Spent Thanksgiving weekend in L.A. eating, shopping, and sketching. Can't wait to go back!
It's odd to live so close to Big Sur that we can go there on a whim. This is the view from Nepenthe, a cafe/restaurant that overlooks the water.
Thank goodness the month is over. My daily InkTober drawings often devolved into strange late-night surreal scribblings, as I'd ask M. to give me prompt words. Here are the remaining ones, just to close out this bizarre month:
I've been diligently drawing every day but just hadn't taken time to scan everything until today. So here's the massive catch-up post.
Last night M. and I had dinner at Pho 69 and checked out TechShop in downtown San Jose. In between I sketched the California Theatre, a '20s-era movie palace turned performing arts venue.
The day before, I drew the two trees and distant hills I see every day out our front door. They are tall and totemic and remind me that I am in California.
Finding InkTober subjects on busy weeknights was challenging until M. and I hit upon the idea of using word prompts (from vintage copies of Sunset magazine, found at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park) to inspire me to draw random things and tie them together.
M. thinks teacup-tuna-toilet-paper baby will go viral.
Me, I'm rooting for the Saltine desert.
It's hard to do it without any prompts -- I end up mostly drawing what's in front of me, and at 10 pm it starts with whatever I see in and around the mirrored bedroom closet doors.
Last Sunday M. and I rode our bikes at Viva Calle SJ, an open streets event in which miles of San Jose roads were closed to cars. I sketched at the Aztec dance demonstration by Tezkatlipoka Dance Group and then drew the cyclists who had gathered at the information tents at Parque de los Pobladores.
They loiter aimlessly and peck and scratch and strut and sometimes even use the crosswalk when crossing the street. And they will not be on your Thanksgiving table.
After two hours of high-energy one-step, cha-cha and swing at Friday Night Waltz, I caught my breath long enough to do some quick gestural studies of our fellow dancers as they whirled around the room.
Drawn while sitting on the new sectional in our living room. A gift plant was the inspiration for the first.
Delicious green papaya salad to start, farro entree for the main. Not the best vantage point for a sketch, though, and the light was rapidly fading.
InkTober is a disciplinarian.
M. was a ready, if oblivious, subject for yesterday's drawing. I learned that although striped flannel sheets are cozy, drawing them takes a lot of patience.
Today I decided to play around with dip pens, a bamboo pen, a brush and various bottled inks. I used Levenger Regal and Forest, and Noodler's Cayenne.
Free music in Golden Gate Park, good friends to hang out with, Strathmore gray sketchbook, an assortment of pens, my tiny folding stool. Saturday done right.
Took VTA to the South First Fridays Art Walk tonight. Perfect venue for InkTober sketching! Lots of people strolling the area. Saw some new restaurants to check out, and was particularly wowed by the show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.
The people shaping clay at the Higher Fire potters' wheels were also impressive. They kept their focus even with all the people wandering in and out of their space.
It's a visual feast of approaches to location sketching, with lots of examples for inspiration. I'm honored to be in the company of such amazing urban sketcher friends.
Ask for it at your local bookstore or library.
(And yes, that's the book sitting in my brand-new shed studio -- will be posting some pics of the building and interior soon!)
Before I lived in Connecticut I wasn't really a beach person. Now that I'm living inland, I crave a glimpse of water from time to time. It's a good thing we don't live too far from the ocean.
M. surprised me on my birthday with an impromptu trip to Santa Cruz, the original California surfer town. Our lovely B&B, West Cliff Inn, overlooked the boardwalk and the beach.
Just a few minutes' drive away is Natural Bridges State Beach.
Both of these sketches were done on a Fluid 100 hot press watercolor 8x8 block. I'm really enjoying the way paint behaves on this smooth surface.
It's not easy to draw people playing volleyball (though it's easier than drawing people bowling).
San Jose sprawls from urban to practically rural; I've only just started to explore it. From the hill behind our house you can see a panoramic vista of towering palms and carved-out hills, drought-parched grass and tile-roofed homes.
You can't go to Singapore without eating ... or shopping. Although I didn't get to see Orchard Road (inexcusable, I know - will have to go back), I did make one purchase: a Hero pen with a bent nib, from Straits Art. It's similar to the Sailor bent nib pen I already own, but shorter and heavier. Its nib lets you make thin and thick strokes by varying the angle of the pen.
I filled its cartridge with the super5 ink that we got in our symposium goodie bag. This is my kind of travel souvenir -- something I'll be using for several years that will remind me of a great experience!
After registration and an opening sketchwalk, the symposium's packed schedule of activities and workshops got underway.
This year, I led an activity for the first time. It was called "Putting the 'Urban' in Urban Sketching." The task was to incorporate found materials -- both as drawing tools and as paper/substrate -- into our sketches, in order to tell the story of a place. I was concerned that Singapore's famously clean streets would yield no interesting scraps to use, but I needn't have worried.
I was blown away by the creativity of the activity participants. One found a scrap of cardboard at Albert Mall food center; another used a splayed joss stick to do a great ink drawing.
I used a palm twig dipped in watercolors to draw this -- not easy!
In this sketch, I used a stray price label, a dried leaf, and coin rubbings to evoke the atmosphere of the vendors.
Virginia Hein's excellent workshop, "Light and Dark with a Punch of Color" was a good challenge for me. I'm so used to working with line that it's hard for me to see just value shapes.
In Nina Johansson’s workshop, "Light in the Spaces Between," we learned to look at the areas between planes, to seek out the changes in value between surfaces.
Nina also showed us how to make subtle warm and cool shifts to our watercolor mixes without creating muddy colors.
Melanie Reim's workshop, "Found In Translation: The Influence of Calligraphy in the Figure and Environment," was inspirational. I loved "collecting" faces and figures with economical strokes of the brushpen in and around the Sri Krishnan Temple on Waterloo Street.
The final sketchwalk was at the Singapore Management University courtyard. It was a tranquil oasis of green, with ample space for sketchers to spread out and choose different views. Some sketched the Singapore Art Museum across the road:
I decided to complete my symposium experience with a sketch of the other sketchers.
And who could resist drawing our youngest participant, who patiently held this complex pose?
All the energy from Singapore will carry us through the rest of the year and onward to our next symposium: USK Manchester 2016 here we come!!
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