I needed to draw and paint something fun and refreshing after the ordeal with the last oil painting. I reached into my still life cabinet and pulled out this fun little pitcher. This gave me the idea to draw my complete inventory of still life items, one at a time. And that gave me the idea to draw everything I own. I wonder….
The day before I’d drawn these two guys snoozing back to back on BART. The coppery paint mixture worked perfectly for them too.
REI Berkeley was our sketching destination last week. The store sells high-tech gear for every kind of outdoor activity along with comfortable clothing and shoes. It turned out to be a fun place to sketch with an overwhelming variety of subject matter.
While drawing the fancy, complicated ski boot above, I reminisced about my attempts at skiing with some fondness and pride. Growing up in sunny San Diego I was a surfer girl, not a ski bunny. Fearless in the ocean, on my first ski trip in my 30s I found I was terrified on the slopes. I challenged myself to go on both downhill and cross-country ski trips with friends, family, and even once on my own. I never bought any fancy equipment; rentals were fine with me.
It seems that hats have become quite popular again for guys, a trend that hasn’t seen a comeback (other than baseball caps) since my grandfather’s day. I remember his beige felt fedora and how, when we took my sister and I for a ride in his Buick, he would carefully put the hat on the little ledge above the back seat so “us kids” wouldn’t fool around with it (though we always did anyway). Even my two sons wear those cute pork pie hats now.
I liked the original ink sketch of these strollers, but hated the watercolor added at the store. Everything was brown or dark blue and looked ugly. At home I tried washing off the paint and applying colored pencil over the remains. I tried varying the colors. I erased and tried again. I tried and tried, but finally remembered IT’S JUST A SKETCH, and moved on.
You can see some of my sketch-buddies’ excellent REI sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog here and here.
This was so much fun to draw with all the little details and decoration. I found it at a thrift shop when I was taking a long walk in El Cerrito and stopped in to browse. I expect to have more fun drawing and painting it again. It’s sitting on my drawing table enticing me to come back and draw.
On Halloween I got inspired to paint a pumpkin but the only pumpkins left in the grocery store were huge warty-looking ones and two smaller ones with cartoon faces painted on them. I chose one of the painted pumpkins whose paint was peeling and asked if they’d sell it at ordinary pumpkin price, which they did.
I took it home, washed off the silly face, cut it open and set it on a black plate on my drawing table to make a preliminary sketch:
Then I set it up on the table by my easel inside a box made of black foam core with a strong light shining in from one side. I sketched the composition on my Gessobord panel, mixed some colors, and began painting with the intention to work quickly and directly.
But after three hours I gave up and scraped off the panel. I just couldn’t get a clean orange and everything looked chalky, horrible and dead. I emailed my friend Kathryn Law, a brilliant painter who gave me some excellent advice about mixing colors (including that orange was tough to mix from cadmium yellow and red with oils), along with inspiration and encouragement.
The next day, unwilling to accept defeat, I attempted the painting again, this time draping an olive-green cloth over the black foam core. Everything went so much more easily; what had felt like work the day before felt like fun. At Kathryn’s suggestion I used larger brushes and was more generous with the paint. I tried to put down a stroke and leave it. I kept in mind the way I enjoy sketching, and tried to keep that sense of adventure and freedom. I finished the painting and went to bed happy.
The next day I saw a few things I wanted to fix but had to go to work. I left my pumpkin still life set up for three days while I went to work. When I came back to the pumpkin today it was smelly, collapsing, gross and growing stuff:
Ewww! Tossed the pumpkin in the recycling bin and washed the plate. I guess the painting will have to be done as is, though I’m tempted to work on the plate a bit to try to make it look shiny.
Before we met the others at Nong Thon on Tuesday night, Cathy and I sketched in the dark outside the restaurant by the Cerrito theater and El Cerrito Yoga. Tuesday night is baby night at the theatre and families lined up, loaded down with babies and baby gear, to see the Social Network. The Cerrito serves beer, wine and pizza (along with usual movie fare) while you watch the movie.
We could see into the warmly lit, crowded yoga studio and did some quick gesture drawings. This is one of those Bikram yoga studios where they say they crank up the heat to “increase flexibility and flush toxins.” I’m not sure I’d enjoy spending the evening in a crowded room full of people sweating out their toxins, whatever “toxins” are.
I know some people swear by sweating, fasting, or colonics to get rid of “toxins” and I wondered if there is any scientific evidence that tells what these toxins are and why releasing body fluids would get rid of them. I found this great article that scientifically (and hilariously) debunks the whole concept, as does this one on Wikipedia.
We met to sketch at the new Vietnamese restaurant, Nong Thon, on the corner of Central and San Pablo in El Cerrito and we had a great time. The restaurant is large, open and has been completely redesigned. The food was delicious and the service was beyond fantastic.
In the entry there is an elegant, life-size statue of an ox standing in real growing grass (below a skylight). My friends made beautiful renditions of the ox but I got all snarled up on its proportions. I’ve saved a page in my sketchbook to go back and give it another try. The waiter told me that in Vietnam boys ride on the ox playing a flute to pass the time, as they till the soil.
I’d called ahead to make sure it was OK for us to come sketch and they generously reserved a whole section of the restaurant for us where we’d have the best views and could move around to sketch different scenes.
You can see some of my friends’ sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog. Micaela is going to India for a wedding soon so her ox looks very “Indian Water Buffalo.” Beth and Sonia both went in the direction of Babe the Blue Ox.
When I was teaching my last session of watercolor classes I saw my students learning so much and was jealous. I realized that I wanted a teacher too! So I began a search for an oil painting mentor to review my work in progress, give me guidance and help me progress.
First I tried advertising on Craigslist, describing what I needed. But the artists who responded weren’t a good fit. I wanted a mentor whose work excited and inspired me AND who was a good teacher. Then Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez sent me a postcard announcement for her show of portraits of undocumented immigrants and I fell in love with her paintings. I knew she also taught at a local art school so I emailed her my proposal, we met, and she agreed to mentor me.
At our first meeting she reviewed a dozen recent oil paintings and knew right away what I needed to work on. She said that I needed to focus on my values (the range and contrast of light to dark) and I knew she was exactly right.
She asked me to sketch using ink and diluted ink washes and to start paying close attention to values in everything I see, when I’m out walking, or just looking out the window.
She suggested I ask myself, “Is this shape darker or lighter than that shape,” noticing the value relationships in everything I see to strengthen that ability. For example, a black object in bright sunlight might look lighter, relatively, than something white that is in shadow.
So much of learning to paint is learning to see, and so much of learning to see involves a kind of “peeling layers of the onion” off of our eyes to see the relationships, shapes, colors, and values in the current light and atmosphere, which can be shockingly different from what we think they are.
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).
Last week we met up at Jupiter Beer Pub for sketching, pizza and beer on their outdoor patio. It turns out to have been the last warm night of the year and the place was packed. It was quite dark where we were sitting at the beginning of the evening, the last table way at the back of the courtyard (at top of sketch above) so my Pitt Artist’s Brush Pen with a thicker line made it easier to see what I was drawing (barely) than my fountain pen and I added the watercolor at home.
As it got later and the crowd thinned out we were able to move to the main area of the patio where I sat in a wonderful Adirondack chair and sketched the courtyard where we’d started the evening (sketch #1 at top).
Every now and then I manage to get out of the office at lunch time long enough to eat and even sketch for a few minutes. Across the street from our office building is a huge modern cathedral that looks more like a concrete prison with an upside down glass ship on the roof.
Their roof garden follows the concrete theme, with a sort of maze of square concrete planters with benches that force you to sit straight upright on them. But there are trees, shrubbery, and perfectly maintained grass (a delightful treat to pull off sandals and enjoy on bare feet).
I keep wondering why I never see any birds in the roof garden even though it is across the street from Lake Merritt which is a bird refuge, full of pigeons, waterfowl, pelicans, egrets and more. And it is kitty-corner from Snow Park favored by huge flocks of Canadian geese and pigeons (and always covered in big slimy goose turds). Do the guards chase the birds away? Are pigeons Catholic?
Update: I wrote to the Cathedral’s contact person and she explained why there are no birds: “With regard to the birds, I think the main reason for the lack thereof is the cleanliness of the facility. Birds will congregate wherever there is food. Our janitorial staff is always sweeping and keeping the grounds neat and clean.” It’s true, the place is very clean.
Jana Bouc, Artist 