Around the Corner from Actual Cafe, ink & watercolor 6×8″
When we arrived at the Actual Cafe in Oakland to sketch, the sun was just starting to set. It seemed a shame to go indoors while it was still nice out so we sketched around the corner from the cafe first. Even though it’s in a rundown neighborhood, this house had some charm, with its pillars and rounded porch roof.
Susan Ford’s Sketch of Me Sketching
While I was sketching the house, Susan was sketching me sketching the house (above). She also got the house next door and the cute car as well.
Actual Cafe Espresso machine and counter, ink & watercolor, 6×8″
And then we went inside. I had a delicious cappuccino (decaf these days) and sketched their snazzy Italian espresso machine. As you may have noticed, these are from September; I’m still trying to get caught up on posting sketches and paintings but I just keep making more. That’s a good thing, right?
St. Mary’s College Chapel #2, ink & watercolor, 8×6″
St. Mary’s College in Moraga had two great landscape art shows* that I attended a month or so ago. After I visited the museum I tried sketching their chapel. I had to draw quickly while fighting off wasps that were buzzing around me and kept landing on my bright yellow Lamy Safari pen.
St. Mary’s College Chapel, ink & watercolor, 8×6″
When I started sketching the chapel in the two pictures above, what interested me were the interesting shadows but by the time I finished drawing and was ready to paint, the shadows were mostly gone. I wasn’t having a great sketching day and struggled a bit with both of these.
It’s an interesting campus, very quiet and serene with well-scrubbed, polite students, very different from other Bay Area colleges where diversity and tattoos are the norm. On the hours the bells ring out a very dirge-like sound which seemed out of place.
*The two art shows included “The Nature of Collecting, The Early 20th Century Fine Art Collection of Roger Epperson.” Epperson was a park ranger who over 30 years collected more than 300 museum-quality California landscape paintings by shopping at antique stores, flea markets, garage sales and online. The other show was “Richard Gayton: One Square Mile in California.” I especially loved seeing his sketches and annotations in his journals of the local wildlife and his experiences drawing them within the one square mile in Mt. Diablo State Park.
The best way to start the day is an early morning walk on the beach in Santa Monica. I love the wonderful air, the sounds and scents of the sea and the damp sand on bare feet for miles. My son, his girlfriend, their dog and I drove down there to visit my mom a few weeks ago.
After the Lifeguard Trials swim, lining up at the pier, 4×6″
We stayed at a motel two blocks from the beach so that each morning I could get out and walk the beach. One day they were holding lifeguard trials with hundreds of people lined up on the shore, all wearing green bathing caps, ready to try out for the first round of trials. After the big swim they lined up again at the pier.
Santa Monica Morning Beach Walk, ink & watercolor, 4×6″
My mother grew up in a house half a block from the beach. It would still be in our family if the city hadn’t claimed eminent domain to build fancy high-rise apartments and forced my grandparents out. Their wonderful old house had a great front porch and a backyard that was mostly sand. I always loved visiting them and spending the day at the beach. My grandparents fought the city as long as they could until their house was one of the last standing. Finally they moved about a mile from the beach to the house where my mother lives now.
Although I don’t care for the stereotypical L.A. lifestyle which is all about appearances and money, I miss the southern California beaches where I grew up. Northern California beaches are beautiful but they’re just not the same: rocky, cold, windy and foggy.
Aztec Dancer waiting; wearing animal head (coyote? wolf?), fur and feathers, ink & watercolor, 8×5″ (drawn from Micaela’s photo, not on site)
LOUDDRUMMING! Brilliant Colors! Aztec Dancers! Smoke from sage (and other “herbs”) and grilling meat! LOUD Bands! Dancers! LOUD Spanish radio stations broadcasting live! Sugar skulls! Costumes and painted faces! Marigolds everywhere!
I followed the man in the sketch above after he finished dancing, trying to get a photo or a sketch of him and failed, meanwhile losing my fellow sketchers in the crowd. Micaela managed to get a photo which she let me use for this sketch.
People of all descriptions lined up to be blessed with sage smoke and feathers, (drawn from my photo, not onsite) ink & watercolor, 8×5″
It was the Dia de Los Muertos celebration in East Oakland and I felt like I was in Mexico. Spanish was the language heard everywhere. Families came to celebrate and honor their loved ones who had passed on with beautiful altars filled with marigolds, fruit, religious imagery and mementos of loved ones.
1948 Chevy Fleetline, drawn in ink on site, painted at home (5×8″)
I was finding it difficult to sketch at the festival since it was so LOUD my ears hurt and so crowded we kept losing each other. Being tall, I didn’t want to stand in front of someone’s booth or altar and block the view. Then I found the wonderful old low rider car show at the edge of the event which was much quieter and less crowded. I set up my stool and started sketching directly with a Micron Pigma pen.
People stood behind me and watched me draw. They said nice things about my sketch, including the owners of the car, Jose and Denise, even though my sketch turned their meticulously restored, beautiful work of art into a jalopy.
My first car when I was in high school was a ’49 Plymouth (it was already an antique) and looked a lot like this sketch. To get to school in the morning my sister would have to push it until I could “pop the clutch” to start it. Then she’d run after me and hop in. I was afraid to tell my dad that it wouldn’t start on its own—I thought I’d broken something but it just needed a new battery. I was sad when the motor died.
Boy who likes to draw cartoons watched me (in blue hat) sketch
This young man stood behind me and watched me draw so I offered him a notebook to try his hand at sketching the car but he declined. He said he didn’t know how to draw cars but liked to draw cartoons. I said I didn’t know how to draw cars either, but just did it anyway.
There were booths selling decorated skulls made of sugar, beautiful little skeletons in fancy dress, paper cut-outs, hats, jewelry and even paintings on black velvet of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis as skeletons.
Aztec Dancers, brush pen inkSugar skulls, little skeleton ladies and a view looking down from BART tracks when we were departingPainted faces everywhereSugar candy skulls; they added your name on top for freePretty skeleton dollsAztec DancerOne of the many amazing altars at the festival
When I went to get my car smogged there was a 30 minute wait so I walked down the street to Catahoula Coffee for a latte and some sketching. I only had my pens and a couple of markers with me so I added a little watercolor over the ink and markers when I got home.
The coffee was good and the beautiful coffee roasting machine provided an inspiring challenge to draw. The counter in front of it curves around the shop. That’s an (empty?) burlap bag of coffee beans next to the barista reading his soccer magazine when business slowed down.
End of Journal Self Portrait, graphite and watercolor, 7.5×5″
Just like my life, my blog and journal posts are all mixed up. I always save the last page in each journal for a self-portrait and this was in the Moleskine watercolor notebook that I finished last month.
I did the sketch standing at the big mirror in my studio which I just knew would be great for self portraits. The unlovely, but much-loved apparel in the sketch are a T-shirt my son made for me back when he was a teenage graffiti artist, and my favorite, funky, old grey sweatshirt that I wear all the time at home/in the studio.
The past month has been a bit of a wild ride, with a major transition in progress, which I’ll write about and celebrate here once it’s complete. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can catch up with more posting, painting and drawing!
Halloween City Masks and Punkin Pups, ink & watercolor, 8×5″
We had so much fun sketching at Halloween City, a popup store in the former Petsmart in Albany (next door to Berkeley). They had a great sound system and were playing a variety of good music from stormy classical to Halloween-themed pop hits and dance music.
The Spooky Butler: “Skulls anyone?” ink & watercolor, 8×5″
Along with all the costumes, masks, props and decorations they had a bunch of displays with computerized life-sized ghouls that pop up or start talking or laughing. This spooky butler was part of one of those displays.While I was drawing him the store manager had to climb into the display to change one of the ghoul’s suits. I wonder why.
They also had some inexpensive skeletons and skulls that were close enough anatomically to the models I’ve wished I could afford for studio anatomy practice that I may go back and buy one.
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).
Kensington Chevron with Whip-Out Food Truck, ink & watercolor 8×4″
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).
Stillman & Birn sketchbooks are highly rated by other sketchers so I wanted to try one but couldn’t figure out which paper to choose. I emailed the company and they sent me a packet of paper samples. On a sunny afternoon I tested them using potted strawberries and flowers on the deck for my subjects. (Then I ate the strawberry. Yum!)
The two most likely options were the Multi-Media Surface papers: either the Delta 180 pound ivory (at top) or the Beta 180 pound white paper (above). I liked the way the ink went on smoothly. The watercolor worked well if applied directly in one layer without much water. Otherwise it backwashed like crazy (see splotches above).
I liked the Epsilon paper (above) but worried that the 100 pound weight wasn’t going to be thick enough. The very smooth finish was nice for both ink and watercolor, similar to hot-pressed watercolor paper.
The 100 pound Gamma (above) and Alpha (below) vellum surface paper was probably my least favorite, although I ended up judging my impressions by how well I liked the way the sketch turned out instead of technical reasons since they all took ink and watercolor somewhat similarly.
I chose the ivory Delta paper (at top of the post) in an 8×6″ wire-bound journal because I liked that paper the best, even though it only comes wirebound. I’ve used that journal for the past month. It works well if I draw in ink and then apply a stroke of paint and leave it alone. I’ve been less successful if I add another layer of paint or try to get a smooth wash over a larger area. The paper pills, previous layers of paint lift off, or it backwashes.
I also keep getting nasty, dirty, thumbprints on the previously painted page when painting on the next page (which has ruined a couple nice sketches). But maybe that’s just me being clumsy. Or maybe I should only paint on one side of the paper even though it’s thick enough to paint on both.
I’m halfway through the journal and have found workarounds to my problems. It’s been good practice for me to be more direct and get it right on the first stroke or else. But I’d still like the option to add more washes when I need to. It’s a beautifully made journal but I don’t think I’ll buy another. I’m going back to binding my own with the watercolor paper I prefer.
If you’ve used a Stillman & Birn journal, which version did you use and why do you love it (or not)?
Streetlight on 4th Street Patio, Berkeley, ink and water, 8×5″
When uninspired and all else fails, draw a street light. Even better when there are two lights on the same pole. And a sign.
4th Street Yuppie DadMy Big Foot
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.
Thomas Livingston Antiques, Adeline & Ashby, Berkeley
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.
Jana Bouc, Artist 
