Le Bateau Ivre is a cafe I used to visit often when I first moved to Berkeley so it was great to rediscover it with my Tuesday night sketch group. The food is wonderful and the atmosphere warm and inviting. Le Bateau Ivre is in an old house on Telegraph Avenue and each room has its own charming personality and decor.
Details of the room and music and my drawing mistake
I fell in love with the classical music playing in the cafe and was holding up my iPhone to the speaker, hoping that the Shazam or Soundhound apps could guess the recording. The owner of Le Bateau Ivre saw me and asked if the music was too loud. I explained what I was trying to do and she ran to get the CD and showed it to me. I took a photo of the cover which I later pasted on to this page. The CD was Heinrich Ignaz Franz van Biber: Sonatae a Violino solo of 1681.
Falling behind and worrying about catching up can be stressful when it’s about work not accomplished, tasks not completed. But in the case of my blog, being behind on posting is a good thing. It just means I’ve been doing lots of painting and sketching with less time for the computer (a goal for this year).
I did the sketch above on the day I was preparing to leave for a weekend painting workshop. I reminded myself that I was officially on vacation, which allowed me to slow down enough to stop and sketch while out walking to do errands instead of rushing back home to get packed.
This sketch came in handy last week at work, when I wrote and illustrated a blog post for our literacy organization’s blog. My post’s subtitle was: “Two birds with one stone” (intentionally leaving off “kill”). Our clever editor suggested changing it to “Feed two birds with one scone.” So then I needed a sketch of a scone to accompany my two birds. Since I always have my sketchbook with me I was able to scan the scone sketch. You can see the result on our Reading Apprenticeship blog here.
And I will get that backlog of artwork posted soon!
The El Cerrito Honda dealership was kind enough to allow our Tuesday night urban sketchers group to come and sketch in their showroom. There were chairs and tables for us to sketch and paint in comfort and interesting architecture and cars to draw. I remember boys drawing cars all the time but never thought that someday I’d go out of my way to draw cars too.
The artist Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez told me that she likes including cars in her paintings because they remind her of jewel-like candies. In this post she not only included cars, but got a passerby to stand and pose for her and included him in the painting!
Shark Honda, ink & watercolor
I drew this car at the end of the evening and it was so close to me that it got way out of proportion and then started looking like a shark with whatever that thingee was on top. It’s good to develop the ability to see and draw cars because they’re everywhere, and leaving them out of a scene can look strange.
Artist Beth Bourland told me a funny story about this car sketch on her blog. She kept working on her drawing after the cars drove away. Some passerbys looked at her sketch and then at the empty street in front of her, and back at the sketch, wondering if she was seeing things.
North Beach Pizza in Berkeley is housed in a former International House of Pancakes. Pizza is a sort of large pancake, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it served with maple syrup. We had a good time eating, chatting and sketching the night away, six of us in one cozy booth.
You can imagine my glee when this gentleman in full Mohawk sat down across from me on BART. Entranced by his cell phone, he never noticed me sketching and held perfectly still. It must have taken him a long time to get his hair to stand up so perfectly–and why? Especially first thing in the morning? I awarded him a sticker (on his page) from National Geographic.
Shellfish Shells, original version, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
A shellfish company saw a previous shell painting of mine and commissioned me to paint one for them to use as a background on their business cards. They shipped me a box of their oyster, clam and mussel shells to use as reference. I created the above sketch in my Moleskine watercolor notebook and sent them the file for their review.
Close up: Accidental texture caused by painting on reverse page
On the next page in my Moleskine, I sketched a landscape and painted it with juicy washes, something I do on the 140 lb watercolor paper in my hand-bound sketchbooks all the time. Without my noticing, the water seeped through the lighter-weight Moleskine paper, wetting the shell painting on the previous page.
Some of the mussels’ paint lifted, creating the wonderful texture (close up above) that I probably couldn’t have achieved if I had I tried. The only downside to this “technique” is that some of the lifted paint printed on the opposite (fortunately blank) page.
I wasn’t worried about the change in the art for my client because I’d already created a high-resolution file of the original. And as it turned out, they asked me to do another version with two different kinds of oyster shells and more clams, apologizing for changing their directions. I’m happy to paint as many versions as it takes since shells are one of my favorite subjects.
It was fun to meet the South Bay members of our Urban Sketchers SF Bay Area group Suhita and John, and to meet some of the members of Sketchcrawl Silicon Valley at the Stanford sketchcrawl on Saturday. Cathy and I made the hour plus drive down there and met at noon. We started with lunch at the outdoor cafe with a view of the Rodin Sculpture Garden (sketched above at the end of the day after everyone left and it is my favorite because I love those funny, imperfectly groomed trees).
Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center
My first sketch was the one above, of a statue called “Faith” in front of the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Starting with “Faith” seemed good, since it helps to have a little faith that the sketching will go well. By 1:00 there were about 10 of us and everyone went off to follow their muses with a plan to regroup around 3:00. I followed Cathy who knew her way around, since my muse, like me, has no sense of direction.
Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor
The sign on the building said “Memorial Arch and Court Erected by His Mother, 1898 in Memory of Leland Stanford Jr. Born to mortality May 14, 1868…” I ran out of room to record his year of death but he only lived until age 16 so his mother donated the land Stanford was built on to create a memorial for her son.
Chapel and courtyard
From a distance the front of the chapel appears to be glowing gold but when you get closer you can see it’s covered with a stunning mural made entirely in mosaic. Coming from an urban environment where things are crowded, noisy and grungy, Stanford was amazing. The Stanford campus is tremendously spread out (over 8,000 acres), with most buildings only one or two stories, but massive nonetheless. Everything is immaculately clean, with amazing gardens, gazillions of trees (well, officially 43,000), and quiet. At $51,000 a year for tuition, room and board I suppose one should expect a lovely environment!
Ginger Ale and Saltines Namiki Falcon pen, Carbon Platinum Ink, and watercolor
Today was a bad news, good news day. It started with a migraine that eventually passed enough to work most of the day (despite the internet going down, fixing that and then a little later the electricity went out long enough to shut down the computer with several projects in progress). The migraine left behind a tummy ache. I couldn’t deal with the supermarket so went to the little health food store and bought some natural Ginger Ale, organic saltines and candied ginger (all supposed to be good for tummy aches).
Candied Ginger in an Egg Cup
The good news is that this morning my reliable but grumpy mailman delivered my new Namiki Falcon fine point fountain pen and this evening I felt well enough to fill it with ink and give it a spin. I LOVE IT! The nib floats like a dream over the page with control and flexibility and a really nice fine line. It’s the best pen I’ve ever used. UPDATE June 2011: After using the pen for a few weeks I discovered that I didn’t really like it that much and sold it. I felt I had too little control of the ink flow, which went to fast for me, even with the extra fine nib. I’ve gone back to my Lamy Safari extra fine point which I LOVE!
The other good news is that with these sketches I finally finished filling the Moleskine watercolor sketch book that I’ve so detested using during the interim between binding sketchbooks. Tomorrow I get to start using the one I bound a couple of weeks ago. Yay!
On my first day back to work after being sick for weeks we had a staff meeting. I wanted to put my head down on the table and nap so doodled to stay upright and awake. Later I pasted the page in my sketchbook with the added note about antibiotics.
Sketching Sketchers #1
Then my first night back at Tuesday night sketching (at the Bread Workshop) after I drew my food I sketched the sketchers at my table. I had to add that shading to the right of Amy’s face to “erase” the splotch I made by her nose that looked like a booger.
Sketching Sketchers #2
I added one too many lines, which lead to more lines to try to fix them, in Sonia’s hair which had been perfect until I did that. I made a note to remind myself to STOP at “good enough” and not keep going.
Turkey & Swiss at The Junket, El Cerrito. Lamy Safari pen, Carbon Platinum ink & watercolor in Moleskine
Whenever we meet to sketch at a cafe we always try to sketch our food before we eat it and we always joke about what a great diet it would be to do that at every meal. It not only helps to slow down eating, but it also helps to speed up sketching! This leads to looser, more playful sketches which I think are more fun to make and to see.
Sonia and I met for lunch at The Junket, a deli in El Cerrito Plaza. My Turkey and Swiss Sandwich on a sourdough baguette (sketched above) was the best I’ve had in years. It was my second choice though, as we originally ordered Chicken Dumpling Soup. But when I saw them spooning it into a bowl, it had the consistency of gloppy, yellow gravy. I asked if it was cream-based (Sonia is allergic to dairy) and they said no, they knew it wasn’t because they reconstitute it with water. Um…no thanks. I switched to the half sandwich and Sonia got salad and we were happy.
Grilled Veges & Brown Rice at the Bread Workshop. Ink & watercolor in Moleskine
On our next Tuesday night sketch-out we met at the Bread Workshop. They had contacted me the week before to ask if they could use this previous sketch I did there to illustrate a newsletter they are sending to supporters and I gladly said yes. They reserved a large table for us with a view into the bakery so that we could draw the bakers working.
I wasn’t much up to that challenge as it was my first night out after being sick for two weeks and my sketching felt rusty. You can see Micaela’s wonderful sketch here and Sonia’s here and here. The food was fantastic: my grilled veges (above) were so flavorful!
Bread and Baker at Bread Workshop, ink & watercolor
This was the extent of my drawing bread and bakers. The Bread Workshop are advocates of sustainable foods and practices and ranked as one of the top ten greenest restaurants in the Bay Area. Everything I’ve had there has been delicious and they were playing great music that night, going from George Benson to Billy Holiday to Tom Waits in succession.
Jana Bouc, Artist 