(Above) There is so much on these two pages that I’ll post them separately below with their stories. The righthand page was especially meaningful, with the pink ballet dancers from my dream:
Tag: ink and watercolor
For Wordle: NINTH, I chose the ninth story from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. In that story a porter follows the lady of the house through the marketplace and carries all the goods she purchased (which I drew, above). No shopping carts in those days, I guess.
I didn’t remember any dreams so I painted the beautiful Great Blue Heron I saw at Point Isabel today.
I was so happy with the first page and so unhappy with the second one. I spent a lot of time on the drawing of the complicated apple slices in the slicer and then totally messed up the painting. I tried to “fix” it but on Hobonichi Tomoe River paper you really have to get the painting in one shot. Fixing rarely works.
Above is the two-day, two-page spread; keep reading to see the individual pages with the stories below in this continuing journal series of the day’s Wordle and my wacky dreams.
The left page above was personal. I had just had surgery (with stitches still in place) to fix my vision-impairing eyelids so a self-portrait with stitches seemed like a perfect fit for Wordle: ALTER.
On the right, the Wordle was BLURB so I shared a blurb I wrote about “The Foundling” by Ann Leary. You can click twice to see an enlarged version to read my blurb/review.
Please keep reading below for another week’s worth of journal pages.
Today I’m including a week of journal pages to (try to) catch up. You can click twice on any image for a larger version. My favorite funny dream stories are on the last page below.
Above, left: Wordle was MATEY. I drew an obituary photo for a Ms. Doris Matey and an “Ahoy Matey Dahlia.”
Dreams that day:
- A guy took my spot at a shared art studio
- Shopping for a water brush in an old car repair garage
- My sister and my niece looking like each other
Above, right: Wordle was ELUDE so I drew a kitty eluding capture.
Dream: two guys had a podcast about coyotes at their coyote ranch (and some other stuff I didn’t draw–zoom in on text in photo if you care).
Wordles and dreams for these two days sparked some fun drawing/painting. See below for closeups and details for each page.
Above is the 2-day spread and below are the individual pages with a bit of the stories.
Black Crowned Night Heron I saw at the park today
Continuing from the previous post, here are the rest of December’s Wordles and Pictures and dream sketches.
They’re tearing up all the streets in my neighborhood which were already horrible. There are so many potholes I often drive with one wheel on the center double yellow line since that is the only part of the road not in shreds.
The city had deferred maintenance for the past couple years, waiting for funds to replace the water lines (requiring street demolition) and then finally to pave them. The federal money finally arrived (thanks Obama!) and now the workers are out in force ripping up all the streets (in between their lengthy breaks every hour to stand around, smoke, snack and shoot the bull).
This seemed a fitting image for one of the last few pages of my journal since I’d done some tearing up and rebuilding of my own (figuratively) during the months it was in use. (More about that next time.)
I was sitting on a corner near my house sketching this near sunset when a nice, ordinary, family man who lives on that block (with a perennially messy front yard), wandered over to see what I was doing, reeking of marijuana. He showed me a wooden burl bowl he’d just carved and we talked briefly about the joy of creativity and then he wandered off again.
P.S. Not that anyone cares, but I was curious what this tractor thingee was called so I looked it up. It’s a backhoe-loader, a fun word to say out loud. It sounds like a line in a country western song.
I stood outside on a dark, drizzly night in front of Brennan’s Bar and Restaurant last Tuesday night, drawing until my sketchcrawl buddies arrived. Brennan’s recently moved to a new building, a former train station a block away from their former location under the University Avenue overpass in Berkeley.
I’d propped up my sketchbook on the hood of a truck parked nearby and immersed myself in figuring out the building. “HONK! HONK!” Suddenly the truck honked at me. I jumped, and moved away, thinking someone was approaching and would get in their truck and drive away. But nobody showed up so I went back to drawing. But then every few minutes the truck would HONK at me again.
Each time I jumped and then I heard guys laughing. One of the three silly, half-drunk men joking around near the bar was using his remote to play around with me. He came over to see if I was drawing him, as his friends said I was doing. Uh, no. But I told him he could pose for me. He declined and they left just as Cathy and Sonia arrived.
We went in and ordered dinner. I have a thing for turkey legs so while Cathy and Sonia each ordered half turkey sandwiches, I got this huge plate of turkey, mixed veges, boiled cabbage (yuck, what was I thinking?) and boiled potatoes. The turkey was great and I took home enough for two more meals.
I switched to using a Pilot Varsity fountain pen, adding water over the lines with a waterbrush to make washes. It was so convenient sketching at Brennan’s. The light was good, the atmosphere full of energy, and we sat right near a water and condiments station so we could fill and empty our water containers a few feet from our table. Since it’s cafeteria style dining there was no waiter to care how long we sat there.
Cathy suggested we do some contour drawing so I drew the condiments at the next table.
I used to go to Brennan’s back in the 70s for their Irish Coffee (and for pitchers of beer with my women’s softball team after our games). Now that I’m not consuming sugar or much caffeine that wasn’t an option. But I did get a cup of decaf and it was worse than our office coffee so I figured I probably wasn’t missing much.
This couple was pretty good about moving between two poses. I found that if I just waited a bit they would return to the position I was drawing.
These guys at the bar were soooo nerdy. The guy on the left was actually wearing orange pants.
This week we’re going to the Berkeley main library to draw.
Jana Bouc, Artist 