We always enjoy a visit to Saul’s Deli in Berkeley for sketching and dinner. I got my usual grilled trout dinner but was too hungry to draw it before eating. One of the owners of Sauls, Karen Adelman does the wonderful quirky drawings on their menus and website and always makes us feel welcome to come and sketch there.
More Saul’s sketches from my pals Micaela, Sonia and Cathy on our Urban Sketchers site.
Falling behind and worrying about catching up can be stressful when it’s about work not accomplished, tasks not completed. But in the case of my blog, being behind on posting is a good thing. It just means I’ve been doing lots of painting and sketching with less time for the computer (a goal for this year).
I did the sketch above on the day I was preparing to leave for a weekend painting workshop. I reminded myself that I was officially on vacation, which allowed me to slow down enough to stop and sketch while out walking to do errands instead of rushing back home to get packed.
This sketch came in handy last week at work, when I wrote and illustrated a blog post for our literacy organization’s blog. My post’s subtitle was: “Two birds with one stone” (intentionally leaving off “kill”). Our clever editor suggested changing it to “Feed two birds with one scone.” So then I needed a sketch of a scone to accompany my two birds. Since I always have my sketchbook with me I was able to scan the scone sketch. You can see the result on our Reading Apprenticeship blog here.
And I will get that backlog of artwork posted soon!
North Beach Pizza in Berkeley is housed in a former International House of Pancakes. Pizza is a sort of large pancake, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it served with maple syrup. We had a good time eating, chatting and sketching the night away, six of us in one cozy booth.
I drew the pizza before sharing it with Cathy and Micaela (her sketch is here on our Urban Sketchers site.)
Today was a bad news, good news day. It started with a migraine that eventually passed enough to work most of the day (despite the internet going down, fixing that and then a little later the electricity went out long enough to shut down the computer with several projects in progress). The migraine left behind a tummy ache. I couldn’t deal with the supermarket so went to the little health food store and bought some natural Ginger Ale, organic saltines and candied ginger (all supposed to be good for tummy aches).
The good news is that this morning my reliable but grumpy mailman delivered my new Namiki Falcon fine point fountain pen and this evening I felt well enough to fill it with ink and give it a spin. I LOVE IT! The nib floats like a dream over the page with control and flexibility and a really nice fine line. It’s the best pen I’ve ever used. UPDATE June 2011: After using the pen for a few weeks I discovered that I didn’t really like it that much and sold it. I felt I had too little control of the ink flow, which went to fast for me, even with the extra fine nib. I’ve gone back to my Lamy Safari extra fine point which I LOVE!
The other good news is that with these sketches I finally finished filling the Moleskine watercolor sketch book that I’ve so detested using during the interim between binding sketchbooks. Tomorrow I get to start using the one I bound a couple of weeks ago. Yay!
Whenever we meet to sketch at a cafe we always try to sketch our food before we eat it and we always joke about what a great diet it would be to do that at every meal. It not only helps to slow down eating, but it also helps to speed up sketching! This leads to looser, more playful sketches which I think are more fun to make and to see.
Sonia and I met for lunch at The Junket, a deli in El Cerrito Plaza. My Turkey and Swiss Sandwich on a sourdough baguette (sketched above) was the best I’ve had in years. It was my second choice though, as we originally ordered Chicken Dumpling Soup. But when I saw them spooning it into a bowl, it had the consistency of gloppy, yellow gravy. I asked if it was cream-based (Sonia is allergic to dairy) and they said no, they knew it wasn’t because they reconstitute it with water. Um…no thanks. I switched to the half sandwich and Sonia got salad and we were happy.
On our next Tuesday night sketch-out we met at the Bread Workshop. They had contacted me the week before to ask if they could use this previous sketch I did there to illustrate a newsletter they are sending to supporters and I gladly said yes. They reserved a large table for us with a view into the bakery so that we could draw the bakers working.
I wasn’t much up to that challenge as it was my first night out after being sick for two weeks and my sketching felt rusty. You can see Micaela’s wonderful sketch here and Sonia’s here and here. The food was fantastic: my grilled veges (above) were so flavorful!
This was the extent of my drawing bread and bakers. The Bread Workshop are advocates of sustainable foods and practices and ranked as one of the top ten greenest restaurants in the Bay Area. Everything I’ve had there has been delicious and they were playing great music that night, going from George Benson to Billy Holiday to Tom Waits in succession.
Happy New Year! Thanks for hanging out with me this past year! Even though I’ve had a nasty cold all week I managed to get in some pomegranate painting between nose blowing, naps, and chicken soup breaks, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped to do over my year-end vacation.
I only had enough energy to be in the studio for a couple of hours a day but fortunately the pom waited nicely for me. I started by doing a value study in oils (above), trying to sort out where the darkest darks and lightest lights are and just how dark and light they are.
I did a small study next since I knew I didn’t have more than an hour or so of painting energy. I had fun with this and feel like I’m starting to find a way to get loose and sketchy with oils.
I used a GE Reveal light bulb in my lamp which gave everything a pinkish-lavender cast and that’s why I named the painting “Pomegranate Revealed.” GE says they are “specially made to filter out the dull yellow rays produced by standard incandescent bulbs.” I’d bought it originally thinking it would simulate daylight but it doesn’t at all. I usually use a fluorescent 5000K bulb 40 watt bulb (equal to 150 watts) which does a better job of producing clean light.
When I compared the final painting and the studies I realized I liked the original composition with less background better so I experimented with cropping the painting in Photoshop. It’s not hard to cut the board down if I decide to crop it for real.
What do you think? Do you like this cropped version or the “final” version at the top of the post better?
Ranch 99 Asian Market is a great place to sketch on a dark rainy night. The delicate pink of these cleaned whole squids on crushed ice was the first thing to grab my attention. I Googled “soak squid” to see if it was a variety of squid but from what I read, I think it was pre-soaked in milk or buttermilk for several hours to tenderize it.
Even though I’ve sketched their hanging fowl before, there were a greater variety this time including one on the right that I thought looked like a rabbit.
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the similar shapes but different colors piled beside each other. I was running out of time before we were to meet but still tried to draw each individual shape as they appeared rather than generalize.
The Dragon Fruit again grabbed my attention and one of these days I’ll get around to eating one. I fought the temptation to shop instead of sketching so didn’t bring anything home this time.
Now that it’s dark by the time we meet we’re back to scouting out indoor sketch sites. We met up Tuesday night at the Saturn Cafe (to carry on from last week’s sketching at Jupiter). But we found the atmosphere at Saturn kind of sterile, gray and sad despite their vibrant Barbie-pink soda fountain theme so we headed across the street to the vibrant, warmly lit Cancun restaurant.
I enjoyed drawing all the odd angles and perspective in the multi-level ceiling and light fixtures. But when I finished I wondered why’d I’d chosen to draw the least colorful area of the cafe which has wonderful Aztec-themed murals on all the walls.
The young woman taking orders asked to see my sketch at the end of the evening, wondering what we were all doing and why I’d been looking in her direction so carefully. I was embarrassed by how poorly I’d drawn her face (drawn in ink there was no fixing it) but she smiled and said they were nice sketches. (More sketches from Cancun by my sketch buddies on Urban Sketchers Bay Area).
After much trial and error I figured out just the right steps and ingredients to make delicious yogurt and so of course had to sketch the process. I wanted to make my own yogurt so that I could get the mild, creamy flavor I like without adding more plastic to the landfill; I already have a lifetime supply of empty yogurt containers.
Ingredients for 7 cups:
48 oz. Organic 1% Milk
6 oz. yogurt at room temperature (I like Clover 1.5% Plain Yogurt) or use 1 cup from previous batch
2 T. Organic powdered low-fat milk (optional)
Quick-read Thermometer
1 Quart measuring cup
2 Quart Pyrex casserole dish
Whisk
Directions:
Pour 48 oz. of milk into Pyrex casserole dish, or pot (if using stove)
Cook until 180° F. (almost boiling, 15 minutes in my microwave)
Remove from microwave and allow to cool until 110° F. or room temperature. If skin forms on top, use a fork to skim it off.
Turn on the yogurt maker* and put the jars in place so they can pre-warm.
Pour a cup or so of the milk into the 1 quart measuring cup.
Whisk the 6 oz. container of yogurt (should be at room temperature) and the powdered milk (optional) into the milk in the measuring cup.
Pour the milk/yogurt mixture back into the big bowl of milk and whisk all until completely blended.
Pour the mixture into the individual jars.
Put the dome lid on the yogurt maker and set timer for 8 hours.
When it turns off, place lids on jars and put in the refrigerator to cool.
When cold, eat as is or add fresh fruit.
Yum.
*The Waring Pro Yogurt Maker comes with reusable plastic containers but I replaced them with 1 cup glass canning jars which are more appealing. I eat the yogurt right out of the jars, wash them and use them again. The Waring helps to make the process simple: it has a timer and holds the yogurt at the right temperature for the number of hours you set it to run and then it turns off. The longer it “cooks” the more tart it becomes. But you don’t really need equipment to make yogurt; you can use a thermos, an oven pilot light or even a crock pot, but for consistent results the Waring is great.
Sketching at Pacific East Mall is always an interesting proposition because it’s almost like visiting an Asian country (without the jet lag or costs). The stores and restaurants feature food and products from all the Asian countries and most of the signage and languages spoken there are also Asian.
It was fun copying the Chinese characters on the signage for these amazing and aptly named Dragon Fruits (above). I could picture these little dragons marching in a festive parade. I’m also really curious to try eating them. According to Wikipedia they are the fruit of a cactus and have a creamy pulp and a delicate aroma.
Another strange fruit, Cherimoyas had wonderful pattern on them. Since the green grocer spoke no English and I no Chinese I asked Google about the Cherimoya and learned some amazing things:
Mark Twain called the cherimoya “the most delicious fruit known to men.” The fruit is fleshy and soft, sweet, white, with a sherbet-like texture, which gives it its secondary name, custard apple. Some characterize the flavor as a blend of banana, pineapple, papaya, peach, and strawberry. Others describe it as tasting like commercial bubblegum. Similar in size to a grapefruit, it has large, glossy, dark seeds that are easily removed. The seeds are poisonous if crushed open and can be used as an insecticide. An extractive of the bark can induce paralysis if injected.
At the Ten Ren tea shop, Sonia ordered a Bubble Tea, a pink drink that had little blueberry-colored and sized balls of tapioca in it. We sat at a table and sketched to their background music of 1980’s rock and roll. One song came on that I recognized and tried think of the name of the band which led to us playing Senior-Moment Trivia. From my lame clues (big hair, blonde, nice guy with a bunch of kids, New Jersey, band named after him, there’s a “J” in the name…Jansen…no…) she came up with name of the band as we were leaving, saving me from a tortured night of trying to come up with….Bon Jovi!
It’s a good thing I was warmed up and sketching fast by the time I came to the hanging poultry. The store was preparing to close and an employee snatched them all off the line as I began to draw the last one.
Jana Bouc, Artist 