Book Café Reborn

Book Café was such a huge success last summer that Anarda and I have decided to make it a regular feature of the Teen Summer Reading Program. So once again we will hold four sessions of Book Café, and everyone who comes to three of the four gets to choose a free book from our stash.

They also get to book-talk to each other, and they get to meet some authors. So far I have lined up Mary McCoy, a Los Angeles Public Library librarian who wrote a wonderful noir teen mystery set in the 1940s called Dead to Me. We have high hopes for a couple of local authors whose books some of our teens have read in book club, but I won't mention names until they're booked.

And, not the least, they get Book Café refreshments! Coffee didn't go over real well--American teens don't seem to start drinking it as early as they do in some other countries--but cocoa and cappuccino are immensely popular to go with their cookies.

Even though we are doing the same program again this year, I didn't want to use the same illustration from last year to advertise it, so I worked up a new look and feel for the Book Café "logo" for this year. A little more sophisticated, with more muted colors, but fun, I think, mostly because of the name done in "syrup" on the surface of the café latte!

Micron pen (but in sepia tone instead of black), and watercolor. This is the second time I have used this cup and saucer for an illustration--I was initially terrified by the level of detail, but if you just suggest what's there without being slavish, it works.

Here's last year's:

I can see a few places I need to touch up and re-scan on this year's, but as usual, I couldn't resist putting it up the minute the paint dried!

Breakfast out

This morning I woke up just in time to make it to the chiropractor's for a tune-up during his one-hour Saturday morning session. After, I decided I'd treat myself to breakfast out. I was trying to think where to go, when I remembered the picture I drew in my sketchbook for Valentine's Day of my neighborhood coffee shop that had never merited a return trip, so I decided I'd give it another try.

Nothing has changed at Heart's Coffee Shop. And I mean nothing! Still looks exactly the same as it did 30 years ago when I moved into this house; still run by two cranky Chinese ladies and a cook; still features mediocre service and dishwater coffee; and still as busy as if it were a much better eatery!

When I got there, no one was sitting at the long counter, but all the tables but two were full. Since I wanted to draw the counter I asked for a table; the waitress directed me to one, but because of the view, I stated a preference for the other. We had to argue about it--she kept waving me to the table with no view in the corner, and I kept waving at the table with a good shot down the counter, in the other corner. Finally she threw up her hands in exasperation and seated me where I wanted to be.

The entire breakfast experience was surreal; seated in front of me was a middle-aged couple who giggled so much throughout their meal that I assume there was some marijuana involved at some point shortly before this breakfast. Seated next to me at four tables shoved together were two families--two couples and their five children--who were devout Christian gun dealers. No, I'm not kidding. I listened to their conversation while I was drawing and waiting for my order to come, and it ranged from how much ammunition they sell during hunting season, what to do to make money in the off season, and how, when they had a disagreement with a vendor, they asked the vendor to "pray on it and get back to us."

I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on my sketch. The food turned out to be okay--the scrambled eggs were dry, the hash browns were well done just as I had ordered them, and the toast was hot with plentiful butter. The waitress glared at me when she saw I was including her in my sketch! By the time I was done with it, a party of 12 had come in and filled up almost every seat at the counter, and an old man and his dog had taken the table where the waitress tried to send me, and were sharing his bacon. I would have loved to stay and make another drawing with the seats populated by heads and shoulders, but people were waiting for my table, so this one will have to suffice.

Micron pen, watercolor.

Here is the picture of the exterior:

Getting ready for Summer Reading

It's that time again. Actually, it's well past time, but I've been MIA from the library for about 10 weeks, between physical therapy for a knee injury, a particularly tenacious flu that has lasted a month now, and some other health concerns, so I'm running incredibly late for getting started on Teen Summer Reading. But (since I am obsessive-compulsive) despite the fact that I'm late, I'm still planning to do illustrations for all my flyers. I have assured Anarda (which is mostly true) that making art for the brochure and flyers isn't work for me, it's fun.

It's also not quite as daunting as last year, because we are scaling back a bit on the number and variety of programs. (See health concerns, above.) Book Cafe was such a success last year that we will be repeating our plan to do four of those, so that's just one illustration; and we have four or five other programs, max, for which we will need flyers.

The theme this year was problematic, because the State Library and the American Library Association insist on connecting the theme for summer reading to things that don't really relate very well to reading! This time it's the Summer Olympics, so everything is supposed to be about health and activity and games. But if you know anything about kids and teens who actually come to the library and want to sign up for summer reading, it's that they're not generally the athletic set (those teens are at tennis camp and swim practice), they are the ones who think a summer spent sitting in the corner with a good book is a summer well spent! So we are struggling to come up with thematic programming, which means using an exceedingly loose interpretation of "Get Your Game On."

One program we are doing, at our Northwest Library where there is no auditorium so the programs have to be outdoors in the adjacent park and parking lot, is directly related to athletics: We have hired a group called StuntMasters to come out and present a BMX Bike Show, with stunt riding and ramps. We think this program will appeal not only to teens but to their (terrified) parents and younger siblings, so we anticipate a good turnout!

Here is my interpretation, for the flyer, of a BMX rider catching some air:

I'm trying something a little different, inspired by the art of a Facebook friend--a monochromatic approach to the illustrations. My plan is to pick one, two, or at most three colors, plus grays, to render each of my subjects, and give each flyer a different color spectrum to make them stand out from each other. Next is a new interpretation of the coffee cup and books for Book Cafe, in warm browns and rose-red.

This is LePen and watercolor--Cobalt Blue, Payne's Gray, and a little mix of Burnt Sienna with an unidentified rose color I had in my palate for the skin tones.

More to come...

New days in March

I'm still not feeling entirely healthy, so I haven't been keeping up with the drawings, but last night and this morning I was inspired to do a couple of them.

#11, SOMEONE YOU KNOW:

I have had an ear infection for 2.5 weeks now. The antibiotics are done, and the hearing is slowly coming back, but my ears are still full of fluid. (The doctor did say it would take about three weeks to fully dissipate.) Yesterday, my chiropractor told me about a trick to drain them faster. It's an old wives' thing, but at this point I'm willing to try anything!

You cut an onion in half. You heat it up really hot so that steam and onion fumes are coming off of it. You wrap half the onion in a thin rag (like cheesecloth or a thin dishcloth) and hold it close to your ear (and right on the ear once it cools off enough). The theory is that the onion fumes, combined with the heat, go down the eustachian tubes and thin out the fluid, which dissipates faster. So today I tried it, and I actually think it might be working! If nothing else, though, the heat made my ears feel better. 

While I did the second ear, I snapped a selfie, and then I painted it. I call it, "Me, with onion, amazed." LePen and watercolor, about 30 minutes.

#13, WOODLAND:
It's daffodil time at Trader Joe's, when they sell bundles of daffodils for $1.49 apiece. I always splurge and buy five or six bundles, and put them all over my house.

Since we are supposed to be challenging ourselves with new media, I used some Prismacolor markers that I recently bought but have never used. Green first, and then yellow. I used pencil for the vase, because it is gray, and because I wanted it to be unobtrusive below the vibrant daffodils.

Alternative media, Perspective

As I mentioned before, part of the idea of Every Day in March is to seek out and use art supplies you wouldn't normally choose. I've been avoiding that up to now, but today I saw the box of crayons that my friend Kirsti gave me for Christmas and decided to break them out and try something new. The theme was...

#3: ELEMENTS (still backtracking)

So I did the elements of a recipe. I have drawn and painted this picture before, with more items and using watercolor, but given that I was using crayon, I chose just a few.

It takes a lot of work to build up different shades and blend! More than I was willing to put in, obviously. (And despite the reality of the packaging, I should have thought to choose different colors for the bag of beans, so as to give contrast with the bell pepper, but...whatever.)

So--here are crayoned elements of a favorite winter-time dish: Bonanza Beans, which I am making tonight.

I also did #7: PERSPECTIVE

I am not great at perspective--I tend to draw what I know is there, instead of what I actually see, and my eyes can't convince my brain to quit knowing and start looking, somehow. But I saved a photo of this tree-lined street--not exactly a pleached allee, but close, as the trees overhang the entire road--because I liked its perspective, so I decided to draw it for this exercise. I don't know who took the photo, or where it was taken, but I'm speculating France, based on the all-black hat and coat of the woman, and the ornateness of the fence.

I have not quite figured out how to paint foliage on trees. On the one hand, you can't paint every leaf; but you also need some definition, some variation, from the blobs of green you painted as a child. This got a bit blurry, but for a short, sketchbook attempt it's okay. Maybe I'll try this one again someday, on good watercolor paper, as a "real" painting and see how it goes.

Micron pen, limited palette (greens, grays)

Moving backward and forward

Two more for the EDiM prompts, one for tomorrow, and one for three days ago:

#6: FLAT

I'd just been reading The Princess Diaries for my 6+7 Book Club, and briefly considered painting Princess Mia (since all she does for 200-some interminable pages is complain about being flat-chested!), but I decided to be a bit more literal.

And...

#2: STICKY

I love weird sayings that make their way into the English language to be used in other ways. I have often used the expression "sticky wicket" without knowing its precise derivation, so I looked up today, and came upon this beer namesake. (The sticky wicket itself is just a big plot of muddy grass, so not very interesting to draw/paint!)

Micron pen and watercolor for both. (We're supposed to be trying out new tools, but...what can I say? not into it right now. Maybe later. I did stick with the limited palette--we're not supposed to use more than three tools or three colors.)

Every Day in March

So far, I have been sick every day in March...and for what seemed like half the days in February, as well. Seriously, two weeks and counting: Sinus infection, which led to eye infection, which led to ear infection.

I didn't spend my time wholly in vain; during the first week of illness, when I could still hear the TV (!), I mainlined Netflix. I decided to try out Orange is the New Black, and ended up making it through all three seasons. (WHEN does season 4 start?!) So when today's EDiM topic was "on TV," I knew what to paint.

The challenge this month is to use tools unfamiliar to you, or at least to use tools in different combinations and with limited palettes. I had a watercolor pencil lying on my desk that looked orange (it turned out to be more red, so I had to add some yellow paint), so I used it to draw with, then used plain water to spread the color around, and added a couple of accent colors after. It's kind of a blunt instrument in terms of drawing, so the likeness was harder to grasp, but here she is: Piper Chapman, in her orange jumpsuit.

After I finished her and posted on the Facebook site, I was browsing the drawings of others and saw a great one of Hillary Clinton that Shaw Sys had done for the day one prompt, which was "Women's History Month." So I decided to do a drawing of my current hero, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Micron pen, and two colors of watercolor.

Long may she reign!