Tag: Drawing

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Art supplies Bookbinding Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages

How to Turn Potato Chips Into a Sketchbook

Foil bag of potato chips, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Foil bag of potato chips reflecting on red cloth, ink & watercolor, 5x7"

When my friend Mindy sent me a fun little gift box of potato chips (which were invented in her town, Saratoga Springs, in 1853–read funny history here), I was smitten by the cute box (photo below). Then I opened the box, saw the foil inner pouch and had to try to draw it (sketch above, on a red cloth).

Box of Saratoga Springs Chips
Box of Saratoga Springs Chips

The box was charming, a replica of their original packaging from 1853. I remembered seeing  journals created from packaging on the fabulous Make a Book a Day blog where Donna Meyer binds and posts a new book almost every day. In August she did a whole series of recycled packaging books, from KitKats and Snowballs to root beer books.

Saratoga Chips Journal front cover
Saratoga Chips Journal front cover

So I grabbed a sheet of Stonehenge Kraft-brown paper and the excellent Gwen Diehn book Real Life Journals: Designing & Using Handmade Books to find out how to make a pamphlet book and got started.

Continue reading “How to Turn Potato Chips Into a Sketchbook”
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Albany Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash People Places Shop windows Sketchbook Pages

Evening Outside the Burger Depot

Burger Depot, Ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Burger Depot, Ink & watercolor, 5x7"

Trying to get in one last outdoor evening sketch session of the season, we sketched at the bottom of Solano Avenue in Albany. I stood under a street lamp and by the time I finished drawing it was dark out.

The proprietor of the Burger Depot who has owned the shop for over 30 years saw me trying to paint standing, with my palette and water on the ground, and brought over a plastic chair and a little table for me. The street light and light from inside the shop gave me just enough light to see what I was doing.

I was initially drawn to the scene by two seedy looking guys sitting in a window seat but they left before I could draw them. Fortunately the other two guys eating there were wonderful models who kept returning to the same positions, making it easy-ish to draw them.

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Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Rose Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Will You Accept This Rose? (War of the Roses Part II)

Will You Accept This Rose? Yes, Finally. Watercolor, 7x5"
Will You Accept This Rose? Yes, Finally. Watercolor, 7x5"

After all the struggles of the previous day, I was determined to succeed in painting a rose and decided to give myself a break. First I rearranged the colors in the palette, putting them in my prefered, mostly color-wheel order instead of helter skelter as they were, and replaced several colors (see below for color chart).

Revised Schmincke Palette chart
Revised Schmincke Palette chart

(WN=Winsor Newton, S=Schmincke, DS= Daniel Smith, H=Holbein):

Top Row: WN Transparent Yellow, S Cadmium Yellow Light, DS New Gamboge, S Cadmium Red Light, WN Permanent Alizarin, WN Permanent Rose.

Middle Row: WN Violet, S Ultramarine, WN Cobalt Blue, H Cerulean Blue, WN Winsor Blue, DS Indanthrone Blue.

Bottom Row: S Thalo Green, WN Sap Green, S Yellow Ochre, WN Burnt Sienna, DS Indigo, S Titanium White (the latter will probably be removed since I’ve never successfully been able to incorporate white into watercolors).

Second to Last Rose Test, ink & watercolor
Second to Last Rose Test, ink & watercolor

The other thing I did to give myself a break was that after I made the second to last rose sketch above from life, I decided to work from a photo of the rose.

Continue reading “Will You Accept This Rose? (War of the Roses Part II)”
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Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Painting Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Lavatera Clippings In Amaretti Cookie Can

Lavatera Clippings in Amaretti Cookie Can, ink & watercolor,7x5"
Lavatera Clippings in Amaretti Cookie Can, ink & watercolor,7x5"

I love this old can that once held Amaretti cookies. After trimming some branches off the giant Lavatera bush by my deck, I decided to paint the cuttings. The cookie can was the first thing I spotted that would hold water and flowers.

I used the new Schmincke watercolors palette I recently bought on sale at Wet Paint. I love the palette but after a few trials, added and replaced some colors which I’ll write about next time. The Schmincke pan paints worked beautifully in the hot sun, releasing juicy flowing paint with just a touch of a wet brush.

I think the sketch captured the feeling of heat and strong light and the funky little table with a dirty glass top looks just like itself.

Categories
Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

How to Save Money at Whole Foods

Whole Foods Oakland, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Whole Foods Oakland, ink & watercolor, 5x7"

It’s easy to save money at Whole Foods! Just draw the food, don’t buy it! 🙂

We met at the fancy Oakland Whole Foods for Tuesday night sketching and I had trouble settling down from a challenging day at work. After a couple of false starts outdoors on the patio I moved indoors and found a table with an interesting view.

I decided to start in pencil instead of my usual ink since I was feeling insecure after the first two fails. I was still drawing when everyone wanted to meetup for our show and tell, which I ended up missing so I could finish in ink. I added the paint at home the next day.

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Animals Bay Area Parks Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Places Sketchbook Pages

Summer Stinky Bridge at Pt. Isabel

Pt. Isabel in the Dry Summer, ink & watercolor 5x7"
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.

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Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

K-9 Unit, Paramedics and Fire Truck at El Cerrito Plaza

K-9 Unit, Paramedics and Fire Truck, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
K-9 Unit, Paramedics and Fire Truck, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

The parking lot at El Cerrito Plaza was filled with police cars, fire trucks, hazmat vans and other emergency responders when I walked up there to do errands Saturday. Contrary to my sketch above, which looks like a police car crashed into an ambulance (thanks to a little drawing flaw), it turned out to be the annual Tri-City Safety Day.

I sat on the curb and sketched while cops, firemen and other public safety people handed out fire hats, pencils and buttons to kids who got to climb on police motorcycles and fire trucks, and explore the DUI checkpoint trailer.

The K9 patrol car was off limits when I was there, as King was standing guard inside, barking if you got too close. I heard that earlier he’d been out and available for petting but I bet the huge German Shepherd scared off more kids than enticed them.

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Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Figs On Deck

Figs in glass bowl in sun, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Figs in glass bowl in sun, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

After a summer of fighting with a contractor to properly complete my backyard deck and some other construction (beginning stages of garage to studio conversion), the work is done and I can finally enjoy painting on my backyard deck. This was my first happy little backyard sketch of three varieties of organic figs. I painted sitting on my cute new wicker love seat, bought  for just $20 from neighbors who were moving away.

I may at some point share my lengthy rant about the way many contractors condescend, ignore, cheat and/or bully women clients, but it’s too nice a day to dwell on such things. I’ll just say that after talking to other women who’ve managed their own construction projects with male contractors, the problem is all to common.

But now the sun is shining, the wind and fog have disappeared and I have a little bouquet of roses waiting to be painted so I’m heading out to the deck!

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Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Life in general People Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

4th Street Berkeley Sketches during New Apple Store Grand Opening

This Old Band on 4th Street, 7x5", ink & watercolor
This Old Band performing on 4th Street, 7x5", ink & watercolor
Waiting in Line at Apple, Waiting to Play in Front of Peets, 2 page spread
Waiting in Line at Apple, Waiting to Play in Front of Peet's, 2 page spread

When the new Apple Store opened in Berkeley, I played hooky from my plein air group’s scheduled paint out and went down to 4th Street in pursuit of sketching opportunities and one of the free t-shirts Apple was giving out to the first 1,000 customers.

When I arrived an hour after the grand opening, the line was barely one block long and moving quickly. By the time I sketched a few people and balloons (above) I was in the store. I got my shirt, bought a gizmo for my gadget and went across the street to Peet’s Coffee.

This Old Band
This Old Band playing on 4th Street

I enjoyed an iced coffee at a sunny table on their front patio as “This Old Band” set up to play. The music was wonderful, with a sweet, sensitive, gentle feel to it including some Otis Redding, The Drifters and other great oldies played by talented musicians.

There were some interesting (?) conversations going on around me.

Peet's Patio People, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Peet's Patio People, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

This guy was actually sitting at a table with another woman beside him on his right blabbing away, but he seemed more interested in this one.

A chubby, balding, dorky-looking, baby-boomer guy sitting behind me pompously talked non-stop about his life as a rock star and the book he was writing about it. His wife never said a word, and the guy he was talking to was obviously someone he was paying to help him with the book, though he barely got a word in either.

After dropping dozens of famous stars’ names who he supposedly shared a life with, he admitted it was “Better to be a Has Been than a Never Been.”

Categories
Berkeley Ink and watercolor wash Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Monterey Market and Berkeley Horticultural Nursery

Monterey Market Sunflowers, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Monterey Market Sunflowers, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

My Tuesday night sketch group met at North Berkeley’s Monterey Market to sketch just before the produce store was closing. My friends started indoors while I stood and sketched the buckets of sunflowers in the parking lot, using a handy shopping cart as my table.

Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

When the store closed at 7:00 they joined me in sketching the sunflowers. Then I walked around the block to the entrance of the wonderful Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. I saw this crazy Dr. Seuss-like plant along their fence and had to sketch it. Each fuzzy orange-red flower grows out of a stalk that comes up from the flower below it.

The next morning I called Berkeley Hort to ask about the plant. The guy who answered went outside to check and told me it is a Leonitus Lenorius or “Lion’s Tail,” a drought-resistant, sun-loving plant.

You can see Micaela’s market sketches here and Cathy’s market, melon and sunflower sketches here on our Urban Sketchers blog.