Old Car Parts in the Spring Garden, ink & watercolor 8×11″
I inherited a bunch of rusty old car parts when I converted the garage (formerly used by my son to restore a 1970 muscle car) into my studio. I thought they were interesting looking “sculptures” and stuck them in my garden, planning to draw them.
It took me a year to get around to it but I finally spent a fun morning sketching them amidst sprouting irises. When I finished, I gave most of them to the my gardener who also collects scrap metal for recycling. I kept the two most interesting pieces as possible oil painting still life subjects in the future.
My friend Amy gave me the lovely gift of an Anthurium plant. I couldn’t wait to sketch its interesting shapes and colors.
Anthurium 2, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I keep it in the studio because my cats eat house plants and then give them back partially digested. The plant held up well during the week and a half I was too sick to go out to the studio. It just wanted a little water and repotting.
Camellia in Blue Bowl, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I can never remember the name of this large flowering bush in my yard. I have to go through the same stupid chain of thoughts to get to it, always starting with “It’s not a gardenia it’s a….” which always leads to remembering when I moved to New York City at the age of 19 with one suitcase, a few hundred dollars in savings, and lots of dreams.
When I arrived and opened my suitcase, my bottle of (cheap, intense) Jungle Gardenia perfume had spilled all over everything. I still hate the scent of gardenia. Camellias have no scent and are a wonderful vibrant pink color, but are challenging to sketch. I did this large watercolor of a camellia (below) several years ago.
Ruffled Camellia, watercolor on paper, 16×19.5″
Seeing my earlier watercolor work makes me want to go back to doing large watercolors. My process was so different when painting rather than sketching with watercolor. I worked slowly and with control, section by section, on very exact drawings or tracings from photos. You can see more of my watercolor flowers on my website JanaBouc.com here.
Crab Apple Blossoms colored pencil on tan paper in 8×11″ Moleskine Journal
Once more with the crab apple blossoms, this time on tan paper using mostly a Prismacolor black grape colored pencil and white pencil (and then pasted in my giant Moleskine).
I sketched these before I did the oil paintings posted previously below. I wanted to try the approach of sketching with only three values: the tan paper as mid-range plus highlights and shadows. But I wasn’t seeing a lot of variation in value in the subject. Everything except for the whitish pink blossoms looked like a medium dark value. So what I was trying to do didn’t really make sense. But it was fun anyway.
The Visitor 2 Million Prize on Making a Mark
Katherine Tyrrell credited me with being or generating the 2,000,000 millionth visitor to Making A Mark, my favorite blog about art on the web. We were both down with a nasty flu bug then so she missed seeing the counter tick over to 2 million. But she could tell it was either me (reading her blog from bed with box of tissues in hand) or someone referred from my blog, so she named me the prize winner. Her blog is such a gift to the artist/blogger community. I learn something new every time I read her weekly “Who’s Made A Mark” column.
Piled up Shoes and Slippers, ink & watercolor, 5×16″
More crazy dreams! The night after the lost keys dream, I dreamed I was at a retreat where I kept losing my shoes. So of course I had to draw them, just to be sure they were still here.
Lately my every-day sneakers have started untying themselves several times a day. So then I dreamed that Justin Bieber and Justin Timberlake were giving me hands-on shoe-tying advice.
My Every Day Sneakers
They unlaced my shoes and then snipped the laces into small pieces. They explained that you need a separate piece for each set of holes and then you knot each piece to the next. We started running out of laces. I think I’ll just start double-knotting them, thanks. Or maybe it’s time for new shoes?
Birkenstocks, Dansko Clogs and Fuzzy Slippers, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
Yes those are magenta polka dots on my ancient Birkenstocks: I painted the funky old shoes with acrylic paint dots and it worked great. I’m definitely not a high heels kind of girl as you can see.
Dreamt I Lost My Keys So I Drew Them. Ink & watercolor, 5×8″
Sometimes I have the stupidest dreams. It’s unlikely I would actually lose my keys since I always put them in the same place. I do this because, like Winnie the Pooh, I’m “a bear of very little brain.” Although I haven’t lost anything* in a long time, I used to lose everything. My parents always said, “If your head wasn’t attached you’d lose that too!” I may not have a good memory but now I am organized about where I keep things.
The View From My Kitchen Sink, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I did this sketch at the end of January after a month of not drawing while focusing on year-end organizing, learning a new computer, creating spreadsheets and doing taxes. The sketch is crazy wonky but it felt good to get back to drawing, even if it was just the kitchen sink, and the view out my window of my bottle brush tree, lemon tree, little purple potato tree and my neighbor’s house.
*(oops…not true…I keep losing my metal water bottles because they fall out of the too-shallow pockets on my backpack. I use a carabiner to keep the bottle attached now, but I’m going to replace the old bag with one with deeper water-bottle pockets. No point in using something that is so inefficient.)
Crazy Chickens 1 at Poulet, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
The night we sketched at Poulet, a mostly chicken café in north Berkeley, I was feeling out of practice with drawing. So instead of trying to sketch the architecture or people I just drew their collection of chickens displayed on shelves, counters and walls.
More Ceramic Chickens at Poulet, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I didn’t bother with the shelves they sat on or perspective or anything serious…just allowed myself to be as playful as the silly chickens. That helped me get over my insecurity, warm up my hand and get back to sketching again after a brief spell of doing everything but art at the beginning of the year.
Poultry Panorama (2-page spread in my sketchbook).
Mira Vista Country Club Putting Green and Golf Carts, ink & watercolor, 5×16″
My plein air group held our annual season kick-off meeting at the Mira Vista Country Club on Saturday where one of our painters has a membership. Afterwards, I sat on a bench in the sun and sketched the clubhouse, putting green and all the cute little golf carts.
Mira Vista, left side of spread, 5×8″
Although I prefer jeans to dress up and agree with Thoreau’s quote: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,” the club has a dress code that prohibits denim. So it was fun seeing how nicely the paint-spattered artists I’m used to seeing at our painting sessions can clean up, even if it meant I had to dress up too.
Mira Vista, right page, 5×8″
Our plein air schedule starts up again next month. Last year I only sketched at our paintouts but this year I’ve committed to dragging my oil painting supplies again and giving actual plein air painting another try. But if I still find it too frustrating to stand in one spot instead of exploring the locations, I’ll go back to sketching.
Ale and Ale Drinkers, ink & watercolor sketch, 5×8″
Before being seated at Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley some of us went upstairs to sketch. I enjoyed the perspective challenge of drawing these guys below me, sitting and standing with their pitcher of beer.
The menu recommended their Apricot Ale with the Blackened Salmon dinner (fruity beer a bit odd but tasty). The beer came before my food so I sketched it. I was too hungry to draw my delicious dinner.
Plates at Pyramid Brewery, Ink & watercolor, 5×8″
After dinner I drew what I could see from my corner of the booth where I was kind of wedged in. And that should finally be the end of December and beer sketches. Now on to posting more interesting stuff than beer and dishes!
I love the way the big guy seems to be looking at the pretty girl’s butt in her shiny black tights. In reality they got in line at different times, but my drawing took on a life of its own.
One of the things I love about living in the Bay area is the wide variety of people you see, dressed however they please, with either no concern about fashion or a style all their own. I fit right in!
While I was in Walnut Creek to take photos of an industrial park for a painting commission I stopped at the Shadelands Ranch Museum to sketch. They were hosting a ladies’ tea that afternoon in the downstairs drawing rooms that looked quite charming. I explored the rest of the house but sadly they told me I couldn’t sketch inside.
I would have loved to draw the Walnut Creek Historical Society volunteers serving in white aprons, the fancy table settings, and most especially the gang of Red Hat Society ladies seated in one of the rooms. I waited outside and sketched the building, hoping to capture them coming out after the tea but they dawdled so long I had to leave or get stuck in rush hour traffic.
Shadelands Ranch water fountain, ink & watercolor 8×5″
I drew this water fountain on the property to warm up before tackling the massive Penniman home. Then I did the three sideways thumbnails on the left to try to figure out how much of the house I wanted to draw and how I’d fit it in on the paper.
Jana Bouc, Artist 