car sketch – Jana Bouc, Artist

The El Cerrito Honda dealership was kind enough to allow our Tuesday night urban sketchers group to come and sketch in their showroom. There were chairs and tables for us to sketch and paint in comfort and interesting architecture and cars to draw. I remember boys drawing cars all the time but never thought that someday I’d go out of my way to draw cars too.

The artist Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez told me that she likes including cars in her paintings because they remind her of jewel-like candies. In this post she not only included cars, but got a passerby to stand and pose for her and included him in the painting!

I drew this car at the end of the evening and it was so close to me that it got way out of proportion and then started looking like a shark with whatever that thingee was on top. It’s good to develop the ability to see and draw cars because they’re everywhere, and leaving them out of a scene can look strange.

Artist Beth Bourland told me a funny story about this car sketch on her blog. She kept working on her drawing after the cars drove away. Some passerbys looked at her sketch and then at the empty street in front of her, and back at the sketch, wondering if she was seeing things.

You can see Cathy’s Honda sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog here.

Sketching Shattuck & Vine, Berkeley

Vine Street Produce Store Roof, ink & watercolor — Vine Street Produce Center Roof, ink & watercolor

The best part of sketching tonight was running into beautiful Martha, who promises to rejoin our Tuesday night sketchcrawls again in a month or so. By then it will be light and warm enough to sketch all evening in comfort. The sun was setting and it got cold while I sketched the roof of the Produce Center above. I could see a crowd lining up for pizza at the Cheeseboard Collective where a jazz band was playing. I could hear the music but wasn’t close enough to smell the pizza, just the scent from all the local dogs who’d visited the bush behind the concrete bench where I sat in front of Bank of the West.

Vege Food Restaurant, Vine St., ink & watercolor — Vegi Food Restaurant, Vine St., ink & watercolor

I wouldn’t have thought to sketch this old vegetarian Chinese restaurant (above) until Cathy suggested it as a subject. I’d never noticed the interesting second story before. It was fun to draw quickly (Cathy was nearly done with her sketch when I started) and loosely (using my Lamy Safari while wearing fuzzy gloves for warmth which kept smearing the ink and caused the pen to keep slipping).

It was nearly dark when I started the sketch above, but I couldn’t resist this wonderful old car from the time when big was better. I wish I’d drawn it across the centerfold instead of fitting it on one page because I see I’ve compressed the width, especially the front which was just as long as the back. But I feel pretty pleased, considering I drew a car (not a subject I’m “good” at), in the dark, with a fountain pen held in thick fuzzy-gloved fingers.