Tag: Animals

Categories
Animals Ink and watercolor wash Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Dogs and their People at PetVet, Part I

Pomeranian Lady at PetVet, ink and watercolor
Wonderful Pomeranian Lady at PetVet, ink and watercolor

A couple miles south of my house, is a high-priced pet shop that sells cashmere sweaters and designer collars for dogs. I don’t shop there. PetVet is a mile or two north of my house, in Richmond. They offer discounted food, medicine and vet services and draw a much less affluent clientele.

I shop there because they sell  the prescription cat food Busby needs, but I usually try to avoid going during their weekend low-cost vet clinic. I don’t like seeing  pets with people who seem unlikely to be responsible pet owners such as this group of young men and their pit bull puppies with cropped ears (a style from dogs used in fighting.)

Tough Dudes and their Pitbulls, Ink and watercolor
Tough Dudes and their Pit Bulls, Ink and watercolor

When I arrived, the parking lot was full and people were waiting inside and outside for the first-come, first-served vet visits. After I stocked up on cat food I was intrigued by all of the interesting characters and dogs and wanted to stay and sketch. But I couldn’t find a way to do it surreptitiously.

I decided to be brave and ask if I could take photos of pe0ple with their dogs; surprisingly everyone was happy to pose. The dudes above dropped their tough guy stance and smiled nicely for me. I’d much rather be drawing from life, but it was still fun sketching from my photos.

Treats while waiting, ink and watercolor
Treats while waiting, ink and watercolor

I’d like to work on my dog drawing skills so that I’d have enough confidence to go back there and sketch the waiting dogs and owners directly.

Not a Pitbull? Ink & watercolor
Not a Pit Bull? Ink & watercolor

This young lady was quite a character. As she walked past me, she turned to a guy with a really wide pitbull and said to him “Your dog is FAT!” Then she told me her puppy wasn’t a pit bull, it was a brindle and would be bigger than a pitbull. [Except brindle is a mixture of color in a dog’s coat, not a breed.]

There were so many people there with puppies, and many of those puppies were pit bulls or pit mixes. It breaks my heart to think about how that will turn out. I know how much work it is to responsibly raise a good, healthy dog and that the shelters are full of pit bulls surrendered when the cute little puppy grew up and got to be too much trouble.

I will just try to hope that all of those people and their pets have what they need for happy, healthy lives. Meanwhile, I still have another half dozen pictures to make from the day.

Categories
Animals Berkeley Gouache People Places Sketchbook Pages

Waiting: For a Fire, a Subway Stop, a Book Shopper…

Waiting guy, waiting dog, ink and gouache
Waiting for his stop; waiting for her owner; ink and gouache

He was waiting for his stop on the subway ride and she was waiting for her owner to come out of the book store on Solano. I used the gouache to hide the guy’s nose that I added by mistake. (It wasn’t visible at this angle but he turned his head and I said, “Oh, there’s his nose,” and sketched it in, and immediately saw it was wrong.) The gouache also nicely hides the false start of the dog and the waiter (see last picture below) too.

North Berkeley Fire Station, copic sepia ink
North Berkeley Fire Station, copic sepia ink

The North Berkeley Fire Station is round. The fire truck barn is a large round concrete building with pillars and attached round buildings where the firemen (and women) live when they’re on duty. At the bottom left of the sketch is the very back of the waiting fire truck, with flag flying, just returned from one call and ready and waiting for the next.

Waiting waiter, ink and gouache
Waiting waiter, ink and gouache

This waiter was on a break from the Inidan restaurant in front of which I was sketching. Although he was only about 20 feet away, he was so engaged in his phone call that he didn’t seem to notice me sitting on my little sketching stool, frantically trying to catch his gesture before he walked away. There’s another quickie of the waiting dog on this page too.

These were all from last Tuesday night’s sketchcrawl. I sketched in pen on site and then added the gouache at home.

Categories
Animals Cartoon art Drawing Gardening Illustration Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Plants Richmond Annex Sketchbook Pages

Strange Garden Ecology: From Birds to Mice to Wasps to Ants to Birds

Weird Ecology, ink & watercolor in sketchbook
Strange Ecology, ink & watercolor (click to enlarge or see big images below)

I used to love feeding the birds and seeing my little customers flocking to the feeder. But one day I thought I saw the wood chip ground covering moving under the feeder. When I looked closely I saw it wasn’t the tan bark moving, it was dozens of mice! By feeding the birds I was also nourishing a growing army of mice with all the seed the birds scattered!

1. Feed the Birds 2. Mice grow strong and prosper
1. Feed the Birds ---> ---> ---> ---> ---> ---> ---> 2. Mice grow strong and prosper

I called “Vector Control” (a euphemism for the county rat patrol) and an interesting female rat inspector came out and inspected. She told me the only way to get rid of the mice was to stop feeding the birds and that for each mouse I saw there were 50 more I wasn’t seeing. I was sad to stop feeding the birds but it was better than the alternative (which included multiple mouse traps, even sadder).

Meanwhile, the spilled millet seed grew into a lovely, tall, feathery bush under the feeder, which I left hanging in a bit of wishful thinking that one day I’d be able to return to feeding my feathery friends.

3. Millet grass grows under feeder. 4. Wasps move in.
3. Millet grass grows under feeder ---> ---> ---> --->4. Wasps move in.

A couple years pass, the feeder and bird house remain empty and the millet bush continues to be a pretty garden feature. One day I notice something odd: wasps are buzzing in and out of the feeder and have built a nest inside it. I learned that while wasps do not pollinate like bees, they are still beneficial because they eat insect pests in the garden. I decided to leave them alone and enjoyed watching them care for their  babies (larvae) in the nest.

Wasps eat potential garden pests including the venomous black widow spider. Adult wasps eat only pollen and nectar (or your soda at picnics). They only hunt for meat (insects, worms, your barbequed hamburgers) to feed their larvae. Wasps nests have only one purpose: to ensure the production of young. At the end of the nest’s cycle, every member of the nest, except emerging queens, dies.

5. The wasps move in next door ---> 6. The Greenhouse Effect
5. The wasps move in next door ---> ---> ---> 6. The Greenhouse Effect

I guess things got a little crowded in the nest because the wasps started hanging out at the neighboring empty bird house too. Then one day we had a scorcher of a summer day. The temperature in my usually cool and foggy neighborhood by the Bay was in the 90s (f). The clear plastic bird feeder turned into a greenhouse and cooked all the wasps in the nest. So sad. All those poor little larvae, all that building and hunting and gathering of food.

But it wasn’t entirely wasted…

7. The millet bush becomes a little ladder and the ants have a party
7. The millet bush becomes ladder to an ant party

The stalks of tall millet grass made a perfect ladder for the gazillions of ants who live in my garden (and don’t even get me started about the ants and their nasty aphid ranches). The ants were streaming up the grass onto the feeder and having a lovely dinner party of roasted wasp.

And because my garden is well stocked with ants and aphids, I am, in a way, still feeding the birds. They still flock to my garden, but now they eat the ants and aphids off the rose bushes and it doesn’t even cost a penny in bird seed.

Categories
Animals Art supplies Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages

Cool Dog in a Cool Car

Cool Boston Terrier, Ink & watercolor
Cool Boston Terrier, Ink & watercolor

This very hip and cool Boston Terrier was watching me with one eye and watching his hip and cool owners with the other from the open window of their cool 1960’s era blue Cadillac. The two guys were wearing hip and cool hats while digging for cool stuff from a dumpster containing items from a remodeling job at the of the Longs Drugs at El Cerrito Plaza.

I’m always drawn to cool stuff in dumpsters or left out on the street, but have to work hard to control those pack rat tendencies since I’ve seen how that turns out (with a certain family member who shall remain anonymous). Unless a found item is something that I need and would buy if it was in the store, I leave it be. I remind myself that I’m NOT a sculptor who makes things from found objects and that I don’t need to bring home someone else’s garbage, regardless of how cool it might be.

To draw the dog I first sketched in pencil from a photo I took of the dog, and then inked with another pen I was testing: the Prismacolor Premier series Fine Line Marker. It came in a set of five pens with varying points from .005 to .08. They’re “permanent, acid-free, lightfast, water-resistant and archival.” I used the .01 and .05 and found them to be comfortable to hold and smooth to draw with.

Categories
Animals Art supplies Art theory Bay Area Parks Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Rush Ranch, Plein Air: Lost Again!

Rush Ranch Horses, Sepia Copic Multiliner and watercolor wash
Rush Ranch Horses, Sepia Copic Multiliner and watercolor wash

Mariah, a wonderful young artist, accompanied me to my plein air group’s paint-out today at Rush Ranch in Suisin City. She was immediately inspired by a spot, sat down and started sketching. I faced the opposite direction and sketched these horses in the corral.

Before we’d left my house, I showed her a book on drawing animals that demonstrated how to first find and assemble the basic shapes contained in the animal (rectangles, circles, triangles) and then refine them. I decided to practice what I preached and did that with the horses. I’d never noticed what big knees horses have before. I sketched with my sepia Copic Multiliner .03 and then added watercolor washes.

Rush Ranch Vista, ink & watercolor wash
Rush Ranch Vista, ink & watercolor wash

The views from Rush Ranch were tremendous. I could have sketched for hours more but we’d arrived late and after our second sketches it was time for the group critique and lunch.

We were late because I got lost yet again (missed the turnoff and drove forever before turning around — and this was with GPS!) My mind had wandered to thinking about the people fishing (and the fish) in the slough off the little bridge we’d just passed so I missed the entrance sign and decided that the GPS telling me I’d arrived was wrong. This was especially stupid since the printed directions from my group said to go over that bridge and then turn right in 3/4 mile.

Instead I drove and drove, went over another bridge and THEN started looking for the turnoff. I went miles past that bridge, eventually arriving at the gate to a “youth correctional facility” (jail for teens) and admitted I’d blown it again. When we finally found our way back and I saw the huge “Rush Ranch” sign, I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.

Well actually I could believe it. I think I could get lost just walking from one room to another these days!

Categories
Animals Cartoon art Illustration Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Meanwhile…. Life Goes On

Zoom Magazine

I’ve been away from my blog this past week, for a number of reasons, including setting up a new computer, an extended family member suddenly hospitalized in a coma with no brain activity, plus other more positive family events.

So in this brief intermission, here is a page from Costa Rica’s Zoom magazine I received recently. My sketches illustrate an article about Leaf Cutter Ants (amazing creatures that live in Costa Rica). When the editor was looking for illustrations she came across my sketches on my blog and asked for permission to use them in the article. It’s fun seeing them in print:

Leafcutter Ants, in "Zoom" (Costa Rica magazine)

(Click image to enlarge)

I’m looking forward to some solid studio time for the next two days and getting back to regular posting. Meanwhile, life goes on…

Categories
Animals Bay Area Parks Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages

Goose (Poop) Park and Subway Sketches

Snow Park (Goose Park), ink & watercolor
Snow Park (Goose Park), ink & watercolor

I meant to take a walk at lunch today but when I saw this old lady feeding the geese I had to stop and sketch. This is a little park near my office in downtown Oakland called “Snow Park” but a better name would be “Goose Poop Park” since it’s home to the many Canadian geese who don’t seem to feel the need to head north or south any longer.

Bart faces and feet, ink & watercolor
Bart faces and feet, ink & watercolor

I drew the faces of these subway riders on my way to work this morning. I drew the feet on the way home. That guy was holding his juice on the floor with his feet.

Categories
Animals Bay Area Parks Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Outdoors/Landscape People Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchercize

Pt. Isabel Sketchercize

Pt. Isabel Sights, ink & watercolor
Pt. Isabel Sights, ink & watercolor

No those aren’t circus dogs stacked up in a doggie pyramid, I just drew them that way as dogs came and went, begging for scraps at the table where the couple was eating lunch.

I’d planned to spend the day in the studio today, but when Barbara called to invite me for a walk at Pt. Isabel, I couldn’t resist. Since it was sunny and not too windy (or so I thought) I also brought along my plein air gear, thinking I might set up to paint there after our walk.  But we took a L-O-N-G walk on the Bay Trail with an equally long walk back, and then had a late lunch at the Sit Stay Cafe in the dog park.

The wind had picked up and I was getting cold and didn’t really feel like spending 3 hours standing in the wind (see top left picture with poor bent over tree from the constant ocean winds). So while I was trying to decide, Barbara took out her sketchbook and I decided to do the same. By the time I finished it was already 4:00 and another weekend was nearly over.

But a day with good solid exercise and a little sketching is a good day and it counts. (Unlike some days that just suck and don’t count.)

Categories
Animals Bay Area Parks Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Places Richmond Annex Sketchbook Pages Sketchercize

Amazing Grace: “Sketchercizing” on the S.F. Bay Trail

Amazing Grace, ink and watercolor 6x9"
Amazing Grace, ink and watercolor 6x9"

The weather is gorgeous in the S.F. Bay Area today, sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. It inspired me to drag my old bike out of hiding and go for my first bike ride in two years. Of course the tires were completely flat. I got my first bit of exercise pumping up the tires (while managing to get chain grease all over myself working from the wrong side of the bike.) Finally took off down the street and 3 blocks later realized that when the front tire pointed straight ahead, the handles bars were turned to the left.

Rode back home, called bike store, got directions to fix it, used wrong little L-shaped wrench thingee which got stuck in the hole, called bike store again, found the correct metric wrench they said to use in my son’s tools he left behind in my garage, got the stuck one out, tried again, but couldn’t loosen the bolt. Looked around to see if there were any men home on the block who could strong-arm it for me. No men home.

Called sons  (both avid cyclists). Son #1 not answering. Son #2 was working from home and was  so sweet, came right over and fixed it for me.  Finally, two hours after I first planned to leave, I was on my way, down to the Bay Trail.

It was glorious! I rode through Richmond Annex, crossed over the freeway on the pedestrian bridge at Sacramento St., over to Central, down to the Bay Trail, and rode all the way to the Rosie the Riveter Monument and National Park in Richmond. I stopped to paint the ship “Amazing Grace” (above) in the Marina Bay Yacht Harbor.

Sit Stay Cafe at Pt. Isabell, ink & watercolor, 6x9"
Sit Stay Cafe at Pt. Isabell, ink & watercolor, 6x9"

My reward on the way home was lunch at the Sit Stay Cafe at Pt. Isabel. I was sitting under a bright red-orange umbrella there when I painted this and so all the colors came out really weird (that’s the bay and SF in the distance on upper right). I loved the body language of the people and the dogs.  Pt. Isabel is an enormous dog park along the bay with spectacular views. The cafe is next door to Mud Puppy’s Tub and Scrub dog bathing shop, so the patio and cafe are dog friendly.

Then I cycled home happy, if a bit sunburned. Tonight is the El Cerrito Art Association meeting, with a demo by artist and Liquitext rep Michele Theberge.

What a great day! The views of the bay, the harbors, the city, were spectacular, the sun hot and the breezes cooling. Doesn’t get much better than this! Definitely an Amazing Grace kind of day!

(Some of this also posted on Sketchercise.ning.com.)

Categories
Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Baby Bird Steps Out

Baby bird steps out and I have questions
Baby bird steps out and I have questions

The day before the baby bird in the nest outside my window left the nest for the first time, his entire extended family of California Towhees chirped loudly all day, making a metallic “chip” sound, calling to him and to each other. The next day there he was, sitting in the tree on a branch near my window, looking right at me. He was bigger than I expected and was definitely having a bad hair day.

And now, quiet. No more constant activity of  bringing food, standing guard, warning off interlopers. The nest is empty and the chirping is over.  After watching them for days raised so many questions, which I scattered in my sketchbook among my 10 attempts to sketch the baby. My favorite was #8 when he turned his head to see mom bringing food and then opened wide to eat that yummy stuff.

I’d always thought birding was for boring old folks but now that I’m a boring old folk myself, I’m finding it quite interesting. Since my knowledge of birds is pretty limited, I initially assumed these guys were robins, since they sort of looked like them but without the red breast. Then I found the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds website where you can search by many different criteria to identify a bird, including their sounds.

That’s how I learned that these guys are California Towhees which I confirmed by listening to them here. If you click the link and go listen to their sounds, you’ll understand how I came to feel that a community of chirping Towhees was as annoying as a neighbor’s constantly barking dog. I’m guessing they were all calling to the baby, “Come out, it’s safe, we’re standing guard, come out, come out, and try your new wings!”

I’m glad the incessant metallic chip, chip, chip sound only lasted one day, but I miss watching the birds being busy in the tree outside  my window and so do my cats.