A few weeks ago Cathy and I were sketching guests at the Spring Meet of the Golden Gate Live Steamers Club in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. The train people were as curious about us as we were about them, and they wanted to see what we were doing. I usually don’t care when people look at my sketches, but I was drawing their trains that they had lovingly built from scratch, designing and engineering everything from the wood-burning boilers to the screws that held them together. It was like drawing their children—one thing out of place and they would know it.
Train guys
Many of their members maintain and operate trains that their fathers or grandfathers built and they are now apprenticing their sons in the craft. Over the years the club has built a complete course of tracks with trestles, tunnels, and small buildings to match the 1.5″-to-the-foot scale of the trains. You can see photos and videos on their website including this one below of me sketching at the meet (much to my surprise!)
Playland Not At The Beach Museum of Fun is an amazing place created by a group of volunteers and artists who are passionate about the circus, history, carnivals, and a San Francisco amusement park (now long gone) called Playland at the Beach.
Laughing Sal, ink, gouache & watercolor
Hidden away behind a nondescript storefront in El Cerrito, Playland Not At The Beach is both a museum and a place to play carnival, penny arcade and pinball games (including historic and 3-D pinball machines), watch movies, see magic shows, have parties, explore the world of the circus and the world of Charles Dickens in miniature and much more, with room after room of visual delights, each surpassing the next.
Circus Diorama Detail, ink & watercolor (the actual scene had about 3 times as many characters, but with so much to capture in 2 hours, I picked my favorites for this sketch)
The circus dioramas contain 300,000 hand-carved and hand-painted realistic figures of every kind of person, animal and behind-the-scenes activity (even including the cooks carving up big fish for dinner and the separate men’s and women’s dressing tents with performers washing up or changing clothes) and all the acts under the big top, all created by a man who joined the circus at 14 and his father, who were both lifelong circus lovers. It took a month just to create one elephant, which were each carved from a separate block of wood and are about an inch tall.
The creativity and dedication to follow one’s passion that went into making the circus dioramas brought tears to my eyes and left me intensely inspired.
Peet's Coffee after Manet, Graphite, ink & watercolor
When I walked up to the woman at the counter at Peet’s to order my coffee I started babbling that she looked just like someone in an Impressionist painting. She humored me and asked for my order. I ordered my latte, went back to my table, and Googled “Impressionist Bar Painting” on my iPhone. It didn’t take long before I found it.
Manet, Bar at Folies Bergère
I showed her the image on my phone and asked if she’d pose for me like the woman in the painting and she agreed. I don’t have permission to post her photo so all I can show you is my sketch, which is a study for a larger painting.
Needless to say, I left a good tip for my coffee (and modeling services). And fortunately there wasn’t a line of people waiting for their coffees.
I can see that I need to go back to Peet’s to sketch and take more photos so that I can replace the computer monitor on her left with something more beautiful. Or maybe it’s appropriate to be there? But it sure isn’t as pretty as Manet’s oranges and flowers in crystal.
…keep drawing! After feeling so rusty sketching at the county fair I was determined to get my drawing juju back. I knew the only way to find it was to draw more.
I tried sketching at the El Cerrito 4th of July festival (see below) but was all thumbs again. Since I couldn’t make a decent sketch myself, I bought a really nice one at the festival’s art show from my friend Ikuko who had a booth there.
I decided to try again on the walk home. The Hillside Garden Apartments (at top of post) is an ongoing renovation project and labor of love by the owner to convert an old rundown motel into beautifully landscaped apartments. He and the apartment manager were driving by and saw me standing on the corner sketching. They parked and came to see what I doing and we had a nice neighborly chat with much mutual admiration.
Can't Draw; Ink, watercolor, colored pencil (click to enlarge)
Back home I continued drawing. I was happy with this sketch of a rose from my garden (below) but lost focus and overworked the watercolor. So the next day I played around with adding gouache, not worrying about getting the colors “right” since the rose had completely changed anyway.
Love the (Artist) You're With; Ink, gouache & watercolor
Then I wrote myself a little pep talk around the rose, concluding that even if my drawing wasn’t all I wanted it to be, I could at least stop being so self-critical and, to re-phrase the old Crosby, Stills & Nash song: “If you can’t (yet) be the artist you love, then love the one you’re with!”
Ever since I saw a crow repeatedly drop a walnut onto the street from its perch on a wire above, fly down to check it, pick it up and drop it again, I wanted to learn more about them. So I’m reading Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, a sort of “how to” for amateur naturalists who want to explore nature where it lies (or flies) without having to journey out to Nature with a capital “N.” I learned that crows drop nuts on the road, hoping a car will drive over it and crack it open.
The crow in the sketch above had been hanging out with some crows and a few squirrels on a neighbor’s front porch. This odd group was bickering over who got the peanuts and who got the walnuts that my nutty (pun intended) neighbor lady puts out daily (hourly?). When I showed up he took this more watchful stance.
I used to dislike crows because they seemed to overwhelm the landscape when they showed up and their noisy caws drowned out the softer, sweeter sounds of smaller birds. But I’ve learned to appreciate these fascinating birds.
Crows mate for life, have strong communities who help care for the young and sick members, and are quite smart. They play games with each other, can recognize individual human faces, can reason and use tools as this video demonstrates:
Crows are helpful too, since as omnivores, along with plants, they eat insects considered as pests by gardeners, and enjoy fresh roadkill, thus tidying up the neighborhood. They are well-suited to our increasingly urban, concrete jungle, which is why their population has increased. It is estimated that in the U. S. there are as many crows as households—about one crow per family.
If you want more information about crows, there is a good Crow FAQ here by a Cornell University professor who also seems to find them endearing, despite their usually undeserved bad reputations.
We began last Tuesday night’s sketchcrawl at Louise Stanley‘s journal exhibit at the California College of Art in Oakland. Lulu’s paintings and sketches are amazing. She combines classical subjects and a great sense of humor with images of modern women on a grand scale in her paintings and in brilliant ink and goauche in her handbound journals. If nothing else, visit her website to read her bio for a peek into her studio and funny writing, and be sure to check out “Lulu’s Rules for Sketchbooks.”
Her journals are full of travel sketches, copies of museum paintings, and lists of things like pen preference rankings, and titles for paintings. I loved the list “Paintings that Matter” that included titles like ‘When Hell Freezes Over,’ ‘Routine Inspection,’ ‘Unintended Consequences,’ ‘Road to Ruin’ and ‘Dressing the Turkey.” The show at CCA will be up through March 5 and on February. She will also give a talk at the Berkeley Art Center on Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 4:00 p.m.
Next we headed down College Avenue for more sketching.
Dinner at Cactus Taqueria, ink & watercolor
It was nearly 8:00 p.m. and I was hungry, having skipped dinner, so I voted to sketch indoors at Cactus Taqueria. After eating (and sketching) some black beans, grilled veges and a tiny salad I made at the salsa bar from their coleslaw salsa (?!), I was ready to tackle the cactus (well, on paper anyway) that sat on a shelf above my table.
Cactus Basket, ink & watercolor
Then it was back out to College Avenue where we were both inspired by the display at Annie’s Vintage Rack.
Annie's Vintage, ink & watercolor
Cathy liked the old suitcases and I liked the old clothes. I probably should have skipped that unfortunately placed sign that seems to be projecting from the skirt. I think it was supposed to look like a megaphone and said “Back to School Sale” on it (though it was just as nearly unreadable as in the sketch).
…but my son Robin did instead. And he took wonderful, soulful photos that he shared with me. So of course I had to sketch them, starting with this otter whose expression really struck me. It came out a little different in each sketch.
Worried Otter, drawn with icky Pigma Brush Pen
I finally threw away the Pigma Brush Pen I used for this sketch. The point seemed to fray on first use and only got worse. The Pitt Artist Brush Pens seem to hold up better.
Perplexed Otter, Sepia & Black Pitt Artist Pens
I think this one is my favorite either because of his expression (why am I assuming it’s a boy?) or because the drawing reminds me of a series of children’s books I used to read to my sons when they were little, about a little badger named Francis.
And here is Robin’s original photo:
Otter, photo by Robin Bouc
I wonder what this cute little guy was thinking. Doesn’t this just call for a caption? What would it be?
Home-made book press, ink, watercolor, gouache, stencil, hardware store ticket
I made a book press as part of the process of learning to bind my own sketchbook. This of course required a trip to the wonderful Pastime Hardware store. I was so excited that the ticket I pulled from the little red take-a-number thingee for the helpful hardware guy (or in this case gal) had both my initial and my birth month/”lucky” number on it so I saved it for posterity in my sketchbook. (I put quotes around “lucky” since the number has never actually been lucky for anything but I call it my lucky number anyway.)
Just like any project that requires tools, measuring, fractions, or spatial relations, building this simple press was not easy for me. First I had to saw the wood. I didn’t want to have to go to Home Depot (ick) to get someone to do it for me I had a piece of fake oak shelving I’d bought but hadn’t used.
So I used my funky little hand saw (that I bought when I became a home owner and thought I should have a basic set of tools in a toolbox “just in case”) to cut the shelf in half into two one0-foot square pieces. It took forever and my cut was wobbly, uneven and made a mess of the veneer.
Then I measured in from each corner one inch and drilled holes, guessing how big they should be. Unfortunately, since my cut wasn’t even, the holes didn’t line up right and they were too small. So when I assembled all the pieces the boards were all tilty and got stuck. I finally got it all apart again and redrilled the holes larger. This solved the problem and the press worked fine.
Like every step in the bookbinding process, I learned something valuable along the way. In this case I learned I should have clamped the two boards together and just drilled right through both of them to make the holes line up.
In my next post I’ll offer some resources for do-it-yourself bookbinding including the tips I learned from my mistakes.
Pears on a Blue Plate, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache, 7x5"
In the week and half since I gave up sugar and Splenda, pears have become my new treat. Not only are they crispy, sweet and delicious but they come in such pretty colors too. This sketch is a celebration of their gifts.
But meanwhile, giving up coffee didn’t go as well….
Busby and the Coffee Buzz
After five days of feeling wiped out, depressed, listless and witless I couldn’t take it anymore and finally had half a cup of coffee. That’s all it took: within a few minutes I was back to my old inspired self again and the blues were gone. Yay!
Maybe I’ll try to quit caffeine when I’m retired in a few years, but for now, each day is too precious to spend feeling like a zombie.
Fresh : Luck, collaged spread in 6x9 Fabriano Venezia sketchbook
Are you tempted to tear out the page in your sketchbook when a sketch goes bad? I used to do that.
When we were sharing sketchbooks Tuesday night, I pointed proudly to three pages that had terrible drawings on them of an object that simply wasn’t draw-able (or nameable–more about that in a minute). I said, “Look! I wasted three pages and they’re really ugly and I’m OK with letting them just be there.” Cathy the graphic designer, said, “Well, you know, you could just paste stuff over them.”
Is It Luck? Ink & gouache lottery tickets and business card (click to enlarge)
So when I visited my local donut shop in a moment of weakness (apple fritter: my drug of choice) I collected some random stuff they had on the counter: a postcard advertising a Tibet Day, some California lottery slips, the proprietor’s card, and the bag my fritter came in. I thought the picture they chose for the card— an Italian-looking chef—was funny since the store is owned and run by an Asian family. I cut stuff up and pasted it down (the bag was already sticky!), wrote and drew on them, colored with crayons, and painted on some gouache. You see a bit of the bad drawing/writing about it coming through the bag/blue paint.
Fresh Daily, collaged page: post card pieces on bakery bag pasted over bad sketch, and crayons and paint
When I wrote “Is it luck?” I was referring both to the lottery tickets and getting a good drawing. Is it luck when a drawing turns out well? Sometimes it feels like a sketch or painting can’t fail—it seems to paint or draw itself—a total gift. Other times it’s just the opposite and I have the feeling from the very start that the project will be a big FAIL. I try to recognize those negative thoughts and make them stop when I do, but sometimes they just won’t go away.
Oh… and the undrawable thing I was trying to draw? It’s something I found in a “Free” box on a neighborhood walk. A cute little wooden sorting device with numbered slots for 31 days on a sliding thingee, with three little drawers that could hold paperclips or other small stuff. It looks like a funky version of this only in oak color and without the clock.
Sorter, sort of
I thought I might be able to use it for drying paintings on panels, but the slots were too narrow. It was way too boring and complicated to draw so after three tries I put it in the garage to take to the thrift shop with some other donations. I thought about returning it to the neighbor’s “Free” box but that seemed like cheating.
So when the sketch turns into a big mess, now I know what to do: don’t rip it out, don’t just leave it there glaring in its butt ugliness; just do what those TV commercials for kitchen cabinets advertise: “Don’t replace, reface!” And when the subject isn’t fun and/or interesting to draw, stop. Life is too short to waste what is meant to be fun time not having fun!
Jana Bouc, Artist 