Stripey Still Life with Lemon, 10x8", oil on Gessobord
Getting the drawing right before beginning to paint is so important when trying to paint realistically. Although it’s theoretically easier to correct drawing errors with oil paint than watercolor, it’s still a lot less fun than painting with a good drawing. As you can see from the start of this painting below, I hadn’t quite nailed the elipse on the top of the pitcher before I started painting.
Stripey Still Life start
I wanted to get started with the painting quickly because I knew the leaves from the lemon tree were going to change wilt, even though I had inserted the stems in a little florist tube with water (and they did!). But by not getting the elipse on the top of the pitcher drawn correctly, I ended up redoing it over and over and finally giving up. I am happy with the way the fabric under the pitcher turned out, as well as the lemon and didn’t have to do any repainting on those areas, although I did change some of the fabric as I painted.
Stripey still life photo of set up with wilted leaves
On my next still life, I’m going to sketch the composition on tracing paper first, and then transfer it to the painting panel, rather than trying to sketch it on the panel. Maybe that will make the painting more fun and less of a struggle.
4th Street Jazz Festival- by Jana4th Street Jazz Festival-by Casey
Casey Toussaint and her son Paul are visiting from France and I had the pleasure of spending Sunday with them. After a quick visit to my house and studio, we headed down to the Berkeley Marina to cool off on an unseasonably hot day.
Casey & Paul on Berkeley Pier
We walked to the end of Berkeley’s long pier on San Francisco Bay with views of the Golden Gate Bridge (which Paul wanted to see) and there was a wonderful cool breeze coming in off the ocean. Then we had a delicious lunch at Skates on the Bay, where we had a window seat and watched birds nesting under the eaves and sailboats tacking back and forth on the choppy bay.
Casey & Jana @ Skates
On the way to our next stop (Dick Blick Art Supplies to pick up a large sketchbook to bring to the afternoon session of the figure drawing marathon sponsored by the Bay Area Models Guild at Merritt College in Oakland) we passed Berkeley’s Fourth Street boutique/foodie shopping area. We saw that the street was blocked off with a sign, “Fourth Street Jazz Festival” and decided to nix the figure drawing and sketch at the festival instead.
Casey sketching at Peets Fourth Street
We strolled the street and then settled at Peets Coffee for coffee and sketching where we did the two sketches at the top of the post. Casey works quickly, with wonderfully expressive lines, and got in a few more sketches from Peets:
4th Street people by CaseyMore 4th St people by Casey
After an hour or two we connected with Paul again, walked over to Blick’s for Casey’s art supply shopping and then headed to Telegraph Avenue and the University of California campus. Casey and I found a spot we wanted to sketch on campus so Paul headed back down Telegraph to Amoeba Records, a huge used CD/record store.
UC Campus building by JanaJana's sketch and buildingCasey's sketch of the building
When we met Paul back at Amoeba a couple hours later, I was hungry and we decided to head out for dinner. We all felt like Mexican food so I took them to Solano Avenue’s Cactus Taqueria. Paul was quite impressed by the size of the burrito he was served, and took photos of it. I learned that servings are much smaller in French restaurants and that it takes 5 or 6 years of serious study before someone can become a baker. He was surprised that here all one need do to beome a baker is to open a bakery and start baking.
Casey at UC Berkeley
As the sun was setting I drove them back to San Francisco. The fog had rolled in, ending the heat wave, and as we traveled across the Bay Bridge we had amazing views of San Francisco rising up out of the fog bank, sillouhetted by the setting sun. I drove really slowly across the bridge so Paul could take pictures and he got some great ones.
Inspired by Casey’s success with the Carder Method and frustrated with my own slow progress at oil painting, I bought the Carder Method video and Color Checker tool. Below are step by step photos of my using the method to paint this still life, a brief review of the Carder Method and photos of my studio set up for working with it.
The Carder Method is designed to eliminate many of the problems that can make painting difficult. By creating an carefully lit, controlled environment, a painter can focus on learning to clearly see color and value differences while eliminating problems caused by variables such as changing light.
Click “Continue Reading” to see photos and read more….
Officially they’re known as Ground Squirrels but they look more like rats wearing moth-eaten squirrel costumes. After trying to sketch them during a hike around Albany Bulb, a spit of land projecting into the SF Bay in Albany, I can say they have cute little ears and seem to be curious and playful. Their biggest selling point is that they make good snacks for the owls and other birds of prey that hunt in the area.
I’ve written about Albany Bulb before, so won’t go into details about this wonderful place where people make art from found objects washed up from the Bay or from the land’s original use as a dump. New art is created and people add to or decorate pieces already there.
One of the regular artists who create there is writer, artist, civil rights lawyer, Osha Neumann (below, building a new sculpture).
Osha Neumann at Albany Bulb, at work on new sculpture
I asked him if he documents his work and he said no, but that other people sometimes take photos. I told him I thought that his work was true art, because it was made just for the pleasure of the creating, with no concern about marketing, sales, fame or glory. He just gets out there and creates. I asked what the man he was constructing was meant to be doing and he asked what I thought. It wasn’t until I saw my photo that I realized he was holding a fishing pole (duh!).
My favorite new piece was the artist below, although Osha said that someone else added the palette and pampas grass “paintbrush,” they weren’t part of his original sculpture.
Artist at the Albany Bulb
When I saw the dog below I asked Osha where the arches with the dog atop them were that I remembered from a previous trip. He said that structure blew down over the winter and was gone.
Dog sculpture at Albany Bulb
My hiking companion, 10 year old Mariah had a great time playing in the fort someone built, complete with a spiral staircase. Next time we go there we’re going to bring supplies to make our own art.
Proteus in Bloom, ink & gouache, Moleskine 5x7 sketchbook
When I was walking to BART last week I ran into Fletch who had just finished shooting photos of an amazing Proteus a few blocks from my house. I must have walked by this stunning plant a hundred times and never noticed it until he pointed it out to me. I couldn’t stop to sketch that morning but finally got back there this afternoon.
I got as close as I could without trespassing and sketched with my Micron Pigma .01 pen, trying to capture the many different forms the blossoms take along the way to fully blooming. Then I used my mini gouache palette and a tiny brush to paint the details. Gouache seemed like a perfect medium for doing this kind of detailed botanical sketching.
I also took a bunch of photos of these amazing and diverse flowers. Here are a couple of them:
Photo of Proteus blossomProteus in bloom, photo
Note to self: Find proteus at a nursery and plant them! But first I want to do some larger botanical illustrations from my photos (or from life if I can convince the woman who owns the plant to allow me to take some cuttings). Fletch told me she reluctantly allowed him to take one.
And here’s a bit of etymological (word origin) trivia about theProteus:
The Proteus got its name because of its amazing diversity of form: It was named after the Greek sea god, Proteus, who was able to change his appearance at will. From this comes the adjective “protean,” which means “versatile”, “mutable”, “capable of assuming many forms.” “Protean” has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.
Silly Pose on BART, Drawn later at home, Graphite 8x6
Riding our subway known as BART the other day, I sat down beside a young man who was talking to his friend in the next seat. I asked if they wanted to sit together and they made a joke about not liking each other (actually it was a racist joke that shocked me at first when I thought they were serious—they were of different races ). So I sat down and took out my sketchbook like I usually do. The guy beside me insisted I draw his friend and his friend immediately struck a crazy pose for me to draw.
I said I only had 5 minutes before I was getting off but they egged me on. I drew as fast as I could (in ink—what was I thinking!) and was making a pretty bad job of it—talk about pressure! Then I had to get off and we all had a good laugh about the bad sketch (see below). I asked if I could take his picture and he agreed, continuing the pose as I quickly snapped a photo with my iPhone and then jumped off the train as the doors were closing. Here’s the photo that I put on my computer monitor across the room to draw the sketch above in my sketchbook last night:
Quick Photo of Silly Pose
And here’s the original sketch done on BART, along with a few others from this week:
Quick ink sketch done on BART
BART people, graphite
BART people ink
Quick Photo of Silly Pose
Silly Pose on Bart, Graphite 8×6
Now, about feeling like a Zombie… I’ve been doing prep this week for a colonoscopy this afternoon. I’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, except sugary clear liquids and the gallon of “Go-Litely” (hah! what false advertising!) and very little sleep due to drinking the first half gallon last night and then “Go-ing” all nite, thus the only “Litely” was my sleeping! And for the three days prior, I was told to eat none of my usually healthy diet: no vegetables, no fruits, no whole grains. Just white bread and meat, basically. The procedure isn’t until 2:00 so until then, I’ll be under a pile of blankets in bed trying to get warm and watching a movie on my laptop.
A new storm is on its way in but this morning was sunny so I took a walk in the neighborhood and discovered Spring had arrived overnight. The magnolias were blooming along with some other flowering trees.
Spring Trees, ink & watercolor wash
The Jehovah’s Witnesses were also out in full bloom, a whole parade of them canvassing the neighborhood. These folks were waiting while their colleagues knocked on the door of a house on the top of the hill.
Witnesses on the Hill, Ink & watercolor wash
One of their team told me she liked to paint too, and then offered me some reading materials. “No thanks,” I said. “But it’s really, really small,” she said. It was a small pamphlet, but why would she think that would change my mind, I wonder.
Can't Stop the Seasons, Photo
I thought about drawing this but decided a photo was good enough. Seeing the new season bursting forth in front of a sign saying “STOP” made me think about the ways we try to control things by making laws and rules and posting signs, and yet Mother Nature rolls along, no matter what we puny humans have to say about it.
I’m trying to use one sketchbook at a time and so, despite being tempted to switch to a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, I continued on in my Strathmore Drawing sketchbook. It’s not watercolor paper but is great for ink, is my favorite size (6×8″) and is light for carrying because it only has 24 sheets. It does wrinkle a bit from the watercolor, and it’s not good for lifting out color or heavy application, but it’s a good compromise between quality of paper and size and weight.
After deconstructing one artichoke to paint in watercolor (previous post) I decided they were too old and worn out to bother cooking them, so why not paint them instead. I’m finding how important it is to take breaks when I’m painting. Each time I took one (because someone came to the door, I had to go to sleep or have lunch) I was surprised at seeing the painting with fresh eyes. It gave me a chance to strategize, stop futzing around in one area that wasn’t working and just needed to be scraped off and started over, notice that the values needed strengthening, etc.
At a certain point I recognized that this is as good as I can do for now. I’ll learn a little more and be able to a better on the next piece. That is so much more satisfying than trying to bring the piece to the level of the bar I keep raising or trying to make it as good as the painting of other artists’ work I admire. As a good friend said to me yesterday, “Compare…and despair!” and he was so right. Another friend pointed me to this from Desiderata:
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Artichokes, easel & palette in the studio
The multi-colored card on my easel is a Gretagmacbeth ColorChecker that I use when I photograph art work. Sometimes I use the white square to set my cameras “white balance. I always include some or all of the card when I take the photograph so I can compare the colors on the card to the colors on my monitor to see if I’ve got it right.
With the card included in the photo, I can correct the colors in the photo using the Levels tool in Photoshop:
Select the “white” eyedropper in the Levels menu and click it on the white square. This sets the white level so that white in the photo is pure white, not greyish. Sometimes this is all that’s needed.
If the black square doesn’t look black enough, I do the same with the black eyedropper in the black square. Setting this range of black to white really helps, especially when there is no black or white in the painting.
To remove a color cast (e.g. when the gray square looks greenish pinkish) I use the grey eyedropper on various spots on any of the gray squares until the color cast is gone and gray is gray.
My friend Gina emailed me a photo with a note saying, “I like the light in this photo– for some reason I always think of you when I look at it.” Although I rarely paint from photos, especially those taken by other people, I just had to paint this one. My computer monitor is set up so that I can paint directly from the image on the screen which is a lot better than working from the limited colors in a printed image.
I’m not sure if I’m done yet, but I couldn’t see what else was needed so I stopped. If you have any suggestions for improving the picture, I’d love to hear.
Below are some stages of the painting. I used a bit of artistic license: I gave Hannah a bit of a haircut and deleted Gina’s wonderful dog Bella because:
The dog was competing with Hannah as the focal point and was about the same size.
I couldn’t get Bella to “read” as a dog; no matter how hard I tried to draw her correctly, she just kept turning into a jackrabbit.
Hannah’s Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16×12
Painting phase 1
B&W value check
Painting phase 2
Painting Phase 3
Color spots
Photo, B&W w/2 values
Photo, B&W w/3 values
Original Photo
Top row: 1) the finished painting; 2) my painting start; and 3) a black and white version of the start to see if my values were on track.
Middle row: 1) & 2) the next two steps in the painting. 3) a view of a “color spot” layer that I made in Photoshop. I created a new layer, and used Photoshop’s Paintbrush tool to select (Alt-click) and paint spots of those colors because it can be easier to see the colors when they’re isolated. Even more helpful than the color spots is a color-mixing tip I learned from Dianne Mize on Empty Easel: you apply the color to the edge of a small card and compare it to the subject until you get it right.
Bottom row: three views of the original photo. 1) “Posterized” in Photoshop down to two values; 3) posterized with three values; 3) Gina’s original photo.
P.S. This park, which Hannah affectionately calls the “swamp adventure,” is part of the East Bay Regional Parks. It is a river front park next to McAvoy harbor in Bay Point. It’s a little delta oasis in the sprawl of East Contra Costa County.
These humble but persistent hydrangeas were still blooming outside my kitchen window, despite suffering through drought then rain and cold. Their leaves were few, gray and blotchy and the stems were bent and woody but the flowers just weren’t giving up.
While I worked on the painting I was thinking about humility. I’ve discovered that being humble is a good antidote to procrastination.
When I think that I have to be “good” at something (especially painting), it creates fear that I won’t be. Then I find myself either procrastinating or, if it strikes while I’m painting, reworking a painting again and again because it’s not “perfect” yet.
I’ve found that the best way to step out of that rut of perfectionism is to focus on being honestly humble and not worry about being good, better, best, or perfect. All I have to be is humble little me and like the hydrangeas, just hang in there and shine forth.
About the painting:
I was trying to see and paint light and make good use of color temperature and value contrasts to model the form. I started by doing a monochrome underpainting in acrylic, but didn’t really like the way the acrylic paint kind of ruined the wonderful texture of the ArtBord. Here are the steps along the way:
1 & 2 are photos of the still life set up, the second in black and white to look at values.
Jana Bouc, Artist 
