-year old church community changed their name from “First Baptist Church of Albany” to “Church on the Corner” in 2005 because “many people in the community refer to it that way.”
I can’t stop pondering the implications of this: like what if other businesses started dropping their identities and brand names and Apple Computer became “Big Corporation in Cupertino” or Starbucks became “That Coffee Place on Every Corner.”
Golden Open Acrylics and Utrecht Masters Panels
This painting had been nearly finished when I tried glazing over the sky and it failed miserably, lifting off some of the previous layer. So I painted the sky again. Not sure if it was something I did wrong or that the Open Acrylic Gloss Medium doesn’t work well for glazing over layers.
For this painting I used an archival-quality Utrecht Masters panel which is medium-textured canvas on MDF (medium density fiberboard). The surface seemed too absorbent and coarse for the soft Golden Open Acrylics so I applied a first layer of regular acrylic.
That solved the absorbency problem but the texture is still a little too rough for the way I like to paint in thin layers. I have several more of these panels so will continue to experiment with them, using paint more abundantly so the texture isn’t as problematic.
For Worldwide Sketchcrawl 27 today I headed to San Francisco on BART for a 10:30 meetup at the Ferry Building, sketching along the way. The couple at the top of the picture seemed to be on an unsatisfactory date. The woman seemed passive-aggressive: she’d gone along with bringing her clunky bike on BART and her stupid, ancient, ill-fitting helmet, but wasn’t going to have fun. Her date adjusted her helmet straps for her but while he kept his on all the way to the city (complete with duct tape patch), she wouldn’t put hers on.
The guy in the middle above is Pete Scully, sketched outside Peets’ Coffee at the Ferry Building. I had a great time sketching with him and my friend Sonia and other sketchcrawlers wandering the Financial District of SF.
Waiting for Sketchcrawl to Start, ink & watercolor
There were too many people at the Ferry Building, shopping at the upscale foodie shops, being annoying tourists, and/or waiting for ferries. I waited in a line of 20 women for the restroom and didn’t even bother trying to get a cup of coffee at Peets. While we waited for Enrico to give us the “Go,” we sketched the scene. Yes, I exaggerated the crowds and the closeness of the Bay Bridge.
There’s a clarinetist (see Sketchcrawl 21 sketch) who is a permanent fixture at this spot, playing annoying screechy “music” that he segues into “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or “Popeye” whenever a kid approaches. Moms and their tots stop and dance while dads take photos and stuff money in his case. I couldn’t wait to get away from the crowds.
View of Ferry Building from Atop Hyatt Regency
Pete had the brilliant idea of going to the top of the nearby Hyatt Regency Hotel to sketch the view from above. We tried to go to the top floor (17) but the elevator would only take us to 14. We met a bellman on 14 and he said you had to have a key card to get there. I brazenly asked if he had one and he said yes. “Could you take us there?” I asked. He opened the door and swiped his card and sent us on up. What a sweetie! I wish I’d thought to tip him.
When we got off the elevator a gentleman informed us that the 360 degree-view-Regency Lounge was only for Regency Members and asked if we were members. I said no, but asked if we could just look at the view and draw pictures. He asked “For how long?” and I said “Oh, about 10-15 minutes” and he said OK. We were there for nearly an hour and nobody bothered us. We did tip him when we left and he invited us to help ourselves to any of the complimentary food and beverages but we declined.
Cable Car Turnaround, Drumm & Market
Sonia and I were hungry so while Pete started sketching a cable car we bought lunch at a deli across the street. We ate sitting at a bus stop, the only seats around. People kept coming up to us and asking about buses. Then I tried sketching the cable car and the hill it goes up and down. I was doing pretty good until I somehow planted a street light in the path of the street car.
Pete Sketching in front of McDonalds
Heading north, Pete sketched an old German hofbrau that didn’t inspire me (though his sketch did, which I will link to when he posts it) so I drew him from across the street, sitting on his stool in front of McDonalds.
Victoria's Secret Window, Embarcadero
I was tired and about ready to call it a day but managed one more sketch. I was more interested in the almost spiral staircase, the shadows, and odd architecture than the mannequins in their jungle print undies. I’m not a fan of the Victoria’s Secret brand or their ads and I think maybe it shows in the way I subconsciously made the mannequins look like they were giantesses, trapped in the store window and trying to get out.
It was 4:00 and although the end-of-Sketchcrawl meetup was happening at 4:30 in Union Square I decided to just go home and relax rather than head towards more crowds. It was a great day!
Jana Bouc, Artist 