The year in pictures: 2019

I followed some friends' examples and decided to post my "best of 2019." I branched out a bit this year, doing portraits of people, dogs, birds, and a few landscapes to throw in with the usual still life subjects, and doing 30x30 Direct for the first time. It was fun, and I want to expand even more. I also included my two "commercial" successes—my urban sketch of Bobby's Coffee Shop that made it to the cover of their menu, and my Breakfast with Two Valley Girls map. Thanks to everyone for their kind comments about what is always a work in progress.

Stay tuned...I signed up for both 30 sketches in 30 days and for Sktchy's 30 portraits in 30 days for the month of January! We'll see what sticks.

Good news

I just received an email from Nate at theydrawandtravel.com that my map of West Valley breakfast joints will appear in a book, a compilation of the 100 best maps submitted to the "Mapping Special Places" contest in which I entered it last month. He noted, "Of course, your map was a favorite of all the judges, me included!"

The book will be distributed to dozens of art directors worldwide. It's due out in early 2020.

The maps from the book will also be posted on the site of the sponsor of the contest, Stroly, where they will each have a QR code so viewers can find them online and actually use them if they happen to be in the area of the place you mapped.

I'm so excited!

Here's my map, again, called "Valley Girl Breakfast":

Some urban sketching

Last week I met a friend mid-afternoon at Hugo's for a late lunch/early dinner, and got there about 15 minutes early, so I did a sketch while waiting for her. The restaurant was uncharacteristically empty—it's a popular spot, but we seemed to have hit the lull between lunch leaving and dinner arriving. I really like the earth tones and green they used to decorate the restaurant—along with the lighting, it gives an intimate atmosphere.

Tuesday morning I woke up late and a little cranky.  I didn't have many groceries in the house and couldn't figure out what I would have for breakfast. Then I remembered my cousin telling me that the AMC in Woodland Hills does a special on Tuesdays—$6 for all movies for seniors (60 and over), all day! So I took myself to Bobby's Coffee Shop as a treat, where I did a sketch of the other end of the bar while I waited for my food, read my book, and enjoyed having someone else cook my (late) breakfast, and then I went to the movies. (I saw The Good Liar, which was great!) I'll have to remember this outing for future moody Tuesdays.

Bobby's was similarly uncrowded, between breakfast and lunch, so the only people in my sketch were this lone cell phone studier and one of the waitresses, who was renewing the supply of ketchup at the empty end of the bar.

Uniball pen and watercolor, in my Moleskine sketchbook.

Back to the prompts

I'm running behind on Doodlewash November, so in the interest of catching up, I decided to see if I could combine prompts. The two I chose were "Raccoon" and "Pomegranate," which seem unlikely as co-conspirators, but guess what? There is a video for absolutely every eventuality in life on YouTube, and one of a raccoon enjoying a snack of pomegranate seeds, sitting on pillows at a table and scooping them up from a pretty china plate is no exception! So I took a screen grab, and here we are:

Uniball pen, Signo white gel pen for whiskers
Watercolor
in the sketchbook...

#DoodlewashNovember2019

Challenge accepted

A couple of years ago, I took a class from Sketchbook Skool on map-making, taught by the talented Nate Padavick of theydrawandtravel.com. That year, teen summer reading club had a travel theme, and I came up with the idea that the teens could do a map for one of their summer projects—either a map of actual places they had been on vacay, OR a map based on a book they were reading. Anarda and I put together lists of books with road trips in them to facilitate ideas, and held a couple of workshop sessions, hoping for participation. Alas, the teens were not as fascinated with the idea as we were, and we only ended up getting about half a dozen to participate. We each had fun making a map, mine based on the book Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins, and Anarda's centered around Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone.

Two years later, I received an email saying that theydrawandtravel.com was having a contest, involving maps of "special places." And since for the past two years I had been contemplating an idea for a map, I decided, last week, that I was going to make and submit it.

Cousin Kirsten and I meet semi-regularly for breakfast out, usually on a day when she doesn't have to go to work until noon. For a long time we just went to one of our regular venues, but after a while we got bored and decided that since there were so many restaurants in the Valley, we should be explorers and try out a new one each time we met for breakfast. For about two years, we did just that. We did return to various places multiple times if we liked them a lot, but we tried to keep throwing new ones into the mix. We were somewhat restricted (this being Los Angeles) by morning traffic from going too far afield, so most of our choices ended up being in the west Valley, between my house (dead center) and hers (far west).

I sat down last Wednesday, looked up all the restaurants, and put them in order according to address, most of them along Ventura Boulevard. Then I made a small drawing of each restaurant's logo. Between Thursday and Sunday, I drew and redrew the map in pencil until I had everything just so, and then inked it onto good paper and watercolored it. And last night I submitted it to the contest.

Here is a .jpg of all the places we have sampled the eggs, potatoes, toast, waffles, coffee, etc. in the past couple of years:

And here is the link where you can find my entry, online at theydrawandtravel.com:

https://theydrawandtravel.com/illustrations/14692-breakfast-with-two-valley-girls

Kirsten is responsible for the title and the synopsis (inside the legend box), plus lots of helpful critique in-process. It's always beneficial to have someone who will let you bounce your ideas off of them!

Here are the details of the contest: https://www.theydrawandtravel.com/stroly-contest

I have no illusions that I will be one of the winners; but I'm so excited to be in the company of all these fantastic artists, and I admit that I do hope to be chosen for the top 100.

Also, check out Nate and Salli's other website, theydrawandcook.com. Similarly great art, and yummy recipes too.

More art for November

For the prompt "Octopus," something a little more historical than ocean critter-oriented...does he look too much like Medusa?

This was fun, both the portrait itself and the "appendages" I added on to remind us all of that classic tune of 1968.

I'm busy with a map project right now so I'm giving the prompts a miss for a few days, but I will catch up. I also posted some older artwork to fulfill some, which isn't exactly copacetic, but oh well...

For berries:

For flowers:

And for children:

More to share soon...

#DoodlewashNovember2019 7-8-9

Here are my next two entries for November. There was a prompt of "leaves" for November 7 and one of "owl" for November 8, so I decided to combine them by using the leaves as a decorative autumnal background for this encounter of the baby corvid with the baby owl.

These two are supposedly enemies, but I think maybe, if caught young enough, they could be friends...Today's prompt was "nuts," and I could either paint a self-portrait (ha ha) or render some actual goobers, so I chose a medley of favorites in the shell—peanuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts. I drew them with a brown micron pen to keep all the colors as true as possible.

I don't always like the prompts on offer, but this time Charlie chose some nice fall themes, and I'm enjoying putting them on paper. More to come!

Uniball pen (birds), Micron pen (nuts)

Paul Jackson watercolors

Bee Super Deluxe Mixed Media Sketchbook

November renaissance

Since I bagged Inktober, I haven't been making much art. I seem to go through these cycles where I can't focus to pick up a pen and draw, even if it's just some little thing. So when November rolled around and Charlie over at Doodlewash published his prompts list for the month (and it looked like one I could get with), I decided to let that give me some impetus. Here's what I have so far:

#2 Pears

I enjoyed painting these—there's just something so paintable about pears. I even managed a little spatter without it looking like a crime scene. The shadow could have been better...

#4 Eyes

I had fun with this one. The prompt reminded me of this old movie from my younger days, which gave me nightmares for weeks after I saw it. I chose not to put too much emphasis on the camera and focus on the eyes. Who knew how hot Tommy Lee Jones was in his youth?

#6 Water

This looks like I did it en plein air, but it's actually from a photo I took while at Echo Park with the Urban Sketchers group one day. (I painted other things that day, but really liked this bridge.) There wasn't a lot of water in the scene, but enough to fulfill the prompt. I struggled a bit with the reflections and the ripples.

More to come!

Coffee shop fame

A few postings back, I shared an urban sketch of Bobby's Coffee Shop that I made. Since I had done it while there on my own, the next time Cousin Kirsten and I went there to breakfast, I remembered and pulled my sketchbook out of my purse to show her. The manager (owner? not sure) of the restaurant happened to be passing our table. He saw my drawing, and promptly solicited me to send him a .jpg because, he said, they were reprinting the menu the following day, and he would feature it in the menu! I negotiated a credit for myself with him, and sent it over. The next time we went to breakfast, there was my picture—on the front cover of the menu! Pretty cool.

I haven't said anything about it up to now (this happened a couple of weeks ago) because Kirsten and I wanted to take our friends, Kirsti and Aaron—who recommended Bobby's to us—to breakfast there and spring the menu on them as a surprise. We did that this morning. They arrived first, and it was fun, upon walking through the door, to be greeted with exclamations of "There's the celebrity!" They thought it was way cool, and I have to agree.

Although some people chided me for not charging him for its use, I felt like since I didn't do it as a commission but purely for fun, why should I? Also, it has already borne fruit—last week he sent me the email and phone number of a local florist and said "please call them, they have some work for you." From the way it was phrased, I'm hoping he didn't tell them I did the picture gratis, because if it's a commission, I will be charging. Still, what fun! opening doors to local businesses to showcase my work.

Bagging Inktober

Well, I hung in there for a whopping two drawings, and called it a day. I just wasn't having fun. The prompts didn't inspire me, and I got tired of having to sit and cogitate for hours on what I could do to fulfill them; and honestly, although I'd like to be better at those things I mentioned before (cross-hatching, etc.), I don't enjoy them. I like doing what I do, which is making a contour drawing and then giving it personality with watercolor.

Also, unlike the other challenges in which I participated (30x30 Direct, Every Day in June), this one seemed different—competitive, full of one-upmanship, a little mean! There was so much brangling over what constituted an appropriate drawing for Inktober—whether any ink was fine, whether you could use ink like paint, whether you could use color, whether working digitally was okay, and on and on. Some of the people who were following the "legitimate" Inktober prompts talked smack about those who were making up their own prompts, there were a lot of attempts at censorship if people ventured into life drawing territory, and I just got tired of seeing it in my feed. So I bagged it.

Here are the two drawings I did, neither of which was I particularly happy with; and below that is a contour drawing I made and watercolored for pure fun and satisfaction. No comparison.

This was the drawing for the prompt "ring." It's a newly imagined cover for a Georgette Heyer novel. I misjudged the proportions and ran out of room; my original plan was to make it about 1.5 inches taller so I could put the title above the figures and the author below.

And this below was for day two, the prompt being "mindless." It took me forever to think of this, and it didn't actually express what I wanted it to, which was "less screen time," because the TV is no longer the major offender in this, it's all the trawling on social media! But I had the idea based on an old photograph for "Turn off the TV" week from a decade ago, and went with it. I drew in ink, and then used Tombow markers for the color and tints, and spread them around with water (they are water soluble). Again, not my best drawing.

Today, just for fun, I used a reference photo from a trip the cousin of my friend Mika is taking across 48 states in 48 days, and made a painting of "Eric driving the caboose." I made his head a bit too big (he looks a little too much like Paul Bunyan here), and simplified certain aspects of the caboose, but otherwise it's pretty accurate.

It was fun, I enjoyed doing it, and I'm sticking to my style for a while!

in the Sketchbook...

Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen

Uniball fine pen

Tombow markers

Paul Jackson watercolors

The Inktober Challenge

Yet another challenge approaches, one that I've never had the nerve to do. It's called "Inktober," and it's basically making 31 drawings in 31 days, using ink. Your tool (dip pen, fountain pen, ballpoint, Microns, technical pens, etc.) is up to you, but it's all about drawing. And while I do draw in ink, it's been strictly contour up to this point, which is to say, the basic outline of the object and its details. Once I left art school, with its geometric shaded objects and charcoal portraits, behind, I used my drawing purely in service to another medium. Because I love watercolor so much, I have always sublimated drawing to a framework for my watercolor, so once the contour drawing is done, I jump into color, shade, and shadow using the paints, not the pen.

Because of this, I feel a little insecure taking on this challenge. Yes, I could just do contour drawings, but the thing I love about art is its details, and the people who participate in Inktober are all about the details. I don't think I'm quite ready to draw like my new Facebook friend Steven Reddy (i.e., brick by brick!), but I would like to master the basic skill of hatching!

I decided to be proactive about this instead of trying to wing it and feeling dissatisfied, so I signed up on Bluprint (formerly Craftsy) for a class called "Pen & Ink Essentials." Here are some of my visual/verbal notes from the class:

1. Basic contour drawing (I practiced on the book sitting on top of my scanner.):

2. Contour and parallel hatching:

3. Cross-hatching, and specialty hatching (basket weave, gestural, stippling):

4. Types of gestural hatching:

For deciduous trees:

For rough stone walls (I repeat, if you're not, like Steven, inclined to draw every stone, brick, tile, shingle, paver, etc.):

There was also a segment on ink washes, but A. I didn't have any ink (oh boy, a trip to Dick Blick), and B. because it's so much like using watercolor, I didn't feel the need to practice it!

This gave me lots of ideas. Now, to try them out in "real" drawings.

Inktober isn't quite as daunting now...except that the prompts leave me drawing a blank (pardon the pun), so I may have to come up with my own theme as well!

Continuous line, contour line

Every once in a while, you need to go back and remind yourself of the basics. Since I've been teaching the occasional contour line drawing workshop at libraries this summer, I've returned to the continuous line drawing as the basis for everything. Can I make a better drawing, if I really concentrate, check all my proportions, maybe use an eraser occasionally? Sure. But who's to say it would be better than simply eyeballing the line of an object and following eye with pen in hand? As I tell the students so eager to find out that they can, in fact, draw, it's not a matter of perfection, it's a matter of personality.

So this morning I decided to do a continuous contour drawing of my desk lamp. The drawing has its flaws; the arm of the lamp is too small, the base too big, and I didn't focus carefully enough on the curves to the right of the lamp as I returned up that side from the base after delineating the left. But does it have personality? Definitely.

I then decided to paint it, because for me, color makes everything come alive. The colors of the base were complicated by the light from above as well as the light from the window, and ranged further in tone than one would expect from a basic gold-toned metal. The glow of the lightbulb was intense. I went back and forth over whether to include a background, and finally settled for an anchoring shadow, a few strokes to indicate the bookshelf on which it sits, and a few light reflections on the turquoise wall behind it.

My only other foray into art this past week was a drawing at a new favorite breakfast hang-out, Bobby's Coffee Shop in Woodland Hills. Kirsten and I are still continuing our sporadic exploration of breakfast places in the Valley, and this one was a favorite of Kirsti's and Aaron's but neither of us had ever been there. We liked it so much that we have returned, once together and now once for me by myself. As I have mentioned before, Kirsten doesn't like it when I draw during our meet-ups, so I decided to treat myself to a solo date at Bobby's to see if I could capture its ambiance.

There are several angles to capture, but I decided this time on the counter and cook-space behind it. Maybe next time I will go for the booths and 1950s signage on the other side of the room, or the tables down the center, populated pretty thoroughly no matter what time of the morning. (The lettering is an addition by me—not in the scene itself.)

Urban sketching, watercolor flowers

Urban sketch of the North Hollywood Regional Library (alias the Amelia Earhart branch) of Los Angeles Public Library, last Saturday morning.

In the sketchbook, drawn with a Uniball pen and watercolored after.

And a floral watercolor based on a reference photo from Hilary Weeks's garden.

These got a little fuzzy and muddy, but I loved the colors and the way they blended. They might have popped a little more had I put in a darker background, but part of what i liked about the reference photo was the light in the background, so I kept some of it.

On Fluid watercolor paper, drawn with pencil and watercolored using Paul Jackson Signature paints and a synthetic Escoda brush. About 7x10.25.

Draw With Me

Sketchbook Skool has a couple of weekly features that are kind of fun. One of them is called "Draw Tip Tuesdays," with Koosje Koone, which addresses some issue about which sketchers have expressed difficulties and offers solutions. The other, which I haven't tuned into as much, is called "Draw With Me," and is run by Koosje's co-founder, Danny Gregory, who simply picks a subject to draw and asks everyone else to draw along. It may be literally drawing the same thing he does, or it may be an instruction such as to draw what you can see out your window (his being much more glamorous and intricate than mine, since he lives in New York City!).

This past week, Danny decided to put SBS Dean of Students Morgan Green front and center: He excerpted five or six "screen grabs" from her weekly SBS Bulletin, and we all made three- to five-minute drawings of her based on those. Needless to say, with that amount of time they weren't the most flattering drawings ever made! Danny himself was working on his iPad, this being his new passion, and some students followed suit, while the rest of us stuck with pencil, pen, or whatnot.

Here are the four sketches I completed. We had a whole discussion, mid-sketch on #1, about teeth and how difficult they are to do, and Danny suggested that, rather than draw the individual teeth, it looked better just to draw a teeth-shaped block and maybe put in a little gumline detail, because when you draw all the teeth verbatim, they just look wrong. Despite having been successful in the past with some people's teeth, after doing one of these of Morgan I decided he was right, and confined myself to blocks from there on out!

I forgot to post these in the "Skoolyard" (the private site for SBS members) after I did them, and once I had, I thought to myself, Poor Morgan, you owe her a decent portrait. So I went to her latest Bulletin and kept hitting the pause button until I managed to snare a decent "in repose" face (with no teeth showing!), and drew and painted one.

Her hair is dyed kind of a rust brown on one side and a white with lavender highlights on the other. Because I put it all in with pen first, it was hard to convey the lightness of the one side, although I did add some white. I hope this portrait makes up for the others!

"Morgan DWM" and
"Morgan SBS Green"

In the sketchbook...
Uniball pen, Paul Jackson Watercolors

Gascon sun(flowers)

About a week after painting the Purple Haze lavender farm in my sketchbook, I found a photograph on The Good Life France (a Facebook page I follow) of a sunflower farm in Gascony. The photo has been sitting open on my computer desktop ever since, while I worked up my nerve to give it a try. Compared to painting the lavender, it was exponentially harder, since sunflowers and their foliage are so distinct in shape. I was particularly nervous about trying to convey the long-distance appearance of the sunflowers near the house vs. the close-up sunflowers at the front of the photo.

I don't think I did too badly; I wished, afterward, that I had left some pure white in the sunflower field as well as in the various greens of trees and bushes around the house, but I caught the distance thing better than I thought I might. As usual, I wanted this to be washier and looser than it came out, but it definitely has more of that quality than much of my work, so I'm satisfied.

Thanks to Sue Aran for the reference photo.

Gascon Sun
7.75x10.5 inches

140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper
Paul Jackson signature watercolors, plus Holbein for that bright spring green color whose actual name I can't recall at the moment!
Escoda #10 brush

My OTHER blog

Those of you who follow me here are probably doing so because you're interested in ART—drawing, painting, urban sketching, etc. But it occurs to me that some of you (as I am) may also be READERS, and if you are, I would like to invite you to follow my OTHER blog, where I am known as The Book Adept. You see, I was a librarian for about 11 years, and have been a reader for [my age minus three years], and there's almost nothing I love better than talking about books with other readers, recommending books I have discovered, or finding just the right book for someone who doesn't know what to read, or what to read NEXT.

If those categories include you, please check out my book blog! It's https://bookadept.com/blog.

I read and blog about an eclectic mix of fiction, including my favorites (fantasy, science fiction and mystery) as well as the occasional thriller, mainstream and literary fiction, and sometimes romance or "chick lit." And I throw in some young adult fiction, since I was a teen librarian for 11 years and still enjoy keeping up with that category. (Also, I teach Young Adult Literature at UCLA in the library masters program, so I need to be current!)

   

If you happen to be a librarian, and believe that your library staff could benefit from some instruction on readers' advisory or book-talking, please also check out the main website, which is https://bookadept.com, where I offer seminars and workshops on both those topics, and mention me to your administrators!

Artsy people, thanks for bearing with this blatant self-promotion! (I did make the above drawing/painting, so there's a little art here...)

An Urban Sketcher in Amsterdam

No, it's not me, I didn't go to this year's Urban Sketchers' Symposium in Amsterdam. And judging from the reports of extreme heat that rivaled or surpassed that of SoCal last week, I'm kind of glad! But I have been enjoying all the sketches of windmills, quaint houses, strangely shaped public buildings, and canal boats with which Amsterdam is rife.

One of the first days of the symposium (or maybe during the pre-conference), I opened Facebook and this photo of this cute, rosy-cheeked Urban Sketcher popped up in my feed. "Look at you!" I said, "with your little pursed-up mouth!" and she replied, "I'M HOT." I saved the photo because I loved her face juxtaposed on the USk Amsterdam logo painted on a window, and today I decided to paint a portrait.

Problem is, I didn't write down her name! I've scrolled all the way back through July 25 in vain. Maybe someone will recognize and identify her?

"Purselips"

9x8 inches, in the sketchbook...

Uniball pen, Paul Jackson signature watercolors, Escoda brush

Nostalgia, light

I haven't been inspired by anything in particular lately, so I decided to click through my "Reference Photos" folder on my computer to see what goodies I had saved to paint when nothing was demanding attention.

I came across a rather unassuming photo—it was from my trip to France in 2013, but it contained no monuments or fancy architecture or cafés, nothing quintessentially French. It did, however, have a wonderful light direction that I thought I could capture, and reminded me of more peaceful moments from the trip, when we watercolor students sat in the back yard at Bandouille (a beautiful monastery/country house near Bressuire and Chiché) and painted, talked, and ate our mid-morning snack. Someone has just arisen from the table, leaving their paints, brush, and water jar behind (and their cigarettes).

Sadly, Bix and Drew are no longer hosting painting holidays there; they intend to sell the property if/when they find the right buyer. But they are still in residence at the moment, and I'm sure Bixxy will recognize her little outpost behind the studio.

I had some trouble with this; I painted it on watercolor paper just so I could mess about with the layering of paint a bit more than I can in my sketchbook. But although my base painting was pretty flawless, once I got all the elements painted their respective colors, it became clear that I hadn't gone near dark enough with the background. I went over it once, and then again, and encountered some "fingerprint" spots where the paint just wouldn't stay where I put it. So the wall behind the table, which initially reflected its rough plastered texture and had a nice yellow glow reflected in the center from the tablecloth, is now a bit splotchy. I guess only more experience will prevent me from overworking.

I was, however, happy with the whites and lights I saved. The vinyl tablecloth had an over-all pattern of fruits and veg and mason jars, but I decided it was more dramatic to just let the yellow tablecloth be (and wasn't confident I could pull off the patterning and make it look real, to be honest).

"Sunny Umbrella"
About 8x13 inches
Fluid watercolor paper, Paul Jackson signature watercolors (made by Da Vinci)


Yesterday, I did a quick, small (7x7) painting of a closeup of some lavender, with a ladybug attached. My intent was to work on my wet-in-wet technique, but I went in too dark with my initial wet washes, and since the purple I was using was a "staining" color, I ended up with virtually no whites left to save! I went back over it and did some detail, but my sense for when to paint again (at what stage of wetness) is not accurate yet, so I got more blurring and it wasn't too attractive. I finally did what many watercolorists refuse to do (and I have been one of them in the past): I mixed up some lighter purple with some white, and put in some highlights at the end to compensate for no whites. It's dark and blurry and overworked, but here it is, for the record.

"Wet Lavender"

About 7x7 inches

Fluid watercolor paper, Paul Jackson watercolors

Fantasy for one's 30s

For some time now, I've had my eye on Sequim, Washington (see previous post, here), and this past week, on a whim, I went on Zillow to look at real estate prospects in that small town on the Olympic Peninsula.

One of the reasons I was initially so interested in Sequim was because of its reputation as the "lavender capitol of North America," so imagine my disbelief (and initial delight) when I saw that Purple Haze—one of the primary lavender farms in Sequim—was listed for sale! It's one of the most beautiful show places in the town, and apparently a thriving business. When I examined the listing more thoroughly, however, I saw that it has been listed for more than two years, so apparently people who want to take on a farm and two gift shops are few and far between.

I sent the listing to my cousin Kirsten (I keep trying to involve her in my retirement plans), who said to me, This needs people with a lot more energy (and money) than we have! and opined that a nice couple in their 30s with some kids to raise would be the perfect proprietors. I reluctantly conceded that she was right, so I contented myself with painting a picture of part of the farm instead. I borrowed a reference photo off the Sequim Outdoors Facebook page; I did message the photographer to ask permission, but never heard from her, so I went ahead. It's only painted in my sketchbook, so it's for me (and my blog), not to be used for profit.

It was challenging to paint, because of the need to convey the 3-D effect of the mounded rows of lavender, and also to get the feel for the far-away rows vs. the close-up disintegration into individual sprays of flowers and stems. I simplified parts of the background, leaving out other buildings and details, and had a lot of fun gradating the pink and purple in each row.

Apparently other people are as romanced by the idea of a lavender farm as I am; I received the most "likes" and comments on Facebook that I have for anything I have ever posted! I hope the photographer, Johnna Anzures, will forgive me for using her photo without waiting for her go-ahead.

In the sketchbook

Pencil and Paul Jackson watercolors by Da Vinci

Conscientious Artist

I have a Facebook friend named Lynn who is absolutely outraged (as are many of us) by both the existence and status of immigration detention camps. But Lynn has taken several steps beyond posting memes and venting on Facebook.

First she made a series of art pieces, captioned drawings about the camps, and posted them in our open forum for Sketchbook Skool artwork. Then, when a few sour apples complained that they didn't want to have to look at political stuff in the place where they come to be inspired, political posts were banned there. Undeterred, Lynn kept posting them on her own page, and those of us from Sketchbook Skool who wished those complainers had just acted like grownups and scrolled on past if they didn't want to look (as I do every Easter when someone inevitably paints a picture of Jesus with nail holes in his hands!) followed her to her own page and offered further encouragement.

Lynn then found a group she wanted to support, a bunch of women called Angry Tias and Abuelas who are bringing supplies—food, drink, clothing, and legal aid information—to the people at the border in the Rio Grande Valley, so she offered to trade some of her quilting work for donations to their cause. She made a set of four coasters for one person and, having seen them, I asked her if she would make me a nice thick quilted potholder. Being Lynn, she made me two! They are in the mail on their way to me, and now her requests are piling up.

Although it's a little bit like coals to Newcastle since Lynn paints self-portraits a few times a week, I decided that it wouldn't be unwelcome if, as a thank-you to Lynn, I did a portrait of her as well. So here she is, with one of my new potholders as background. As usual when I draw in ink, some proportions are unable to be fixed after: The nose is a little too long, the forehead a little too high. But I think there's a likeness, and that her happy spirit shines through.

Thanks, Lynn, for being so concerned about the world, and so generous as to encourage others to pay attention by gifting them with your art as an incentive.

If you would like to contribute to Angry Tias and Abuelas, here is their website.  I would also like to encourage you to call your congresspeople and express your outrage and IMPATIENCE with this situation, and to donate to legal aid societies for these poor people. Here is a pro bono South Texas organization. Move On has a petition you can sign to close down the camps, here. Let's all do what we can.

Seeking asylum is not a crime.

Sketchbook styles

After running some errands, I treated myself to breakfast out on Wednesday and made two paintings from the experience. One was what I usually do when out in public, which was a fairly precise pen drawing of someone(s) sitting nearby, in my purse-sized sketchbook with watercolor added afterwards. The second was a snapshot of part of the table in front of me (I finished my omelet, got rid of the plate, and then painted what was left), and it's paint-only—no underdrawing, kind of messy, but more realistic.

So the question is...do I prefer one? Do others prefer a particular style? Where should I invest my time and effort?

And of course there is a third alternative, which is to make a more careful painting by choosing to do a pencil underdrawing that gets all the proportions just so, and on watercolor paper instead of in a sketchbook. Again, where should the effort be placed?

You can also see this latter piece on my book review blog tomorrow, to accompany a review of Behind Closed Doors, by B. A. Paris. 

Shine

I have a set of six of these beautiful cut glass (crystal?) goblets, in a variety of colors, handed down from Mom: kelly green, ultramarine blue, sunflower yellow, bright pink, purple, and this deep burgundy red one. I have pulled them out of my china cabinet more than once to paint, and then thought better of it and put them back, because I simply don't have the skill set or a discerning enough eye to capture the quality of the glass and make it sparkle. (I think I need another class with Paul Jackson.)

But I had what's left of a big bag of cherries that will spoil if not eaten (or painted) today, and the similarity in color between the cherries and this goblet struck me, so I staged a still life including both of them. I started about half an inch too high from the bottom margin when painting the cherries, so that the goblet didn't quite make it onto the page in its entirety; and the crystalline quality of the glass stem did indeed mostly escape me. But I like the variation on the bowl of the wine glass and its reflection in the cherries down below. I guess the only solution to getting the hang of painting something like this is to paint it over and over and try to figure out what it is that makes the light shine.

Wine glass and cherries

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019, #worldwatercolormonth

In the sketchbook...the last page!

Homage

Today's painting is an homage portrait of Juan Linares. He is one of my favorite urban sketchers, and lives and paints in Barcelona. He is so talented and also so versatile that I always look forward to seeing his latest work.

I was fairly happy with the likeness, although I think his face is a little taller and not so wide, and also I started too high on the page so the top of his head got cut off! But over all, I am satisfied. Painting beards (particularly when they are salt and pepper) is challenging! I hadn't really done that before, except for some stray whiskers on my friend Rani. So, a new experience. I hope Juan doesn't mind my appropriating his image for my painting!

If you want a really good 12-week art course, and you speak (or at least understand) fluent Spanish, Juan is teaching a course I would love to take...if only I hadn't taken French instead! If you were smarter than me, sign up!

19WWMjuanlinares

Still pursuing the 30x30 goal of no underdrawing.

In the sketchbook...

Days 3, 4, 5

For Day 3, I painted something to go along with a book review on my other blog, https://bookadept.com/2019/07/02/branching-out/. It's the first murder mystery by romance writer Jude Devereaux, and the bodies are buried under a royal poinciana tree. I did the shadow in red not because the tree is shedding blossoms but because, well, BODIES!

For the 4th, I cheated and used a sketch I had done in a previous year, because I was about to make the potato salad depicted by this picture of ingredients (and didn't have time to paint), and also the colors reflected some red, white, and blue.

Today's prompt was "loose and free." As we know, I'm not great at painting loose, so I opted to go with "free," and tried my hand at one of my favorite birds, a corvid (don't know if this guy is a crow or a raven, I'm thinking crow). Unfortunately, my sketchbook paper didn't hold up to painting in the background and got all splotchy; and although I tried for some variation on my subject by using grays, purples, and blues in addition to the blacks, my crow came out sort of raggedy looking as well. Perhaps I should have painted in the background first and then painted the picture over the top? I'll try this one again soon on real watercolor paper. I need to further study the crows and ravens of Sarah Yeoman, which I greatly admire!

The poinciana and the crow are still direct to watercolor, no underdrawings.

In the sketchbook...

Sunny sky

Here is Day 32 and Day 2. The prompt was "sunny sky," and since I am still painting without drawing, I decided to try a wet-in-wet sky with no other referents. This didn't really help me along in my goal to fill my sketchbook, however, because I knew if I did wet-in-wet, it had to be on watercolor paper. So I still have four pages to fill in the sketchbook.

This came out a little overworked, because I simply cannot resist messing with success. But...it's recognizably a sky with a sun in it, and not a toddler's depiction with a circle and a bunch of rays, so...I'm counting it good.

DAY 2: SUNNY SKY

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019, #worldwatercolormonth

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, using Paul Jackson paints...

Day One and Day 31

Today marks the beginning of World Watercolor Month, and I'm taking up the challenge so that I keep painting daily. WWM offers prompts for painting each day, which you may follow, take literally or interpret liberally, or ignore completely. I took today's, which was "primary palette."

I'm also, however, still following the single precept of 30x30 Direct Watercolor from June, because I have only five blank pages left in my sketchbook, and so rather than start drawing again I decided to at least do these first five without any under-drawing.

DAY ONE / DAY 31: "Primary Palette," or, Geranium in blue pot on yellow cloth

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In the sketchbook...

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

And here it is, my month's work, all in one group!