After twice starting and wiping off an oil painting of these Gerbera daisies, I switched to studies in ink and watercolor to understand them better. The sketch above is my 4th attempt and below are all four sketches in reverse order.
Tag: Art
- Happy Boy Farms Tomatoes, Oil on Gessobord panel, 12×12″
My friend Barbara said this painting made her want to lick the tomatoes right off the panel. That was her positive feedback when I got stuck and asked for advice at an earlier stage of this painting. The constructive criticism was harder to hear but helped me get to the final painting above. The earlier stages of the painting and her advice are below.
When I set up the still life I hung a light yellow-green cloth as a backdrop and piled the tomatoes into a thrift shop silver basket. I thought I’d use the folds in the cloth to divide up the green background.
I wasn’t feeling well the night we sketched at the newish Rendez-Vous Cafe-Bistro and it looks like I sketched my feelings onto my friend’s face. She was cheery and having fun but my pen gave her an expression reflecting how I felt instead.
There was a guitar jazz duo playing lovely music and the waiter kindly let me order spaghetti and meatballs from the kids’ menu since I just wanted a small portion. As you can see in the sketch above, after I sketched my food on the table I continued down the page, over the binding, and sketched my legs and feet under the table.
By the end of the evening I was feeling much better, as almost always happens when I sketch, especially with such good friends.
The little village of Kensington is battling over their streetlights. According to El Cerrito Patch, “A number of residents in the upscale community complained in late July when PG&E began removing the distinctive old streetlights on wood poles and replacing them with generic “cobra head” lights on shiny steel poles.” The replacement project was put on hold and community meetings planned to sort it.
I wanted to sketch the controversial street lights so we met on The Arlington, Kensington’s main street for our Tuesday night sketch-out. I found a spot to sketch where I could see all three of the street light types (though of course not so close together as in the picture above).
It got dark quickly so we sat outside the Sugar Cone Cafe at their sidewalk tables and sketched by the light from their windows. Across the street at the Chevron Station, people were lining up to get dinner from the Whip-Out Food Truck. It’s funny how food trucks have gone from being “the roach coach” that served awful food to factory workers to the new gourmet thing.
You can see some of the delightful sketches my sketch buddies Cristina and Ceiny did that evening of the festive cafe and the food truck on our Urban Sketchers blog. I give Cathy credit for the pool of light in front of the gas station that I added to my sketch after I saw it in hers (which I’ll link to when she posts it).
When uninspired and all else fails, draw a street light. Even better when there are two lights on the same pole. And a sign.
Finished the street light and spotted yuppie dad waiting for tot and mom to do more shopping at the stores on 4th Street selling mostly expensive stuff nobody needs.
No street light? No problem. There’s always a foot. I put this foot sketch on a birthday card for my son with an apology for passing on the big, narrow feet that make shoe shopping so hard.
A quick little leftover sketch from sketching on Ashby and Adeline. The building is bright red and full of interesting details that will be fun to draw when I have more time.
I wanted to learn how to get from a grisaille underpainting to a full color painting after I did the Frankie Flathead monochrome study. So I decided to set up some colored blocks as if they were a landscape, and paint them in layers, starting with a grisaille, trying to find a method that worked for me.
Above is the final painting and below is the step-by-step process that I followed.
My first trip to the S.F. Giant’s ballpark was for a simulcast of the San Francisco Opera’s production of Rigoletto. Our plan was to sketch this annual tradition where 30,000 people attend the opera for free and picnic on the field or feast on hot dogs, beer and garlic fries in the stands.
Public transit was jammed. I stood all the way to SF on the BART (the subway), then we transferred to a SF Muni streetcar so tightly packed my bag got closed in the door and my big feet barely had space to stand.
Each year a family (a nation?) of yellow-jacket wasps builds a nest here. One year they built a nest in an abandoned bird feeder which led to an interesting garden ecology life-cycle story. This time the nest is under the eaves of my studio. Fortunately it’s in an area where they’re not bothering me and vice-versa.
I would have liked to draw them and their nest with more detail, but decided it was best to work from a distance, have a more vague drawing, and not get stung.
When I eat lunch on the nearby deck, a wasp scout or two will come by for their share, which I put on a plate on the table for them. That way they don’t bother me on the chaise lounge where I usually eat and read.
I investigated having the nest professionally removed but read that they are beneficial to the garden, as they eat insect pests and move pollen around. I was surprised to learn that you shouldn’t swat at them as that makes them instinctively want to bite, which they can do repeatedly since unlike bees they don’t lose their stinger.
When the season changes I’m hoping they go away so I can remove the nest to observe and draw it more closely. And I’m watching for dead wasps that I can draw, but no luck so far.
We started our Tuesday evening sketching outside the Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany. I had trouble with my watercolor Moleskine paper kind of pilling up when I tried to put another layer of paint on the shadow side of the funky building. Not sure why but that has happened to several pages so I’m glad to be finishing up the Moleskine and going back to binding my own sketchbooks.
Around sunset it got cold so we moved inside.
We heard they had free hot stew on Tuesday nights (S’tewsday) and thought that would be a good way to warm up. It turned out they don’t serve it until 9:00 so Judith and I shared a hot toddy (as opposed to a Hot Totsy which the bartender explained was served on fire). It was pretty dark inside and hard to judge the colors we were painting.
I previously posted some snide comments about the Hotsy Totsy Club here, but it got new owners around that time who transformed it from a 72-year-old sleazy joint mostly populated by old drunks to a fun neighborhood retro saloon. Here’s an article about the club’s transformation.
We hung out and sketched until 9:00 when we were rewarded with the most delicious gumbo ever! Full of fat shrimp and all the other spicy goodness that is gumbo. Yum!
Back in the 1970s when Chez Panisse first opened, the neighboring area became known as Gourmet Ghetto, and it has continued in that tradition since then. The area is packed with wonderful foodie joints, fine restaurants and specialty food shops as well as boutiques like Earthly Goods (above).
The French Hotel (above) is in the same neighborhood and has a great espresso bar on the ground floor. A couple of doors down is the Cheese Board Collective, famous for their special pizzas that people line up for while being entertained by a jazz band and then eat, picnic style, on the center median strip of Shattuck, despite signs saying not to. (This previous post has funny video of people breaking that particular rule.)
Jana Bouc, Artist 