For our Monday night sketchcrawl we met at the Berkeley Rose Garden, sketched a bit, and then took a stroll along Euclid Ave. At sunset we sketched at the foot of the Rose Walk Path steps where two women residents of the cluster of Maybeck cottages there had a cheerful chat in front of a large Japanese maple while we sketched them.
Hollyhocks, ink & watercolorBerkeley Rose Garden views, Ink & watercolor
Inside the rose garden I sketched the trees and the person reading in a bright spot of sun. The hollyhocks on the right were our last sketching stop since it was totally dark by the time we finished them.
The Squid Boat, ink & watercolor, 9x6"
On Sunday I spent the afternoon on a beautiful sailboat on the San Francisco Bay. After our sail my friend Barbara and I found a dockside bench near a cafe to sketch before heading home. This funny little fishing boat was docked there and was a perfect subject for a quick sketch.
Monday night Cathy and I did a little sketching around San Pablo Avenue between Albany and El Cerrito, not the most inspiring of locales it turns out. It amused me that the palm tree above had an Available for Lease sign just in front of it, though it was actually a space in the building behind it (that I didn’t draw) that was for lease. The other pics above are of the Albany bowl and inside Peets Coffee where we ended the evening.
Old West Gun Room
We started at the Old Gun Room, a still-functioning, historic gun store that is terribly out of place and time. I was having trouble paying close attention to detail last night, and drew the N in “Guns” on the sign backwards, as well as adding an extra wagon wheel in the fence. I think I did a better job last time I drew and painted the Gun Room when I painted it on site.
Hotsy Totsy Club, Albany
I like the way the Hotsy-Totsy sign came out, though I’m not sure what happened to the perspective: I KNOW I couldn’t have seen the top of the sign. But I was really hungry at that point and was having even more trouble paying attention to details. By the way, the Hotsy-Totsy Club is anything but! It opens around 7 a.m. (need I say more?).(UPDATE: the club has new owners and a new clientele and a fun retro vibe; see my newer post here).
Cathy likes to sketch on site in order to capture more images, and then adds paint at home. I don’t usually do that, preferring to paint on site, but tried it last night. After I’d done all the cross-hatching on the windows and door area, trying to shade them, I looked at what Cathy was doing and saw that she just does the outlines without any cross-hatching when she’s going to paint the images later. I think that makes more sense and allows the watercolor to do the shading rather than the incongruous scribbly ink that was too dark.
We decided that next week we’ll go somewhere pretty and away from traffic, like the Berkeley Rose Garden.
Hidden away behind the new, massive Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light is a “Healing Garden” for the victims of sexual abuse by priests. I knew it was there because I’d read about it when the cathedral was opened to the public, but had a hard time finding it.
I was having a stressful day at my office, which is just across the street from the cathedral, and had gone looking for the garden at lunch. I thought that a few minutes in a healing garden would be restorative before tackling the afternoon’s work.
The “garden” is hidden away in a little corner behind the church, and consists of a small patio, about 10 feet in diameter, ringed by wooden benches arranged in a circle around what looks like a big cracked rock. The only greenery in the “garden” are some small hedges in cement planters that support the slatted benches.
The healing I found in the garden came from sunshine and sketching, not from sitting next to the huge concrete cathedral, on a hard wooden bench, gazing at what turned out to be a sculpture of a big cracked rock, not an actual rock.
The plaque on the bench: “This healing garden, planned by survivors, is dedicated to those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm, NEVER AGAIN.”
The plaque beside the sculpture: “Some day, 11, 2000. Masatoshi Izumi. Basalt.”
I get that the sculpture might represent how hard, broken, and cracked apart the lives of the victims must be. What I don’t get is how this could be called a “Healing Garden.” Where’s the garden? Where’s the healing?
I hope that survivors who visit and are able to find the garden do find it a healing experience.
It was 86 degrees but quite comfortable in the shade of an umbrella, on the patio at Peets Coffee in Pinole, where I sipped my iced latte and sketched this view of the parking lot and hills behind it. I’d dropped off a key at my son’s house nearby and then done my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s and decided I deserved a delicious icy reward next door at Peets.
Mr. Fidget keeps moving
This guy never stopped moving, feet up on a chair, knees up, leaning sideways, feet under chair, flip-flops on, off. I was so happy when he put his feet back on the ground so I could finish the sketch. It felt good to slow down on a busy day and sit and draw, but when I checked my watch I realized my groceries had been baking in the car for nearly an hour. I packed up and added watercolor at home.
Finding Tina (top from memory, bottom from yearbook)
I was sketching and looking at my high school yearbook in preparation for a series of paintings I’m starting. I was surprised by the low expectations so many of the girls in the yearbook had for themselves compared to today’s young women. I started counting how many “hoped to eventually” to become beauticians, secretaries and airline hostesses (flight attendants). Even my high school best friend Tina’s yearbook entry said she aimed to be a beautician (not to denigrate those important jobs, but there are so many more options for women now.) Maybe it was the elaborate, sculptural hairstyles back then that made so many of us want to be hairstylists?
When I read the tender, poetic inscription Tina wrote in my annual, I decided to try to find her again. We’d lost touch with when I moved away a year after high school and have unsuccessfully searched for her for years. Today I found her 86-year-0ld father, just by typing his last name and the city where we lived into the people finder on YellowPages.com! He promised to give her my phone number and then filled me in on her life over the many decades since we last were together.
Jana's senior picture and yearbook entry
When I filled out the form for my blurb I was trying to be funny: “Hopes to marry a millionaire…especially liked the people, weekends, and vacations.” But there was some truth in it too. I was so done with high school and wasn’t looking forward to having to grow up and get a job, either.
OK, so maybe I was procrastinating and avoiding the nice blank canvas waiting for me… but, (not counting the girls who said they just wanted to be happy, or didn’t mention their goals at all), here is my tally of career goals for San Diego’s Crawford High class of ’66 (I put the odd outliers in red):
Teacher: 67 (90% said elementary teacher)
Graduate from college: 55 (and then get married: 30)
Except for doing these sketches while watching the NBA Basketball Finals last week, it was a pretty rough week, with no energy for art or blogging. I kept putting the TiVo on pause to sketch, enjoying drawing with a Pilot fountain pen and then adding a bit of water to make the line bleed and turn into an ink wash.
NBA Finals: Aiming for a free throw, ink
Then I started trying to capture a little more action, drawing in pencil.
NBA Finals pencil sketch
I enjoy watching basketball playoffs and seeing these 7 foot tall, extremely buff, and mostly really cute guys with charming smiles, maneuver their massive bodies like ballerinas, leaping through the air, dodging and dancing around each other, or just storming down the court like a locomotive, charging the hoop, hanging from it when they dunk the ball in, or tossing the ball from across the court and watching it swish right in (or not).
I took so long with pausing the game to sketch that I had to fast forward to the last five minutes to see who won so that I could go to bed before midnight.
When I saw this woman reading on BART I had to draw her. She seemed to express the essence of dignity to me. She was carefully dressed and groomed, all in white, grey and black, with her hair covered in a white crocheted net and that wrapped with a perfectly ironed bandana, tied in a tiny bow in front.
This was my first drawing in my new Fabriano Venezia sketchbook that Roz had tested and praised and that I bought in a couple of sizes from Wet Paint. This is in the 9×6″ size. I left the first page blank to serve as a title page/table of contents later and did this drawing on the next page. I was totally in love with the sketchbook, writing a little rave review on the page of this first sketch about how wonderfully smooth and thick the paper was, and how nicely it worked with the Micron Pigma .01.
I was a little concerned about how much larger and heavier to carry around it is than the Moleskine watercolor notebooks I’ve been using, but thought it would be worth it. BUT when I tried to scan my drawing and the book didn’t quite fit on the scanner, cropping off part of the image, and the middle seam caused half the image to blur and have a dark shadow, no matter what I tried.
Then tonight I tried adding a watered down ink wash to her jacket, which had been black. The paper acted very strangely, not at all like I’d expected. I knew it wasn’t watercolor paper, and thus wasn’t sized, but now I’m now worried how these books will react with watercolor. I guess I’ll find out soon.
Here’s the same image with the ink wash that went all splotchy.
Less Dignity with ink wash
She was so carefully groomed, with everything perfectly ironed and smooth and now she looks much less dignified with her splotchy jacket. I don’t think the ink wash added anything positive to the drawing, do you? And I don’t think adding more ink to try to make it smoother or darker would be a good thing either.
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
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.
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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).
As second place winner in the International Fake Journal Month contest, I won this amazing t-shirt from Roz Stendahl, the inventor of IFJM. I tried to sketch myself sketching myself myself wearing it. I didn’t do the t-shirt (or myself) justice, but I do like the way the bird and I both seem to have the same expression! THANK YOU ROZ! I love it! (My IFJM posts are here and here.)
I’ve been having one of those crises of artistic self-confidence in my drawing the past couple weeks. I’m not sure if the drawing difficulties are real or I’ve just somehow allowed that nasty internal critic out of his cage and back on my shoulder.
Boris the Dragonly Critic, ink & watercolor
I know the cure though: put him back in his cage and do a whole bunch of drawing until he is so bored he falls asleep for a nice long summer nap. And I’ll start by drawing HIM! Here he is now, safely back in his cage and starting to get very sleepy….
Last week the El Cerrito Art Association hosted an excellent watercolor painting demonstration by Christopher Schinck. Mr. Schink has a unique way of painting with watercolor and a wonderful sense of humor. He both entertained and amazed the group with his bold use of color, thick paint applied opaquely using large china bristle brushes and extraordinary knowledge of art history, composition and painting technique. I alternately watched the demo and sketched the audience (above), enjoying both equally.
“It’s better to quit early than to quit late.” (In other words, stop painting before you’ve overworked it!)
“Sarget said watercolor was ‘making the best of an emergency.'”
“When you first start painting you tend to strive for accuracy and people like it. The more you paint and explore as an artist, the less your family likes it. Push yourself so it’s still identifiable, but have fun!” (Encouraging us to abstract and simplify.)
Then a few nights later my watercolor group got together for dinner and sketching. Dinner was fabulous! Not so my sketches, but here they are anyway.
Ink wash sketch; no likeness Maple sugar candy dessert, ink & wash
What’s funny about this sketch is that I’d drawn the box and then gotten really into the details of each little packet of candy. When I finished the first row I realized there were only three across and I still had room for one more. So I just made the box smaller and left the odd lines from the original ghost box. I added color at home to the top and bottom sketches.
Jana Bouc, Artist 