Tag: Sketchbook Pages

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Drawing Faces Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting People Self Portrait Sketchbook Pages

Coffee and Me

Coffee with Pre-Trip To Do List
Coffee with To Do List

I’m back from my fantastic, amazing, intense week-long portrait workshop with Rose Frantzen, the best teacher I’ve ever had, in Scottsdale, Arizona. I will share my experiences once I have fully processed them and recovered my blogging mojo.

Meanwhile, I’m going through caffeine withdrawal again. After months with zero caffeine I needed extra energy to paint 8 hours a day on little sleep for a week. First it was just a morning cup of green tea, then black tea, then an afternoon diet Coke, and by the last day,  a morning cup of bad coffee AND the diet Coke in the afternoon. Now, after two days of withdrawal migraines, hopefully I’m over the worst of it. And it was worth it.

Self portrait with grey sweatshirt, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Self portrait with grey sweatshirt, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

I felt like sketching and the mirror was handy so why not draw myself, cozy in my gray sweats. My grandma Gertie had a “house dress” she wore all the time at home and out back to hang her laundry. Just a yellow cotton smock that snapped up the front. I have my “house sweats” that I wear when I’m at home. So comfy and warm.

Categories
Interiors Sketchbook Pages

A Peek at My Living Room

Livingroom with books and shoes, ink & watercolor, 6x4"
Livingroom with books and shoes, ink & watercolor, 6x4"

I believe in function over form; everything in my house is there because it works well, provides comfort, or is a tool I enjoy using. I don’t suffer things that don’t work. If they fail and they’re new they go back to the store; if they’re old they get donated.  In the picture above is my wonderful black leather recliner that is so comfortable on my back and my odd-colored leather sofa that also reclines.

The shoes are another story. They squeak and are uncomfortable. I arranged with Zappos to return them but I couldn’t find another pair anywhere that fit as well. I’m afraid it’s my feet, not the shoes, that are not as useful tools as they once were. I can’t send them back or recycle them though, so I’m doing exercises to make them stronger and more flexible instead.

TV and antenna, ink & watercolor, 4x6"
TV and antenna, ink & watercolor, 4x6"

I sketched this view of the TV and unattractive antennas (that work very well) sitting on the recliner in the first picture. I was feeling nauseous after taking a bunch of vitamins to try to fight a cold and so sat down and watched a painting video while sketching.

More good tools: With the $19 antenna from Radio Shack I am able to get all the network and public broadcasting HD channels for free. I love not paying for cable and just using a TiVo to record the few shows I like and watching them without commercials.

I scheduled this ahead to post while I’m at the workshop in case I get homesick and want to see my  kitties or my house. I think that will be highly unlikely though as I’ll be painting and learning like crazy.

Categories
Animals Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages

Bye-Bye Kitties, See You Soon

Fiona on Grandma's Blanket, ink & watercolor, 6x4" Strathmore sketchbook
Fiona on Grandma's Old Ratty Blanket, ink & watercolor, 6x4"

Fiona loves curling up in this funky old wool blanket. It was my grandmothers so despite it being in tatters I can’t part with it and use it as a throw on cold evenings. There is a corner missing that my sister’s rat munched off years ago, and another corner missing that I cut off and sent to an Australian artist friend, Allison Horridge, who was collecting fabrics for an art project.

I will be offline this week to focus on the Alla Prima Portraiture workshop with Rose Frantzen that I was so incredibly lucky to get into from her waiting list. She only teaches a couple of times a year; registration for her June class will be by lottery.

Fiona, ink & watercolor, 6x4"
Fiona, ink & watercolor, 6x4"

Meanwhile, I have the best pet sitter: Rachel McGraw of McGraw’s Paws. She is so professional, honest, kind, organized and caring. I wish all business owners could take a lesson from her. It’s weird having to show house-sitters and pet-sitters my other (neurotic) cat Busby’s hiding places: my closet behind the shoes, the bottom shelf of my dresser, kitchen cabinets (including the one above the fridge), under the couch and bed, or behind a painting drying rack.

Busby Berkeley, Oil on Panel, 6x6" - Portrait of a Cat
Busby Berkeley: The Cat, Oil on Panel, 6x6"

Fiona likes everyone, and even Busby (above) who is scared of everyone likes Rachel.

Categories
Art theory Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Places Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

Squid, Vanilla Ale, Noise and Wonky Sketching at Elevation 66

Grilled squid with avocado, rice fritters, grapefruit gel and spicy avocado
Grilled squid with avocado, rice fritters, grapefruit gel and spicy avocado

I enthusiastically joined my Tuesday night sketch buddies for dinner, beer and sketching at  Elevation 66, the new El Cerrito brew pub. I loved my dinner,  displayed above, (a “small plate” combo so weird I couldn’t resist: grilled squid slices on spicy avocado sauce beside little blobs of grapefruit foam/gel (“to cleanse the palate”) and spicy deep-fried rice fritters. Odd but yummy!

Esther Vanilla Stout Ale, Delicious! ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Esther Vanilla Stout, Delicious! ink & watercolor, 7x5"

Even under the influence of a small glass of Esther Vanilla Stout, a delicious milkshake of a beer, it got so noisy by 8:00 on a Tuesday night that I couldn’t think straight and was ready to leave. I was having a hard time with drawing ellipses and symmetrical shapes (my next drawing subject to practice).

Cathy & Micaela at the bar
Cathy & Micaela sketching at the bar, ink & watercolor 5x7"

And there were lots and lots of symmetrical shapes to practice on! My drawing just kept getting wonkier as the noise got louder.

Beer in the vat, wine on the shelf with hoses
Beer in the vat, wine on the shelf with hoses

I was overly self-critical while I was sketching, wanting to get things right. Then I got my copy of The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing On Location Around The World and discovered something wonderful: Of the two sketches of mine that Gabi chose for the book, one is very wonky and the other nicely organized. That helped me to see that there is room for both in my art life. Wonky is good! Getting it “right” is good too! Yay!

Please click on their names to see Cathy, Micaela and Beth’s excellent pub sketches from the evening on our Urban Sketchers blog.

Categories
Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

Golden Globes 2012 Fun Sketching

Golden Globes: Gervais, Depp, Banderas, Plummer, ink & watercolor 8x6"
Golden Globes: Gervais, Depp, Banderas, Plummer, ink & watercolor 8x6"

It was fun watching the Golden Globes and sketching the people. It took much longer because I kept pausing the TiVo when I saw someone I wanted to sketch.

Four (failed) attempts at Laura Dern
Four (failed) attempts at Laura Dern

I was surprised to actually catch likenesses of some (but definitely not all) of the people. Laura Dern and Rob Lowe alluded me.

Julianne Moore, 2 failed Rob Lowes, Producer of Downton Abbey
Julianne Moore, 2 bad Rob Lowes, Downton Abbey Producer

I wasn’t sure if it was just my TV or the angle of the cameras that filmed the show, but it seemed like all the movie stars had extra long heads. I doubt it was the camera that made all the female stars look soooo skinny. How sad it must be to have your art form require that you don’t get to eat.

Audience, director glasses, Madonna
Audience, director glasses, Madonna

It seemed like all the male directors and producers were wearing glasses with heavy, square, black frames, the kind that used to be considered nerd glasses and usually sported tape holding them together.

Categories
Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life

It Ain’t Winter But It’s Squash

Spaghetti Squash and Acorn Squash, ink & watercolor, 8x5"
Spaghetti Squash and Acorn Squash, ink & watercolor, 8x5"

We’re still not having winter, just more lovely sunny days near 70 degrees. I long for the cool rainy weather that makes it so appealing to bake winter squash and simmer hearty soups while painting in the studio. So the squash gets sketched instead of eaten.

Sonia's Squash, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Sonia's Squash, ink & watercolor, 5x8"

The green squash isn’t really named “Sonia’s Squash” but I always think of my friend Sonia when I see these because of this amazing watercolor she painted of one with hundreds of glazes. (Correction: in reading the title I see that hers isn’t a squash it’s an Australian Blue Pumpkin.)

These squash are actually side by side on a spread in the Moleskine I’m working in (along with two other sketchbooks this month) but since the Moleskine is bound in stupid landscape format it doesn’t fit in my scanner.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Plants

Standing Tall in a Moleskine

Succulents Along the Walk, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Succulents Along the Walk, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

To shake things up a bit I thought I’d try a watercolor Moleskine watercolor sketchbook this time instead of binding a new journal. These sketches are the first in the Moleskine from a walk in my neighborhood on a sunny winter day.

A few spreads into the Moleskine, I’m liking the paper but hating the stupid, floppy, too-wide landscape format. Why, oh why does Moleskine refuse to bind a watercolor book on the long size in portrait format! Brenda Swenson had a clever solution: she bought a very large watercolor Moleskine and sawed off half to make one the right size! Here’s someone else who had hers sliced at the local photocopy shop.

Succulents 2, ink & wat5ercolor, 7x5"
Succulents 2, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

The spike on this plant was about 15 feet tall but I didn’t think through how to make it look that way, and since it was in ink, it is what it is. The stalk should have gotten skinnier as it got further away instead of looking like a fat asparagus.

Categories
Faces Ink and watercolor wash People Self Portrait Sketchbook Pages

Cringe-Worthy End-of-Journal Self-Portraits

End of Journal Self-Portrait #1, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
End of Journal Self-Portrait #1, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

I finished my Sock Monkey Journal on New Years Eve by doing my usual end of journal self-portraits, drawing directly in ink. I did several, trying again and again to get a likeness. Each of them had bits of me, either in feeling or appearance, but none got a real likeness. This was my favorite, above.

Trying a profile (again and again), 7x5", ink
Trying a profile (again and again), 7x5", ink

Since I only had a few pages left in the book I did all the starts above on one page. It’s tricky drawing a profile view in a mirror. You look, then draw, then look, then draw. It’s also rather painful looking so closely and seeing the effects of another year of gravity. But better than the alternative!

Worst one, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Worst one, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

I think the one above is the worst of the bunch. At this point I realized that I needed some serious studying and practice at drawing heads which I began doing the next day.

Self portrait with ponytail
Self portrait with ponytail

Had I not added all the stupid ink to try to make shadows before painting it, this one might have been OK. Instead of using a mirror for this one, I took a photo with my iPad propped on the window sill while looking away from it and then worked from the photo.

Since I did these, I’ve already learned a lot about drawing heads from the Loomis book, “Drawing the Head and Hands.” I’ll be posting my practice from that book soon.

Categories
Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages

The Firemen Were Busy So We Went to the Brewery

Soup at Triple Rock Brewery, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Soup at Triple Rock Brewery, ink & watercolor, 5x7"

We met for Tuesday night sketching at the main Berkeley Firehouse where we had permission to sketch firetrucks and emergency paraphernalia (and maybe even a hunky fireman or too) but they had to shut down the station and send all their trucks and guys off to fight fires.

So we went around the corner to Triple Rock Brewery. I got a bowl of delicious soup and sketched it on the black plaid tablecloth (waterproof tablecloth of course—and a good thing as we saw a couple of pitchers spilled while we there).

Inside Triple Rock, ink, 7x5"
Inside Triple Rock, ink, 7x5"

We had fun sketching and listening in on bar conversations. I was surprised how full the pub was on a Tuesday night, lots of energy and noise and people laughing.

 

Categories
Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages

The New Oldie But Goodie

Matthew's New Old Car, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Matthew's New Old Car, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

My neighbor Matthew who lives in the house across the street with three teenagers. I think this new old car must belong to one of them since he already has a car and a truck of his own. What interested me about the scene was the way the light was glowing on the car on this very bright early afternoon. And also the crows’ nest in the tree.

I sat on the little concrete porch outside my kitchen door looking down the cement path towards my front yard garden ahead on the left. I drew the basic shapes with pencil first, to get the drawing started with things where they belonged.

Why do I feel I have to apologize or confess when I draw in pencil instead of starting directly in ink? I like using both and sometimes I want things to be a little less wonky than they are when I just go for it in ink.