Lamy Safari pen and ink with crayon in Aquabee sketchbook
This week’s EDM challenge is to draw your exercise equipment so here’s my LeMond RevMaster spinning bike which I like very much. I probably would have been better off riding it than drawing it tonight…or just going to bed. I started the drawing four times, but kept running out of room on the page. I finally got most of it on the page and then made the mistake of coloring it with Caran D’Arche Neocolor wax crayons (yuck).
Watercolor & Ink in Moleskine watercolor notebook 6×9″
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I keep my dish soap in this squirt bottle originally meant to mix and apply hair dye. The glass plate is on loan from my sister. When I saw it at her house I begged to borrow it to paint it. I wanted to include it in yesterday’s soap picture.
I was supposed to be doing other stuff tonight but was getting really grumpy not being able to draw or paint so after helping my son with his resume, I abandoned the art business stuff I “should” have been doing. I drew this quickly with ink (hence the goofy edges and lines) and then added watercolor, thoroughly enjoying myself for the first time all day. Well, that’s not true. We did have some fun at work at lunch today, talking about our favorite “guilty pleasure” tv shows, but the rest of the day was just work, work, work.
To end this post on a happier note than the above whining, I’ll mention two things I’m grateful for.
1. I didn’t have a headache or a backache today and I noticed that several times during the day, making me feel grateful each time.
2. Yesterday I realized that even though I get frustrated with my lack of skill when painting with oils and acrylics and want to be good at it NOW, in a year, if I keep practicing and studying, I’ll probably feel pretty comfortable with them and maybe even competent. Or maybe I’ll realize I need another year of practice and I’ll take it. Same with drawing…if I keep at it, in a year, I’ll be a lot better at it than I am now.
Simple stuff, but it makes me happy.
Ink in small Moleskine
This morning I got on BART and spotted the guy on the left at the end of the car in his knitted Cat-in-the-Hat hat, except that he looked more like Mr. Natural from R. Crumb Comics than the Cat. I only had a couple minutes to draw him and then a bunch of people got on and I couldn’t see him anymore so I started drawing the hand of the guy sitting beside me holding a tiny iPod.
After a few minutes he smiled at me and then started helping me, pointing out where lines that I was drawing as curved were really straight and where I needed to add shading. My stupid pen ran out of ink so I pulled out another, with brown ink. He recommended I try UniBall pens (which I like but hadn’t used for sketching). He was clearly a talented artist and a wonderful teacher — his recommendations were right on and offered with great gentleness, kindness and caring. I asked about his art and he told me was formerly a graphic designer but now worked for Apple in “technology not art” and only rarely does his own art anymore and then only digitally with a Wacom tablet and Painter.
I’d been surprised by how crowded the San Francisco BART train was since I’d been quite late leaving for work. It was already around 9:45 but many more people than usual were getting on at each station. My “art teacher” turned to his friends behind us and as they chatted about Apple products I realized that all these people were on their way to MacWorld, which was opening today in San Francisco. I was sad to bid him farewell when I got to my stop. He was the kind of person I would love to have as a friend or a teacher and I’m sad I never even found out his name.
Today was back to work and back on BART. These folks (above) were my entertainment on my morning ride. These sketches are all in my little Moleskine.
I sketched these people (above) at Saul’s Deli after dinner while waiting for Michael to return from the men’s room.
These folks were at Peets. I like walking up there from my house, getting a latte, doing a quick drawing and walking back home. It’s a one-mile walk and a pleasant destination. I had trouble with the guy’s wife because she kept talking and moving. He just sat there without moving anything except for his wonderful bushy eyebrows.
Ink & Watercolor in Aquabee 9×12 sketchbook
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I woke this morning at the apex of a terrible anxiety dream…but with a slightly different take than usual. First I should say that I have terrible stage fright and cannot sing to save my life. My family used to slam doors shut and turn on the radio to avoid hearing my awful singing along with my pretty bad guitar playing when I was a teen and it never really improved.
I’ve had this dream many times, where I find myself on stage, about to sing or play guitar or both, and realize I’m completely unprepared. In last night’s dream I’d been selected to perform as “Jana and the BlackAttack” and was supposed to be leading some sort of soul/hip-hop group at a very prestigious and large theatre. I was calm and relaxed about the whole thing, trusting that the event organizers knew what they were doing in selecting me. I took a seat in the theatre, watching the opening acts. Then it was time for me to go on stage and the MC was stalling and worried since I hadn’t yet appeared backstage. I walked out onstage, noticing there was a steaming pot of potato-leek soup available for performers and stage hands. I picked up the mike and then…
I realized I didn’t know what songs I was singing, what the tunes or words were, where my band was….basically I realized I was ME. I didn’t want to let the organizer down or ruin my reputation by walking away. Then I realized I had no reputation to lose: I’m not a singer, I’m an artist and I woke up, heart pounding.
Gee, do you think I might be having a little performance anxiety about my painting…(I was struggling with oil painting before I went to bed) or even more likely, about the one-woman show of my watercolors in March that will be held in the lobby cafe of a newly restored art deco THEATRE?!!!! I thought I wasn’t worried about the show but the sleeping mind never lies….or does it?
Ink line and wash in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
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While I was out doing errands today I stopped at Silver Screen, my local video shop, and found this wonderful, new BBC mini-series, The Impressionists, about Monet (and Manet, Renoir, Degas, Bazille and others). The story ties right in to the biography of Matisse I’m (still) reading (interspersed with several other books) and am now inspired to finish it.
The visuals in the movie are fabulous. One sees the images, places, and light that inspired the paintings and then sees the paintings being painted and finished. Monet as an old man in 1920 is telling the story of the Impressionists and his life as an artist to a journalist. Through flashbacks we see the stories take place, acted by the most divinely beautiful young men and women.
The scene I sketched above is at the point where the not-yet-named Impressionists decide to hold their own show because none of them can get their paintings accepted into the official, state-sponsored “salon”– just about the only venue for sales of paintings and they’re all desperately poor.
Here’s the DVD cover:
I’m so tired tonight from from three nights of semi-insomnia that I didn’t think I’d do any drawing. But while I didn’t want to stop the film, I got so inspired watching it I had to stop and draw and paint something! Tomorrow’s my last day of work for the week and then I have another 5-day weekend so hopefully my ability to sleep and hence my energy will return.
I first sat behind her and was sure she was holding a can of Budweiser. It seemed so sad at 8:30 a.m. I couldn’t stop thinking about her sad life, dressed in business attire and having to drink a can of beer on her way to work so I moved to a seat to the right and slightly behind her. When I looked again, I discovered it was a can of Slimfast, not beer. She spent more time staring at the can than drinking it. I tried that stuff once and it was like drinking liquid cake batter (ewww!). I just noticed I entered the date in my sketchbook as 9/20/06 but it was really 12/20/06. Wishful thinking?
Micron Pigma pen in small Moleskine sketchbook
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This position is becoming increasingly familiar as I draw on BART — people playing games on their cell phones while listening to their iPods. I was so tired coming home tonight I didn’t even want to read or draw, just wanted to close my eyes, but then I saw this guy and had to draw him. I got the date wrong again when I entered it in my sketchbook — this time I wrote 10/21/06 and then corrected it to 12/21/06. I seem to be having trouble dealing with December!
Ink & watercolor in HandBook Co square sketchbook
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For years I used to get up every morning and sketch my dreams before I did anything else. I have volumes of dream journals full of weird, amusing or x-rated drawings, depending on what the night had in store for me. I often painted the images too. I’m not sure when or why I stopped but I recently discovered an artist who works primarily from her dreams in monotype, Denise Kester, and got inspired to explore my dreams again.
My dreams are often humorous (to me anyway, but then I’m easily amused) or insightful — sometimes I wake up having invented something important and funny, as I illustrated here (one of my very favorite posts) or just quirky, like this one.
In the quickly sketched image above from last night, I dreamt that Sharon and I were canooeing down a pretty river when I realized that we had sunk up to our necks and that I was still wearing my fanny pack containing all my electronic gadgets (cell phone, digital camera, PDA) and they were all ruined. There was more about trying to put on ill-fitting overalls after nude sunbathing but I always hate it in novels when writers go on and on about a character’s dreams so I won’t bore you further with this one.
One last thing, this image of a river with tall banks is the same one I tried to make when I was 10 and convinced my father to let me paint with his oil paints. Unfortunately he gave me a piece of waxy palette paper to paint on and I remember it being so terribly frustrating to not be able to capture the image or anything at all, really, on that horrid paper. It kept me from trying to paint again for another 20 years.
Watercolor, then Micron Pigma Brush Pen in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
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I did this quick little painting this morning of the view out my living room window (more than slightly imaginated) (imaginate is my word for imagine and exaggerate). Even with the color in the sky, everything looked so cold, with frost on all the rooftops.
I’m counting this as yesterday’s post because last night my painting group got together for a little holiday celebration pizza dinner and I had some wine (which I usually don’t and so it tends to make me quickly tipsy) and even though we all sat around eating and talking and I could have been sketching them, it didn’t occur to me until just before everyone went home. I kept thinking we were going to get back to our original plan of taking a group photo, quickly printing and handing it out, and each of us spending an hour drawing/painting from the same photo and then seeing how different all of our paintings were. But with two pizzas, two bottles of wine, a yummy salad and lots to talk about….it just never happened.
Micron Pigma ink & watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
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After I saw Martha’s rendition of the Christmas lights on Berkeley’s 4th Street shopping area I decided to make my way there one evening to sketch. I hadn’t really planned on going there tonight though. I’d gone to the Blick Art Supplies store near there since Jackie (a knowledgeable sales clerk there) had offered to help me select some good oil painting brushes. I also gathered a number of other items I needed, even though I was annoyed that I’d left my sale coupon at home. That was the second absent minded act of the day. The first was trying to return my Masterpiece Theatre Prime Suspect DVD (EXCELLENT!) to the video store without the DVD inside. Before I left home this time I made sure I had the DVD in the box and in the car to return on the way home.
When I went to check out I discovered the Absent-Minded Artist struck again. Earlier today, in preparing to take a walk with Barbara, I’d removed my wallet from my fanny pack to lighten the load and never put it back in. Both Barbara and I were feeling like half-wits on our walk — I was recovering from yet another migraine last night and she’d been unable to sleep the night before.So there I was with all my items rung up and no money or cards to pay for them. (DUH!)
All was not lost though, since 4th Street was just around the corner. I drove down there, parked, looked for something to paint, moved a little, parked, moved some more, until I finally found a scene I wanted to paint.
Since I didn’t have much time, I drew straight away with ink, not worrying about perspective and straight lines (which is obvious). When I was ready to start painting, I put on my cool strap-on headlamp and it worked great. I tilted it to shine down on my paper and could see the colors I was mixing just fine. Unfortunately just as I started painting Cody’s turned off their interior lights so I had to paint that from memory.
When I got home I discovered Miss Absent Minded struck again. The DVDs were still on my car seat — I’d forgotten to return them again.
Jana Bouc, Artist 