San Jose

Morning in the Park

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Yes, I'm pretty lucky to be able to go out our back gate, walk along the trail in Santa Teresa County Park, and see this.

171216_Santa Teresa Cty Park 1

It feels simultaneously urban and rural up there. Those agave blooms are so striking against the sky.

As I was going back home, I did a few rapid captures with a Sharpie pen while walking.

171216_Santa Teresa Cty Park 2

No animal sightings at that hour, other than birds and a few deer in the distance. Where do you like to hike and sketch?

music

Messiah Singalong

Monday, December 11, 2017

Every year, the San Jose Symphonic Choir hosts a You-Sing-It Handel's Messiah at the California Theatre. As I was getting over a cold, I wasn't quite up to singing this time but I followed along on the score. I also sketched various members of the San Jose Baroque Orchestra with the fountain pen I got at the art supply swap. It's red because the pen happened to have red ink in it.

171204_You Sing It Messiah

This group always does the entire Messiah instead of just Part I (the Christmas section) so it runs very long. Both last year and this year we've left at intermission. So I've never actually stuck around to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Which is sad, because that's the best part!

art supplies

Art Supply Swap + Owls!

Monday, December 11, 2017

171202_Art Swap at Suhita house

Urban sketcher Suhita Shirodkar had the bright idea of hosting an art supply swap the other week. It was a great excuse to clean out my studio and part ways with superfluous sketchbooks, pencils, and paints.

Of course, I didn't come home empty-handed! My haul from the art swap? The composite sketch above, plus a Platinum fountain pen, a bottle of ink, a set of Kuretake pan watercolors ... you get the picture.

After the art swap, M. and I drove south into Morgan Hill (it gets rural very quickly just a few miles from my home) in search of barn owls. Squee! I do believe they were just hanging out on fence posts waiting to be drawn. They sat posing for their portraits, turning their heads this way and that in the glare of the car headlights.

171202_Barn owls

171202_Barn owls 2


road trip

Thanksgiving in Death Valley

Sunday, December 03, 2017

Instead of spending Thanksgiving in L.A. again this year, we decided to take a road trip to Death Valley National Park, on the California-Nevada border. Started off with the usual Pacheco Pass sketches on the way to the I-5.

171122_Pacheco Pass

171122_Pacheco Pass 2

I brought a mix of random paper along on this trip -- my Strathmore sketchbook with very thin paper, a Hand Book journal, a Fluid 100 watercolor block, even a Canson mixed media paper sample from the USk Symposium.

Contrary to popular belief, Death Valley is much more than extreme summertime heat and vast salt flats well below sea level. Our first stop was the Mesquite Sand Dunes. They are exactly what you envision dunes to be if your frame of reference is, say, Lawrence of Arabia.

171123_Death Valley Mesquite Sand Dunes

We also went on several canyon hikes. Here's a sketch of Grotto Canyon. We couldn't go too far in because of a sheer, high wall of rock beyond that cavelike area. Apparently there's a way to go around it, but we didn't know it at the time.

171123_Death Valley Grotto Canyon

I tried to paint the view of the pigmented hillsides from the parking area at Devil's Golf Course (a field of otherworldly salt formations), but the Fluid 100 watercolor block I was using was acting more like hot pressed than cold pressed paper. I couldn't get the paint to sit on the paper and move around.

171124_Death Valley Artist Drive

We hiked Golden Canyon in the early morning, before everyone else mobbed the parking lot. The payoff was Red Cathedral, its sienna-colored formations contrasting with the ochre of the surrounding rock.

171124_Death Valley Red Cathedral

And this is a sketch of Natural Bridge Canyon. The trail was overrun with tourists posing for Instagram shots.

171124_Death Valley Natural Bridge

A highlight of our trip was the natural hot springs in Tecopa, outside the park. It was quite an experience to walk out on the flats in the moonlight and sit in the warm water in perfect silence, toes in the squishy mud, looking up at Milky Way.

On our way home, I rapidly sketched the Salt Creek Hills as we passed them on the highway.

171125_Salt Creek Hills

I'm surprised that so many of my colleagues and friends here in the Bay Area have never been to Death Valley. They don't know what they're missing!