This calf was in a photo on my Vermont friend Ruth’s Strava page and I thought it was so cute I took a break from the people portraits I’ve been working on to do a quick oil sketch of it.
Ruth told me about the photo: “It’s the dairy farm next door. Run by Sebastian Von Trapp, who is the great grandson of Captain Von Trapp. Sebastian’s grandfather was one of the Von Trapp singers!”
On the road home from the Port Costa adventure in my last post I spotted this barn and pulled off the road (this time actually managing to stay on the pavement!) into the Bull Valley Staging Area parking lot to sketch it.
When I finished I noticed a herd of cows grazing on the hill beside the parking lot and walked over to the fence to sketch them. As you can see, I know nothing about cows and these gals weren’t holding still for me.
Then the strangest thing happened. A very old Asian man with very long whiskers and long hair, wearing only loose pants and flip-flops appeared in the cow pasture, walked up the hill through the cows and just kept on going until he disappeared. A guy with a camera was taking pictures of the cows and we looked at each other confused. We tried to figure out his story but could come up with nothing.
When Cathy and I visited the Marin County Fair to sketch I was experimenting with sketching on pieces of paper instead of in my sketchbook as I wrote about here. Later I pasted the sketches into my journal. Above is a medley of chickens of various kinds along with one of the 4-H girls sitting at the “pet a chicken” table.
I asked this sweet boy if he intentionally styled his hair to match his chicken and he looked at me like I was nuts and said, “No.” The best part of the fair for me is seeing the kids who show their animals and win prizes for how well they present them.
I made numerous attempts to draw cows, trying to figure out their shapes, and finally sketched one I liked plus a few parts (head and butt). I had no idea their feet had two toes(?). Amazing what you don’t see when you don’t really look.
It got really hot so we went into the air-conditioned theater on the fair grounds to see the Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats perform. I tried sketching in the dark, adding color later. They were amazing. The sketch, not so much.
For the last sketch of the day we sketched from the midway. I sat on a ledge on the back of one of the game booths in the shade of the hanging teddy prizes. I cooled off a little more than I expected: I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was sitting in a puddle of water.
Cathy’s sketches of the day were fabulous (as always) and can be seen on our Urban Sketchers blog here.
Jana Bouc, Artist 