Tag: Moleskine

Categories
Animals Drawing Sketchbook Pages

2014: The Year of the Dog (and other delightful detours)

Millie: 2014 The Year of the Dog Detour, graphite in jumbo Moleskine WC Notebook, 8x11.5 inches
Studies for Oil Painting: “Millie: 2014 The Year of the Dog,” graphite in jumbo Moleskine WC Notebook, 8×11.5 inches

This has been an amazing year in my corner of the world for many reasons, and only some of them are related to art-making. There have been numerous (happy) detours away from the studio, including my son’s wedding and the birth of my first grand-baby, Sadie. And then there’s Millie, my Formosa Mountain Dog who was rescued from life on the streets of Taiwan when she was four months old, flown here and fostered by a local rescue group until I adopted her a few weeks later.

Over the past year with me she’s overcome some fear and health issues to become a wonderful, funny companion. Most mornings we’re out hiking 3-4 miles on forested trails in the beautiful hills or along the SF bay where she can run off leash and play with other dogs. Afternoons she hangs out on the studio deck, keeps an eye on the neighborhood, dismantles things in the garden, chews sticks and sleeps in the studio while I draw or paint. Now that she’s almost a year and a half she requires less work on my part so I’m expecting 2015 to be a lot more productive!

I spend New Years eve and day reflecting on my art/life during the passing year, and considering/setting my goals/intentions for the year to come. I will share a summary of that here soon. My first painting of the year will be a portrait of Millie that the above sketches were a study for. I’m loving my new jumbo Moleskine Watercolor Journal and happy with this first page in it!

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Interiors People Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

The Exotic Loring Cafe and On a Starbucks Bag

Loring Cafe, Oakland, ink & watercolor, 8x10"
Loring Cafe, Oakland, ink & watercolor, 8×10″

Oakland’s Loring Cafe has the most eclectic decor and architecture I’ve ever seen in a restaurant. In addition to the arches, pillars, sculptures, palms and vibrant lighting, the restroom is like a brick-covered Hobbit house with no sink. To wash your hands you step out of the restroom where there is a large, round, stainless steel, multi-user industrial sink with little signs explaining how to turn on the faucets and get soap. Quite a unique washroom experience!

I’m glad I had my jumbo Moleskine watercolor journal with me since there was so much to capture in one drawing (above).

Sketched at Starbucks on Starbucks Pastry Bag
Sketched at Starbucks on Starbucks Pastry Bag

As my note in the sketch above says, I was just recovering from a bad cold and was so tired after my walk to return movies to the video store I had to stop at Starbucks to sit before I could walk back home.  I’m always grateful there are still video stores to provide entertainment during an illness. The only good thing about being sick is the opportunity to catch up on movies. Fortunately I don’t get sick often, and this sketch was done back in April. I think I’m caught up now on old sketches.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Plants

Standing Tall in a Moleskine

Succulents Along the Walk, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Succulents Along the Walk, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

To shake things up a bit I thought I’d try a watercolor Moleskine watercolor sketchbook this time instead of binding a new journal. These sketches are the first in the Moleskine from a walk in my neighborhood on a sunny winter day.

A few spreads into the Moleskine, I’m liking the paper but hating the stupid, floppy, too-wide landscape format. Why, oh why does Moleskine refuse to bind a watercolor book on the long size in portrait format! Brenda Swenson had a clever solution: she bought a very large watercolor Moleskine and sawed off half to make one the right size! Here’s someone else who had hers sliced at the local photocopy shop.

Succulents 2, ink & wat5ercolor, 7x5"
Succulents 2, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

The spike on this plant was about 15 feet tall but I didn’t think through how to make it look that way, and since it was in ink, it is what it is. The stalk should have gotten skinnier as it got further away instead of looking like a fat asparagus.

Categories
Berkeley Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages

Sketching at Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat)

Le Bateau Ivre, ink & watercolor
Le Bateau Ivre, ink & watercolor

Le Bateau Ivre is a cafe I used to visit often when I first moved to Berkeley so it was great to rediscover it with my Tuesday night sketch group. The food is wonderful and the atmosphere warm and inviting. Le Bateau Ivre is in an old house on Telegraph Avenue and each room has its own charming personality and decor.

Details of the room and music
Details of the room and music and my drawing mistake

I fell in love with the classical music playing in the cafe and was holding up my iPhone to the speaker, hoping that the Shazam or Soundhound apps could guess the recording. The owner of Le Bateau Ivre saw me and asked if the music was too loud. I explained what I was trying to do and she ran to get the CD and showed it to me. I took a photo of the cover which I later pasted on to this page. The CD was Heinrich Ignaz Franz van Biber: Sonatae a Violino solo of 1681.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Still Life Watercolor

Sea Shells: Accidental Watercolor Texture

Shellfish Shells, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Shellfish Shells, original version, ink & watercolor, 5x8"

A shellfish company saw a previous shell painting of mine and commissioned me to paint one for them to use as a background on their business cards. They shipped me a box of their oyster, clam and mussel shells to use as reference. I created the above sketch in my Moleskine watercolor notebook and sent them the file for their review.

Accidental texture from working on reverse of page
Close up: Accidental texture caused by painting on reverse page

On the next page in my Moleskine, I sketched a landscape and painted it with juicy washes, something I do on the 140 lb watercolor paper in my hand-bound sketchbooks all the time. Without my noticing, the water seeped through the lighter-weight Moleskine paper, wetting the shell painting on the previous page.

Some of the mussels’ paint lifted, creating the wonderful texture (close up above) that I probably couldn’t have achieved if I had I tried. The only downside to this “technique” is that some of the lifted paint printed on the opposite (fortunately blank) page.

I wasn’t worried about the change in the art for my client because I’d already created a high-resolution file of the original. And as it turned out, they asked me to do another version with two different kinds of oyster shells and more clams, apologizing for changing their directions. I’m happy to paint as many versions as it takes since shells are one of my favorite subjects.

Categories
Drawing Faces People Sketchbook Pages

Sketching Sketchers and Doodling Meetings

Doodling to Stay Awake at Meeting
Doodling to Stay Awake at Meeting

On my first day back to work after being sick for weeks we had a staff meeting. I wanted to put my head down on the table and nap so doodled to stay upright and awake. Later I pasted the page in my sketchbook with the added note about antibiotics.

Sketching Sketchers #1
Sketching Sketchers #1

Then my first night back at Tuesday night sketching (at the Bread Workshop) after I drew my food I sketched the sketchers at my table. I had to add that shading to the right of Amy’s face to “erase” the splotch I made by her nose that looked like a booger.

Sketching Sketchers #2
Sketching Sketchers #2

I added one too many lines, which lead to more lines to try to fix them, in Sonia’s hair which had been perfect until I did that. I made a note to remind myself to STOP at “good enough” and not keep going.

Categories
Berkeley Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

The Draw Your Food Diet (at The Junket and The Bread Workshop)

Turkey & Swiss at The Junket, Lamy Safari, Carbon Platinum Ink & watercolor in Moleskine Watercolor
Turkey & Swiss at The Junket, El Cerrito. Lamy Safari pen, Carbon Platinum ink & watercolor in Moleskine

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.

Grilled Veges & Brown Rice at the Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor in Moleskin
Grilled Veges & Brown Rice at the Bread Workshop. Ink & watercolor in Moleskine

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!

 

Bread and Baker at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor
Bread and Baker at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor

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.

 

Categories
Bookbinding

Binding a Journal: The Saga Continues

Old Journal, New Journal
Old Journal, New Journal

Yesterday I bound a new journal and updated my instruction sheet on how to bind a 5.5″ x 7.5″ sewn-signature casebound journal with watercolor paper.  Each time I bind a journal I learn a little more and update my how-to sheet as I work so that the next time it will get easier for me.

I created the instruction sheet as a guide for myself, compiled from many sources* but you are welcome to download the file if you’d like to make a journal like these. I keep it on my website’s Resources page here on JanaBouc.com because having it in one place makes it easier to find and update.

Last Journal: Aqua Baby
Aqua Baby Journal (with black & gold ink)

I name each journal (actually they seem to name themselves as I’m binding them) and decorate the cover after I’ve filled it with an image fitting the name. My last journal named itself “Aqua Baby” and is pictured above.

New Journal: Scrappy, covered with 3 pieces of bookcloth
New Journal: "Scrappy" covered with 3 scraps of book cloth

I wanted to try (for the first time) to bind a cover made from pieces of book cloth, one for the spine and two for the fore edges. I thought I had a big enough scrap of the purple but mis-measured (as usual). So I had to use some of the turquoise cloth to cover the other side. This journal has named itself “Scrappy” as it’s covered with scraps and was scrappy enough to demand to get made despite everything working against that right now.

Five Casebound Journals Made So Far
Five Case-bound Journals Made So Far

Although I’ve bound other journals using a variety of methods, here are the five sewn-signature case-bound journals I’ve made and here’s another look at their covers. I love the paper, the dimensions, the feel in my hand, the way they’re easy to use sketching standing and for scanning. They are humble and a little plain, but I’ve always appreciate function more than fancy.

I can’t wait to finish the hated Moleskine watercolor sketchbook (which would be fine if it was just portrait, not landscape) that I’ve used since I got behind on binding. Watch for a flurry of sketching to finish it off!

Categories
Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Insipid Cuppa

Insipid Cuppa
Insipid Cuppa, ink & watercolor 7x5

I like to use my winter holiday vacation as a time to review my past year and sort out what I did well and what needs work. Since this is also the end and beginning of a whole decade, this process felt even more important this year. One thing that really stood out was that I needed to kick  my caffeine habit and its evil companion, sugar (both fake and real).

So, after a week of being foggy-brained, sleepy and witless, I’m now free of caffeine, sugar, and Splenda* and finally starting to feel good and my inspiration is returning.

Without the sweeteners, decaf coffee and tea were tasting pretty vile to me so I began the search for a flavorful herbal tea with at least a hint of sweetness. I finally found a couple that I like but in the meantime spent a fortune buying seductively-named but ultimately insipid teas that taste like something you might use to clean windows.

Case in point: the tin of “Hot Apple Cider Tea” pictured above. It looks and tastes like hot apple cider about as much as a picture of an apple tastes like an apple. If I’d painted a cup of that tea, it would look like a cup of water. The tea in the cup above is Good Earth Tea and warm milk. It’s not bad. 🙂 But it sure isn’t a latte.  😦

*UPDATE: Just looked up “What is Splenda” and here’s what I found:

Splenda is made from cane sugar by replacing three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule with chlorine. The resulting molecule is not recognized as sugar or a carbohydrate by the body and as such, is not digested. Some refer to Sucralose as Chlorinated Sugar. Sucralose does not occur in nature.

Eek! I’m embarrassed to admit how much of that stuff I was consuming!

Categories
Berkeley Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Interiors People Places Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Celebrating 3 Years, 600 Blog Posts… and a winning book cover

Cactus Taqueria, Berkeley, ink & w/c, 4x6"
Cactus Taqueria, Berkeley, ink & w/c, 4x6"

On Monday night I completed another sketchbook and three years of sketch-blogging. Cathy and I had dinner at Cactus Taqueria on Solano Avenue in Berkeley and sketched the other diners.  Then we started walking to see what else looked like fun to draw.

It was cold and foggy outside, and the lobby of the old Oaks Theatre looked warm and  inviting so we walked in and asked if we could sketch. This confused the woman working there who had nothing to do but sit and chat with a younger woman. It was a Monday night and they were showing a French movie and it was a bad French movie and so there were few customers. She told the manager we wanted to sketch (with a tone of voice that implied we might be deranged) and he said it was fine.

Oaks Theatre Popcorn Machine, Berkeley, ink & w/c
Oaks Theatre Popcorn Machine, Berkeley, ink & w/c

We sat on carpeted stairs (the only place to sit except the already occupied bench) and sketched the  popcorn machine directly in front of us. At first it seemed like a stupid, boring subject, but within minutes I was captivated by all the odd mechanical bits inside the machine. Oddly, despite the strong scent of hot popcorn, the machine was completely empty.

At first we sketched listening to the inane conversation of the two women which even they seemed bored by. They left and the manager came over and asked us whether drawing can be learned or if is just an inborn talent (definitely can be learned!). Then he wandered off and we listened to him being lectured to by a customer (inspired by the movie she’d just left?) about race, culture, history, and her philosophies on life,  while he listened patiently, saying “OK.” I jotted down a few of her pronouncements on the sketch.

Three Years of JanasJournal.com

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Ladies, Stand Up for Your Right to Pee Standing Up (7,198)
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THANK YOU DEAR VISITORS, READERS, FRIENDS!

My Art on Winning  Bookcover

White Lilac Love Book Cover
Winning bookcover

About a year ago, I received an email from Croatian poet and author Sonja Smolec, asking for permission to use one of my watercolors on the cover of her new book of poetry, “White Lilac Love.” Of course I agreed, and was delighted when she sent me a copy of the book.

A week ago I received an email from Sonja telling me that her publisher had held a bookcover contest and her book had won! The 73 poems in White Lilac Love weave a beautiful and tender love story with all the soaring emotions from hope to despair to true love along the way. One of the poems was so evocative and full of wonderful imagery that it inspired a painting (in progress — more about that later).

It’s been a great three years!