Ale and Ale Drinkers, ink & watercolor sketch, 5×8″
Before being seated at Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley some of us went upstairs to sketch. I enjoyed the perspective challenge of drawing these guys below me, sitting and standing with their pitcher of beer.
The menu recommended their Apricot Ale with the Blackened Salmon dinner (fruity beer a bit odd but tasty). The beer came before my food so I sketched it. I was too hungry to draw my delicious dinner.
Plates at Pyramid Brewery, Ink & watercolor, 5×8″
After dinner I drew what I could see from my corner of the booth where I was kind of wedged in. And that should finally be the end of December and beer sketches. Now on to posting more interesting stuff than beer and dishes!
When we visited Berkeley’s very colorful Gaumenkitzel Restaurant, they offered us a large “community” table where we could sketch and snack all evening. After most of the other customers had left, one sketcher pulled her chair right up to the pastry case to get a better look. Gaumenkitzel means “Tickle Your Taste Buds.” Just saying the name feels tickly on the tongue.
I sketched the back of Susan’s beer while she drew the more decorative front. Click their names to see more sketches from the evening by Ceiny and Cathy.
My January and February have been swallowed up by a ton of organizing and business chores which I’m hoping to declare completed tomorrow (YAY!). Then I can finally get back to a life centered around art instead of on spreadsheets, file folders, computers, and tax forms.
I love the way the big guy seems to be looking at the pretty girl’s butt in her shiny black tights. In reality they got in line at different times, but my drawing took on a life of its own.
One of the things I love about living in the Bay area is the wide variety of people you see, dressed however they please, with either no concern about fashion or a style all their own. I fit right in!
While I was in Walnut Creek to take photos of an industrial park for a painting commission I stopped at the Shadelands Ranch Museum to sketch. They were hosting a ladies’ tea that afternoon in the downstairs drawing rooms that looked quite charming. I explored the rest of the house but sadly they told me I couldn’t sketch inside.
I would have loved to draw the Walnut Creek Historical Society volunteers serving in white aprons, the fancy table settings, and most especially the gang of Red Hat Society ladies seated in one of the rooms. I waited outside and sketched the building, hoping to capture them coming out after the tea but they dawdled so long I had to leave or get stuck in rush hour traffic.
Shadelands Ranch water fountain, ink & watercolor 8×5″
I drew this water fountain on the property to warm up before tackling the massive Penniman home. Then I did the three sideways thumbnails on the left to try to figure out how much of the house I wanted to draw and how I’d fit it in on the paper.
Ticket Machine and Street Lamp, ink & watercolor, 8×5″
We rode BART and a cable car to the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco to sketch. I had to first draw some of the antique street “furniture” on display—an old Cable Car Ticket Machine and a street lamp with cable car line sign on it (California St. Line). The tickets were only 25 cents then. Now they are $6.00 a ride!
Cables that still power the cable cars, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I was surprised to discover that the museum was built around and above the massive cable system that still runs the cable cars. The guy in the sketch above stands on a platform about 20 feet up to supervise (?) the cables that run through multiple sets of huge gears in the basement level of the building and then go out under the streets to pull the cable cars up the steep hills.
Cable Car Museum, ink & watercolor, 8×5″
It was extremely LOUD in the museum since it’s on a second floor mezzanine completely open to the cable machinery (see picture) so it felt great to get outside again and sketch the brick museum building from across the street. It was a grey, drizzly winter day but never outright rained so we had a great walk back to BART up and down the hills.
Last night our sketch group visited Sue Johnson Lamps in Berkeley, a shop that has specialized in custom, artisan-made lamps and shades since the 1970’s. Sue generously held the store open late for us and even offered us tea and persimmon pudding. We all fell in love with their amazing variety of hand-crafted works of art that also happen to light up.
A good example of the variety: on the left above, a “ceremonial fertility carving” of a mother with big hair and a (very stiff) baby on her lap and an exquisite hand-blown glass base that lights up from inside with a shade embellished in lovely Japanese print fabric.
Parrot and Elephant Lamps, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
And then there was a whole menagerie of animal lamps: birds, elephants, dogs, monkeys, frogs and more. Sketching the elephant made me realize how much I didn’t know about what elephants look like. I hope we’ll be invited back again because there is so much more there to draw.
Be sure to see my sketch buddies’ very different drawings on our Urban Sketchers blog: see Cathy’s, Ceinwen‘s, Sonia’s, Cristina‘s, (and I’ll add links to Susan’s and Micaela’s when they get them posted).
When I was given the photo of Cocoa to paint from, I pointed out that her face was covered with mud or sand. I was asked if I could paint her without the dirt. I laughed, since I’d just finished a commissioned watercolor from a photo of an industrial building that was partially hidden by cars, which they requested I remove in the painting. Since I pulled off that bit of x-ray vision (not really—I visited the facility to see what was hidden), I thought I might be able to paint a clean dog from a dirty one.
My favorite part to paint was her nose. I referred to the second photo below to see her fur color sans mud.
Cocoa in her muddy-face photoClean Cocoa
The person who commissioned the painting as a gift for Cocoa’s owner said the painting looks just like Cocoa and she was sure her owner would love the painting. (I hope so!)
The nice thing about sketching in bars, especially one that is also a cafeteria a frequented by an older crowd on a quiet Tuesday night, is that people tend to sit still long enough to draw them.
Balding at Brennan’s Bar: trying and trying to capture him. Ink, 6×8
I kept trying to capture this guy who sat a few tables away eating his dinner and reading but never really got him. My sketch buddy Micaela perfectly captured him, which you can see on our Urban Sketchers blog here.
I’m still playing catch up: these are from November. But now that things have settled down in my world, I intend to be caught up by the end of the month, including my 2012 year-end review and a whole week of sunflower paintings.
Since my end-of-year wrap-up blog post remains unfinished, here are a couple of autumn sketches that were waiting patiently to be posted. I have a good excuse though: my new iMac arrived last week and since then I’ve been immersed in learning the Mac after over a decade on Windows PCs. I’ve been transferring files, talking to both Moron and Genius-level tech support, and installing and learning Mac versions of my applications.
Miller-Knox Park Autumn, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
I’m finding the Mac to be quite delightful in many ways and a bit confounding in others. But little by little I’m getting the hang of it… And..Oh Crud! right after I typed that I made some kind of wrong move and instantly I was popped out of the blog and into an endless loop of…
Computer: “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” I click: “Stay on page.” Computer: “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” over and over until I finally give up, say OK and click “Leave this page.” And of course nothing happens. Had to force quit and restart.
But Yay WordPress; it saved the draft! I wish I knew what I did so I don’t do it again. It has happened a bunch of times and I have no clue why.
It’s quite humbling going from being expert on the PC to being such a beginner that I couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the Mac (finally found the power button hidden behind the screen).
Hurried Sketch of Very Stinky Fruit, ink & watercolor, 5×8″
These funny strawberry-like fruits came from a tree in Berkeley that I passed while walking with a friend. The patterns on them reminded me of cloisonné beads. I picked up a few that had fallen from the tree and was surprised to find them very light and seemingly hollow, rather like marshmallows. I stuck them in my pocket to take home and sketch.
I didn’t have time that day to sketch so left them on a plate in my studio. When I returned to the studio the next day I noticed a foul odor, rather like vomit , and realized it was coming from these “fruits.”
Stinky Strawberry Fruit from Tree, photo
I braved the smell and set about sketching them (quickly). I would have cut them open to discover what was inside but was afraid I’d need a gas mask. As soon as I finished the sketch I bagged them and got them out of the studio, opened the doors and turned the air cleaner on high.
In this case, beauty really is only skin deep. Whatever is under the skin is really yucky. A clever ruse by mother nature to prevent them from being eaten?
UPDATE: 1/9/12.
Mystery solved. One of my readers on Facebook put the query out to her horticultural friends and here’s what they reported:
The tree is Cornus kousa, one of the very best small tree/large shrubs. Spectacular in bloom, late spring, then very decorative in the fall. Good for birds. I found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkkcWtQSgIY
Jana Bouc, Artist 