I took my two favorite 12-year-old girls to Tilden Park for a Friday afternoon outing on a rare sunny day in this horrible summer of fog and wind. My plan was to relax and read on the beach while the girls played in the water and then take them to the carousel and the Little Farm Nature Area.
Sketchy people, Lake Anza
After a little picnic the girls gleefully headed into the water, I reached for my book and discovered I’d forgotten it. Fortunately I had my journal so instead of reading a book I drew in one.
Wrong lifeguard stand and more sketchy people
My first attempt at drawing the lifeguard stand got the perspective all wrong so I used that page for more sketches of people.
The girls were having so much fun in the water, swimming, chatting, and fooling around that I couldn’t get them out until 5:00. I promised that if we have another sunny Friday this summer I’ll take them again. But this time I will remember my book and, if it’s warm enough, my bathing suit!
Pyramid Brewery Tanks and Tipplers, ink & watercolor 7x5"
We’d sketched at Pyramid in the evening before, (here and here) but this was the first time it was light in the brewery area. We could see the network of pipes and vessels where they brew the beer through the giant windows.
I’m not sure why I decided to do two sketches on one page that night. I guess I was feeling a little stingy with the paper. I did a couple more scribbly sketches of people that weren’t worth posting.
Our waitress was so kind and patient, not minding that four of us took over a large booth for two hours only ordering a few things. We left a good tip and thanked her. She said she was a musician herself and understood.
Along with an end of journal self-portrait, I always put an “If Found” notice and silly self-portrait at the beginning of each book (phone number erased for privacy). I started doodling something I was carrying under my arm that turned into a very fat cat (or is it a pig?) And yes, I do wear Pippi braids and bright green shirts sometimes.
Newly bound journal; cover from old tablecloth
Above is my new journal, covered in a piece of cloth cut from an old tablecloth, stacked on top of the last journal, now complete. I temporarily added the silly butterfly sticker as a reminder of what I intended as the front and bottom of the book. And then in my usual Jana way, I accidentally ignored it and started sketching from the opposite direction. And it doesn’t make a bit of difference.
Even though I’ve gotten the binding process down to a 6-hour project per book (when done one at a time; haven’t tried batching them yet), I was looking for a way to save time and be able to sketch without having to bind my own journals. I have yet to find a store-bought journal I like as much as my own, so I wasn’t considering that option.
I came up with the idea of using an aluminum form holder filled with individual sheets that I could later put in an inexpensive art presentation binder in order, as if in a journal. I liked the idea I could keep different types of paper in the holder and set it up to use with my little watercolor kit.
As used, with sketch on left; palette & water container velcroed on rightClipboard for drawing on left, velcroed spots for palette on rightInterior of section that holds paper
While I like this nifty system, and have used it a few times, it just felt weird not carrying a journal containing a little history of what I’ve been seeing, doing and thinking (I don’t share the “thinking” pages here). So now I’m doing both, always carrying the journal above, and when I want a variety of paper, individual sheets, and/or a convenient surface for sketching and painting, I also bring the lightweight Form Holder. Mine is a small size, but a larger one might be really super as a laptop desk.
Page window template
Above is another nifty tool I had made at my neighborhood Tap Plastics for about $3.00: a little template made of very thin plastic with rounded corners that I trace around with a pencil to pre-draw borders on my journal pages. It helps me to have a window to draw within (which I sometimes ignore or erase if I want to work across the spread). Once I finish a sketch I go over the pencil line with black ink.
I drew the black lines on the template with a wet-erase marker so it can also be used as a viewer to see how and where what I’m looking at “should” fit in the drawing (though I rarely use it for that).
I neither know why, again in typical spatially challenged Jana fashion, I wrote “Top” on the template (why would it matter?), and even more perplexing, why I wrote “Top” at the bottom of the template. But it makes me laugh when I see it so I haven’t wet-erased it.
To put the finishing touches on a completed journal, I make a self-portrait for the last page. Since it was also my birthday, I wanted to incorporate my birthday flowers in the painting. So I hung a mirror with a yellow clip from one of my swing-arm lamps on my drawing table and put the vase of sunflowers between me and the mirror and then drew what I could see in front of me: the flowers in front of the mirror, with me and the flowers reflected in the mirror.
As usual for my end-of-journal self-portraits, I wasn’t willing to measure or try to draw and place features accurately but I think I did capture the feeling of me or the me as I was feeling.
In the next post I’ll show you my new journal and another idea I tried out for sketchbooking minus the sketchbook.
Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
When Laura Frankstone of Laurelines was in San Francisco for a long weekend I had the great pleasure of joining her for an afternoon of sketching in Golden Gate Park. Laura and I had corresponded and participated together in many art blogging activities since 2006, but this was the first time we met in person. She is a brilliant artist, a delightful person and great fun to sketch with.
Below are our sketches of the Conservatory. I added watercolor to mine (above) in the studio later since it was windy, foggy and cold sitting on the grass and so were ready to go explore the (way too hot) conservatory.
Laura's on left, Jana's on right (click to enlarge)Photo of the Conservatory with my sketch
After getting all steamy inside the Conservatory of Flowers’ jungle-like atmosphere, and touring the Wicked Plants exhibit, we came back out to sketch people on the lawn.
Girls Picnic in Golden Gate Park, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
We agreed to paint these later too, since time was short and we wanted to keep moving. Below are our two sketches.
Girls in the Park; Laura's above, Jana's below
If you click the image above to enlarge it you can see how Laura even captured the girl on the left’s cheek bulging with her snack.
Our last stop was the Tea House in the Japanese Tea Garden. The garden is an absolutely beautiful place with incredible plantings, sculptures, buildings, ponds, trees, moon bridges and more. I wanted to live there.
View from Teahouse in Japanese Tea Garden, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
While our tea was the most delicious jasmine tea we’ve ever had, our experience was not exactly the “meditative cup of tea overlooking the peaceful waters of the garden” because men were doing construction and running a small but loud and smelly bulldozer back and forth on the path behind what I sketched above. The combination of noise and exhaust were less than ideal but unlike me, Laura didn’t complain once.
Moments after we sat down in the Teahouse another woman sat down beside us and pulled out a sketchbook (before we had ours out). She was an art history student visiting from Boston and we all sketched happily together. The waitresses kept coming over to praise our drawings. I said, “You must see people sketching here all the time.” She said no, we were the first she’d seen.
Oscars Burgers at Sunset, Berkeley, ink & watercolor
Now that it stays light later we can finally go outdoors for our Tuesday night Urban Sketching sessions. We met at the corner of Shattuck and Hearst in Berkeley and I sketched Oscars Charbroiler from across the street. They’ve been grilling burgers, hot dogs (and now vege burgers) over fire on that corner since 1950. It was sunset by the time I painted it, hence the pink sky.
Eating French Fries and Watching NBA Playoffs
When we went inside for one more sketch. There was a big screen TV on the wall tuned to sports. It was the end of an NBA playoff game and people were watching while stuffing their faces with burgers and fries like this guy who never looked at his food, just shoveled in the fries while watching the game.
Another guy came by and complemented our drawings and asked if we came there every week to sketch. Uh, no…maybe once a decade? Though I have to admit I’d skipped dinner, got hungry, and ate one of their burgers. It was good.
Sketching is such a great way to enjoy time spent waiting. In the sketch above I was waiting for someone during her appointment at the medical center. The lady on the left was dressed completely in Barbie pink from head to toe, including sweatshirt, purse and shoes. Even her cell phone was bright pink.
The little boy above spent his waiting time enthusiastically “reading” a book. He squealed with delight to his mom over each page. It was so nice to see a child loving a book even if he was too young to actually read the words.
BART Station Street Light, ink & watercolor, 7.5 x5.5"
When Casey was here visiting from France, I arrived early at the BART station to collect her and her family. While I waited I tried to find something interesting to sketch from my car but this was as good as got: concrete, pole and sky.
I spent the previous day visiting with them in San Francisco and was looking forward to showing them around Berkeley, which we capped with a fantastic dinner at Chez Panisse (thanks Casey and Michele!) Since Casey had her family with her, we didn’t get to sketch but I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them. They are the nicest and most fun people. I wish we lived closer so we could play together more often! I plan to visit them in France within a year or so.
It was a cold and rainy night so we met indoors at the cosy Kensington Circus Pub (named for the traffic roundabout it faces in Kensington, on the Berkeley border. It’s a very pleasant place to sip a beer and sketch. After eating a delicious sandwich I spent most of the evening facing the bar and doing the sketch above. I wore my L.L. Bean flashlight hat to see to paint and it worked great.
Old friends plotting at Kensington Circus Pub, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Then I turned to face the other direction and sketched these gentleman who were in a booth a few feet away but didn’t seem notice or care that we were drawing them. They were meeting to dine, drink and plot a business venture from what I could overhear.
A few weeks ago Cathy and I were sketching guests at the Spring Meet of the Golden Gate Live Steamers Club in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. The train people were as curious about us as we were about them, and they wanted to see what we were doing. I usually don’t care when people look at my sketches, but I was drawing their trains that they had lovingly built from scratch, designing and engineering everything from the wood-burning boilers to the screws that held them together. It was like drawing their children—one thing out of place and they would know it.
Train guys
Many of their members maintain and operate trains that their fathers or grandfathers built and they are now apprenticing their sons in the craft. Over the years the club has built a complete course of tracks with trestles, tunnels, and small buildings to match the 1.5″-to-the-foot scale of the trains. You can see photos and videos on their website including this one below of me sketching at the meet (much to my surprise!)
When one of my sketch group members sent me this photo of her little girl, I had to paint it, despite having never painted my own kids (except as they appeared in a dream once, as a bear and a tiger).
The original photo was taken on an iPhone with a busy background of kid’s toys and furniture. I experimented in Photoshop with different backgrounds and color schemes. I tried some in paint. But in the end I chose this simple grayish-warmish-whitish background.
I thought about putting some of her toys from the photo in the painting but decided I like the way she’s alone in an empty space. It reminds me of my own childhood photos where I usually looked kind of alone and perplexed about the big world around me. I guess that’s an example of how whatever the artist paints, she’s painting herself too.
Jana Bouc, Artist 