Tag: Pen and Ink

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Subway drawings Watercolor

Palm by Lake Merritt

Palm

I took a walk along Lake Merritt to the Oakland Public Library at lunch today to return some books and walked under this huge palm tree on the way. I snapped a quick picture and after dinner tonight, when I felt like plopping in front of the TV, I printed out the photo and did the drawing with a Pigma Brush Pen and then painted with watercolor. I had fun doing it while listening to a digital book from Audible.com. I’m glad I made the commitment to posting a drawing a day because this was a lot more fun than TV!

bart1
I also did these little sketches in less than 10 minutes on this morning’s commute to work. The guy sitting next to me on BART (SF version of subway) was watching me draw and halfway through said, “These are amazing!” as he saw the guy standing near the door take shape on my page. Usually nobody says anything when they see me drawing and I try to ignore them so I don’t get self-conscious. Since he spoke up, I asked if he drew or painted and he said no, but he does stained glass as a hobby. He said he was in the military and traveled a lot and liked that he could easily bring his stained glass work with him, which suprised me, as I’d think it’s fragile and heavy and would be hard to drag around. But then I was at my stop so I didn’t find out anything more.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Back to work

Meeting

A meeting: ink in small Moleskine notebook

Today was my first day back in the office after a 2 1/2 week vacation. The first thing on the agenda was a community meeting and anniversary celebration lunch, a very nice event, except for the 150 emails and voicemails awaiting my attention. This is a composite sketch I made during the meeting of people sitting at different tables. I drew directly in ink and was focused on drawing quickly and seeing shapes and angles and negative space and how it all fit together, rather than trying to get a perfect likeness of any one person, which is a good thing, because I didn’t.

I’m fortunate to work with a group of amazing, dedicated people who are doing really important work to improve adolescent literacy. I talked to my co-workers and my boss today about the idea of my working 3.5 days a week in order to focus more time on art. Everyone was supportive of my giving it a try. I’ll work from home half a day Monday and be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. I’m glad my workweek is only two days this week. I’m still a bit on vacation time and it seems absurd to spend all day in one spot working at the computer in an office, even if it’s a nice one.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

4th of July: Thoughts on freedom and time

4th of July

Bottlebrush tree and flag. Ink and watercolor in large watercolor Moleskine.

This is the view out my dining room window this morning. It’s the 4th of July, a day to celebrate freedom, but it’s also the last day of my annual birthday vacation so it feels more like the end of freedom to me. Of course that’s so relative–I’m incredibly fortunate to have as much freedom as I do, and I know that. It’s just that it always seems to take until the end of vacation to unwind and figure out how to enjoy it.

I had a lot of questions about art and life that I was pondering as I began this vacation and I’m glad I’ve found some answers. The biggest questions I’m still working on are about time. I’m increasingly aware of how precious each day is. There are so many things I want to paint, do, explore, and learn. I’m trying to make choices that allow me to feel satisfied with the way I’ve spent each day, whether it’s in the studio, out in nature, with friends and family, at the computer, or at work.

One of the answers I’ve come to is that I want to reduce my day job from 4 days to 3 1/2 (and see if I can afford it) in order to have more time for painting. Another thing I’ve decided to do is to make an art plan, setting some goals for the things I want to explore in the next 12 months with my art, and how I’ll go about it. Since I tend to avoid art business and marketing in favor of making art which is a lot more fun, I’m also going to include time in the plan for framing, marketing and other art business in order to show and sell more. Now if only my vacation was just starting instead of ending…

I’d love to hear how you manage your life and time in order to make time for the things that give you pleasure and satisfaction.

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Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Beach at Tennessee Valley, Marin County – EDM #74

Beach at Tennessee Valley cp water

Ink & watercolor pencil in large Moleskine watercolor book (above)

Beach at Tennessee Valley cp

Watercolor pencil before adding water in large watercolor Moleskine (above)

Beach at Tennessee Valley pen and ink
First drawing: Ink in large watercolor Moleskine (above)

Today Michael and I went for a hike and picnic at the beach. As usual for the Bay Area in July, it was cold, windy and foggy. I wore two shirts, blue jeans, a bandana tied around my neck, a down vest, earmuffs and Goretex parka. I needed every single item for the beautiful one mile hike to the beach. We found a nice sheltered spot along the cliffs next to a tiny cave and were about to set up our picnic when I got a whiff of something that smelled more like a bathroom than a beach. It wasn’t going away so we did–we found another spot further down the little beach that smelled the way it was supposed to–like fresh sea air and seaweed.

While we were eating lunch we watched a young mother pushing a massive all-terrain stroller through the sand while carrying a baby in a front back with a toddler running along beside her. She set up camp, unpacking a folding lounge chair and deli sandwich for herself, and food for the little ones. After a few minutes her toddler, all dressed in pink, apparently needed to use the non-existent little girls’ room so the mom pulled out a white plastic, inflatable toilet seat which she carried over to the area we had so recently vacated. She laid it on the sand and held up a beach towel for privacy. When they were done, she folded up the seat and put it back in her bag and they returned to their lunch. We felt like we were watching a weird movie. Maybe all the regulars at the beach know that spot is the unofficial potty?

Once lunch was done, I got out my pens and watercolor pencils and enjoyed drawing the rock formations and sea in ink and watercolor pencils. I’d forgotten a brush so I added the water after I got home, but first scanned it to be able to show all three versions. These are Caran d’Ache Supracolor Soft pencils. I’d tried Faber-Castell first but they were too hard and unpleasant to draw with. These apply nicely, but I’m not happy with the colors they come in. I’d rather have colors more like my usual paint palette. Watercolor pencils are easy to carry and fun to use, and remind me of magic coloring books when I was a kid that had the color impregnated in the paper and you just painted with water. But they won’t replace my paints!

By the time we started the hike back to the parking lot, the fog was gone, the sun was shining, and I was down to an undershirt and jeans with all the other gear crammed into my backpack.

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages

Oakland Zoo sketchcrawl

Fruit bats
Judith and I planned to go to the International Sketchcrawl in San Francisco today but realized we weren’t in the mood for the urban jungle and went to see real jungle animals instead. We spent a lot of time sketching the two baby giraffes playing together and being cared for by their families until we got too hot sitting in the sun so we looked for a cooler spot. That’s when we found the fruit bats. They look like fuzzy brown otters wrapped in black leather umbrellas. It was amazing watching them unfurl a huge wings in order to better block the sun from their eyes or adjust which of their many hooks they were hanging from as they slept. From what we could tell with them all wrapped up by their folded wings and hanging upsidedown, they have several long talons on each foot and then another convenient hook at the end of each wing. Their wings looked like the finest leather and their furry teddy bear bodies looked very cuddly. Ink and watercolor pencils in sketchbook.

Giraffes

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

CalTrans trucks by racetrack hay stacks

CalTrans trucks

I visited the Golden Gate Fields Racetrack again this morning. After freezing in the foggy wind for a couple of hours doing gesture sketches of quickly moving horses, sketching horses by peeking through a 1/4″ hole in the barn fence anda blah little painting of the bay (none worth posting), I warmed up in my car and drew this little parade of parked CalTrans trucks in front of the racetrack’s piles of hay bales. As soon as I finished the sketch the trucks all drove away. I plan to return to GG Fields and do some more drawing soon. Ink & watercolor in 6×9 sketchbook.

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Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Sticky

Sticky

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Sticky” and I thought of lots of things less icky than this, but I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Ink and watercolor in sketchbook.

 

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Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Mailboxes: Everyday Matters Challenge #73

Everyday Matters’ challenge for this week is to draw or paint your mailbox. Below is a sketch of my front porch and mailbox (though I think I temporarily forgot everything I knew about drawing when I made it), plus photos of my actual painted mailboxes and a story about mailboxes and Art as Revenge:

Mailbox drawing

Below is my current mailbox (my crazy cats and I with address slightly blurred to protect the innocent):

Mailbox-real
Below is my old mailbox: (Notice the required opening of the jaws to insert mail.)
Molly-mailbox

Molly-mailbox Open

Back in the freedom-loving Berkeley days of the 1970s, leash laws weren’t enforced and dogs could go anywhere with their owners. You never heard about people being attacked and bitten by pet dogs. Our friendly old dog Molly loved to bask in the sun in our front yard and would lazily greet people who parked on our street while shopping for produce at nearby Monterey Market.

We had been waiting for an important piece of mail–a much needed escrow check. After a week of not receiving ANY mail or notice as to why there was no mail, I spotted our mailman (who looked very much like R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural) at the end of the block. I caught up to him and asked why we had no mail.

He told me he wasn’t delivering it anymore if our dog was outside. He wasn’t impressed by my saying she was gentle and harmless. I demanded he give me our mail; he refused. I begged him to give it to me and said he could just put it on the ground and I’d pick it up; he refused. So I climbed onto the hood of his jeep holding my toddler, Cody in my arms, and insisted I wouldn’t get off until he gave me our mail. He threatened to call his supervisor (but couldn’t get to a pay phone unless I got off his jeep in this pre-cell phone era). We both threatened to call the police (he was stealing our mail, I said). We went back and forth like this for quite awhile, and we both refused to give in.

Finally, Cody announced he was hungry (and I’m sure confused by his mother’s very odd behavior) and then the postman announced that actually, he had no mail in his pouch for me. At this I realized I’d lost, got off his jeep, and from then on had to make sure Molly was indoors if I wanted to get mail.

But ART IS POWERFUL and I got my revenge. I kept Molly inside but painted my mailbox to look like her so he had to put his hand inside the dog’s mouth each time he delivered the mail!

Of course, I later came to understand how dangerous a mail carrier’s job can be and know how often they actually do get bitten…so Mr. Natural…er, Mr. Postman… if you’re reading this, I apologize.

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Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Gilman Grill Berkeley Breakfast

Gilman Grill Berkeley
Too bad about the little problem with gravity and the table but fortunately no coffee was spilled. (Might as well blame gravity instead of my drawing).

This morning I took my neglected car in for the “Wacky Wednesday” oil change and car wash special. Then I took a hike to breakfast through the industrial area where the car place is located, pretending I was in an unknown town. On the way to Gilman Grill (a mostly working man’s diner with a few artsy types thrown in–it is Berkeley after all) I saw lots of guys working, either inside dark cavernous buildings with noisy machines, or outdoors moving things on forklifts, or standing around with clipboards watching other guys on forklifts.

I enjoyed eating and painting while listening to the nearby table of off-duty cops or ambulance drivers (couldn’t be sure which) talking, laughing and drinking rounds of beers (yes at 9:30 a.m.) with their eggs as they unwound from the night shift.

After breakfast I walked down Gilman Street two blocks to the S.F. Bay. A cold wind was blowing in from the Golden Gate, carying the scent of sea, salt and manure (?!). The manure smell was from the Golden Gate Fields Racetrack barn located right there where Gilman meets the Bay. They wouldn’t let me come in and draw the horses. The guard said they have to be careful to not let reporters in because the next thing you know there’s a big news item about horses being mistreated. Seemed like a weird thing to tell me but he did give me the manager’s phone number to request permission. Maybe tomorrow…

Watercolor & Ultrafine Sharpie in Moleskine watercolor notebook.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Who Am I Supposed to Be?

Guard
When I was leaving Blake Gardens yesterday I spotted this life-sized statue guarding a gated entry to an enormous but otherwise uninteresting home just past the Carmelite Monastery down the road from Blake Gardens. Today I went up there to draw him in my sketchbook. It was cold, foggy and windy so after about an hour of drawing I took a photo and finished it from the photo at home. As usual I think I should have stopped sooner before it got overworked–I’ll learn someday.

I can’t figure out who he is supposed to be or why someone would want two of them (he had a twin on the other side of the rock wall. His outfit has lots of ribbons and bows–very fancy and rather feminine–maybe that’s why he needs this fierce warrior-like glare and helmet and sword. Actually, he was missing his sword and just had his hands in sword-holding position. I gave him his twin’s sword since he looked so silly without it–sort of like he was playing rock, scissors, paper. I also thought it was funny the way the ivy was growing between his legs.

If you know who he’s supposed to be, or have seen these statues and this property and know what it is, please tell me!