I painted this portrait of a dog named Garbanzo Bean from a bad cell phone photo (see below). I’m posting it here for Garbanzo’s owner to see if she’d like me to make any changes before I deliver it.
Preliminary sketch, ink & watercolor, 8×6
Before I do an oil painting I usually do an ink and watercolor sketch first to try to get the feel of the subject and understand it better. This sketch isn’t a good likeness but it might have captured his feisty spirit even though it portrays him as a much bigger dog than his tiny chihuahua self.
Garbanzo’s photo
Garbanzo is a very cute dog but the photo’s color and detail was funky. His owner’s favorite color is lavender so I made up a lavender wall in her apartment. I hope she likes it!
We’d heard the historic Berkeley Main Post Office was going to be shut down and sold so we decided to go sketch it. When we arrived for our Tuesday night sketching session, there was a “Save The Post Office” demonstration going on. (News report and photos.)
Post Office Protestors and Great Dane, ink & watercolor
By the time I found a parking space and a spot to draw, the rally was breaking up. I quickly sketched a few of the protestors, including an old lady in purple sweats with wild gray hair serving cake and petitions on her ironing board table, and a patient Great Dane.
So what about the Girl Scouts running the post office? While I sat and sketched the historic building, the protesters left except for one man who was shouting slogans and pacing back and forth in front of the building. At first I thought he was part of the rally, but no. While he sounded educated and articulate, he was also literally “raving mad.”
He carried on non-stop, and provided the background sound track to my drawing. Here are a few of his rants that I jotted down.
“Let the Girl Scouts run the post office.”
“Yeah they’re gonna sell the post office. And then they’re gonna sell your mom and put a for sale sign on her buttocks.”
“The Buddhists and the Catholics won’t pick up cigarette butts from the sidewalk. Obama won’t even pick up cigarette butts from the sidewalk. Romney won’t pick up cigarette butts. Berkeley High students won’t pick up cigarette butts from the sidewalk. The Boy Scouts won’t even pick up cigarette butts, the City Council members won’t pick up cigarette butts.” (and on and on)
He lectured on politics, religion, environment, sex, drugs and more. I wondered if he had been a professor or a politician before he lost his mind. Then he packed up his shopping cart and headed to his homeless home. And I finished my drawing and also headed home, grateful for shelter and sanity.
Pt. Isabel in the Dry Summer, ink & watercolor 5x7"
Pt. Isabel is the USA’s (if not the world’s) largest off-leash dog park with 500,000 doggie visits a year. It is situated on what would be prime waterfront property if it weren’t all landfill that will likely return to the sea in an earthquake. Since it doesn’t rain all summer in California, gold, brown and grey-green are the primary colors of the landscape.
Without rain, there’s nothing to wash away the “marks” made by every dog who crosses the stinky bridge that goes from one part of the park to another. I always hold my breath when I cross in the summer. In a few months rain will wash the park clean and everything will be green again.
Barbara's Chickens All Grown Up, ink & watercolor 7x5"
The first time I got to sketch Barbara’s chickens they were these cute little chicks. Now they’re full-grown laying ladies and hilarious to watch as they run about with their tiny bird brains. Barbara has built the most amazing Chicken World for them in her yard, where they can run free and eat bugs and organic greens, safe from predators (raccoons are a big problem here), or snuggle in their cozy nesting house.
Gertie the Dog and Tate the Bunny
The last time we sketched in her garden I sketched Gertie from the front. Here she is from the back. She is a wonderful, loving, and very furry pooch. Then I started trying to sketch the bunny Barbara was babysitting for her daughter. The bunny was so twitchy, didn’t hold still and so fluffy as to be seemingly amorphous. But I knew there were some basic shapes in there somewhere so I kept trying to find them.
In the sketch above I finally did find the basic shape of a bunny. In the first attempts below, not so much. (I love that phrase “not so much” even though I’m sure it’s become passé by now, along with “Really?”, “You think?”, “How’s that working for you?” and “Meh.” Don’t know where those came from but I still like them for their sarcastic yet humorous tone.)
Bunny first attempts; completely at a loss
Above are the first attempts at the bunny, in which I became totally frustrated but didn’t give up. I’m glad I got to draw him since shortly after our sketch night he passed away from a recurrence of a serious illness he’d fought several times before. I hope he has found a home in bunny heaven as nice as the one he had with Barbara’s family.
This month’s Virtual Paint-Out location is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since I seldom travel I find it so much fun to do so virtually via Google Street View. I love being able to wander, exploring roads to see where they go without fear of getting lost (let alone dealing with airports or spending the money).
Here’s the way the scene looked on Google and then the way I cropped and the way I adjusted it in Photoshop.
Original Google Street View, RioRio Photoshopped for painting
As I do these each month I’ve noticed patterns in the way nicer houses and neighborhoods are near beaches or on top of hills and the poorer neighborhoods are indeed on the wrong side of the tracks.
I’ve also noticed a sense of freedom when painting these since I don’t have so much investment in the outcome. And maybe that’s what led to my liking most of my Virtual Paintout paintings more than the ones I’ve labored over.
Zut Restaurant, 4th Street Berkeley, Ink & watercolor
When I saw that a restaurant named Zut! opened on Fourth Street, I remembered Zut the dog, who lived next door to me in Berkeley in the 70s. Zut and his owner Denny lived in a tiny cottage behind a two-story house owned by a man named Huckleberry that he shared with the Arkansas Sheiks‘ (Karana Drayton’s folk group whose fiddler was Laurie Lewis.)
Denny and Zut were also musical; Denny played piano and Zut sang (howled) along with him. Zut and my dog Kangaroo were good buddies and liked to wander the neighborhood together, usually ending up at Bulky Burgers on the corner, cruising for hand-outs.
So when we were sketching on 4th Street last Tuesday night, I asked the hostess about the name. She showed me their mural that included a wonderful portrait of good old Zut and told me that Denny Abrams was indeed an owner of the restaurant.
A La Folie, Undies on 4th Street, ink & watercolor
I always enjoy sketching manikins in shop windows and this one at A La Folie displaying expensive undies didn’t disappoint.
Fourth Street Holiday Lights, ink & watercolor
Fourth Street’s holiday lights were hung so we expected they’d also be lit but only these two were. I guess they are waiting to light them until after Thanksgiving when the shops stay open evenings. Even without the grand lighting, we were grateful for the relatively warm evening that allowed us to sketch outdoors at night in November.
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!
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 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
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 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.
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
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
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.
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.
Jana Bouc, Artist 