Urban sketching at the bookstore

Today I had a wholly delightful treat—I had the opportunity to reconnect with Lorilyn Parmer, my good friend from high school. Although we are recently Facebook friends, and have kept in long-term tentative contact for all these years, I haven't actually seen her since her wedding day, more than 21 long years ago, on a clifftop in Marin County! She let me know that her husband had to fly into Burbank airport to do some business in neighboring Glendale, and wondered if I would like to meet her for breakfast, since she was accompanying him and then they were going down to Orange County to visit with some friends from their years in Singapore. I said an enthusiastic yes, and when I found out that Allen's business was just a few blocks from Foxy's and the Americana mall, I suggested we meet up there.

We had a wonderful five-hour interlude of playing catch-up and reminiscing, and also sharing some of our dreams and plans for the immediate and long-term future (both involving our artistic expression, interestingly enough). It was cool to have a conversation with someone who has known me since high school—different perspectives. It was not cool, however, in terms of weather (99 degrees in Glendale and 110 at my house in Van Nuys today!), so once we deserted our table at Foxy's and walked over to the mall, we took refuge in Barnes & Noble and shopped, compared reading tastes (including the recent preferences of her son, Quinn), and chatted some more.

While Lorilyn looked for board books for a little Afghan refugee girl she knows, who needs to learn some English, I found a bench by a window and sketched a couple of fellow refugees from the heat. I filled in the background of the store's façade later, and then decided to add the Foxy's sign, since I am always delighted by the "crystal chandeliers" part. It's there because there is a chandelier store across the way in the same strip mall, but the first time I saw it, I thought, "Oooh, fancy coffee shop if they're advertising that they have crystal chandeliers!"

LePen #3 and watercolor.
#worldwatercolormonth

Quick sketches

Yesterday was a full day of preparing for and running the next-to-last Little Free Library session for our teens at the library. They have finished the drawing stage and are just beginning to paint on the decorations to which they have agreed, which are so full of character and so creative. While watching them work, I pulled out my sketchbook and made a couple of quick drawings. I'm not great at people—I need to do this more often.

I started the first one with LePen, but it ran out of ink, so the rest was done with a Uniball pen from my purse. I didn't know if it would run or not when I watercolored, but blessedly it did not. I might sketch with that more often—it gives a nice, fluid black line.

It's the weekend! Maybe I'll get some more complex work on paper.

Montrose Car Show

I went to breakfast with Carey and Hubert on Sunday at our favorite place in Montrose (the Black Cow Café) for Hubert's birthday. Montrose always has little surprises on Sundays—there is the weekly farmers' market on the Old Town streets, but sometimes they add a pet adoption day, or a bunch of kiddie rides, and this week the surprise was a six-block-long auto show, with a plethora of cars from the early 1900s to the present! We wandered around reminiscing about cars our parents and grandparents had driven and wondered why we hadn't held onto them, waxed sentimental over the 1973 Corvette driven by our teenage crush or the El Camino that we coveted because that was what all the cool kids were driving in high school, and took some photos.

I drew this yesterday, but ran out of time to paint before work, so I got up a little early and did it today. It took longer than I thought it would, as it usually does, so I may go back and add some more detail later tonight. (I see a few bits I forgot to paint!)

I had a few proportion problems when it came to the cab of the truck, but I think I managed to camouflage them and pull it off pretty well. I aspire to someday draw cars as well as Nina Johannson, but it will take a lot more practice!

Turquoise Pick-up Truck
LePen #3 and watercolor
July 5-6, 2017
#worldwatercolormonth

Red, White, and Blue

That was today's prompt. After the past six months, forgive me if I'm not feeling like expressing patriotic feelings towards the government that has betrayed us, the people who voted for an inept, crass, deeply stupid megalomaniac, and the media who enabled it all in the name of ratings.

So, where do you go when you're feeling like this? My answer is usually comfort food, and since making my famous German potato salad is something of a tradition for the 4th of July, I decided to illustrate the "fixins'" for that as my expression of red-white-blue. The potatoes and vinegar are red; the mayonnaise is white; and some of the packaging is blue. Close enough!

"Red, White, and Blue"

LePen #3 and watercolor

#worldwatercolormonth

(You may have noticed that I already skipped a day. I have a plan. I hope to catch up by doing another painting this afternoon.)

In the Shade

Today's prompt was "in the shade," which made me look up the meaning of the saying "made in the shade," which led me to this rhyme:

Ice-cold lemonade,
made in the shade,
stirred with a spade,
by an old maid.

Which made me take notice of the empty plastic cup from Lemonade (one of my favorite places to go for a cold beverage on a hot day) discarded on my desk. (There are advantages to being a slob. Such as opportunities for drawing.) Since I didn't have a lot of energy or time today, I did a drawing of that.

There was no lemonade left in it; I guess it was made in the shade, because it was concocted indoors by a Lemonade employee; I have no idea what he stirred it with (probably a blender, since as I recall it was cucumber mint lemonade); and while I am old, I am certainly not a maid. But...close enough. Parenthetically, the phrase "made in the shade" was coined in the 1950s, to mean "being in an excellent or ideal situation." I would consider having another full container of cucumber mint lemonade a proper expression of "made in the shade," so while I had to make do with drawing its empty container, I can look backwards with fondness and forwards with anticipation. (Maybe I will stop by on my way home tomorrow night...)

"In the shade"

LePen #3, watercolor

#worldwatercolormonth

World Watercolor Month begins!

Some of you may be aware of the brainchild of Charlie O'Shields, over at Doodlewash.com, of World Watercolor Month: 31 paintings in 31 days, during the month of July. It's for everybody who paints in watercolor--or who wants to try it for the first time--to share their watercolors. Everyone hashtags their work #worldwatercolormonth so that it pops up where it should. You can follow Charlie's blog, or see him on Facebook under World Watercolor Group. People post stuff there all the time--but July is a special effort.

One of the things on offer is a list of 31 prompts, in case you are out of inspiration. You don't have to use them; you can paint anything and everything during your 31 days. But the prompts are fun from the aspect of seeing how each artist interprets them.

Today's prompt was "Strong and Free." A lot of people interpreted it as something associated with our Independence Day holiday, coming up on Tuesday, and painted such things as eagles soaring in a blue sky; but you can equally go your own way, which is what I chose to do.

Here is MY version of strong and free:

It's a nice *strong* cup of French Roast coffee, with a double-entendre book: C. S. Harris's new novel about the American Civil War (in which the slaves were *freed*), and also, it's a library book, so I checked it out and am reading it for *free*.

Weird proportions and slightly wonky cup, but...first day's assignment fulfilled. See you tomorrow! #worldwatercolormonth

Any excuse

So today is supposed to be chore day, starting with dishes. I washed one drying rack full (15 plates, one bowl, four cups), and then discovered that all my tea towels for drying were missing or dirty. So, leaving those to air dry, I put a load of towels in the washer, and cast around for something else to do while the rack of dishes dried and the towels washed AND dried. I decided that, rather than embark on some other chore that would get complicated and ultimately sour me for continuing the dishes once I was able, I would instead paint something. As an inveterate slob, I will take any excuse to avoid doing housework...

My gardenia bush just burst into glorious blossom, and smells divinely outside my bedroom window. I decided I'd paint a vase of gardenias. Since they are white, I decided I would do a negative painting of sorts, by doing the background dark so the flowers would stand out. So instead of drawing in pen, which is my usual habit in my sketchbook, I drew in pencil, then erased until I could see the lines fairly lightly, and began.

I'm pretty happy with how the gardenias themselves turned out, but I was so anxious to get to them that I shorthanded some things that I shouldn't. The vase in which I put them is pottery, and although it's dull, it does have some shine and sparkle in the light, but I left out the highlights. It also has weird markings that are white because wherever they are scored into the clay, the paint didn't follow, but they are really hard to translate in art. In retrospect, I wish I'd left some simple highlights and left out the white lines. Also, although gardenias are soft and almost chalky in appearance, with few highlights, the same cannot be said of their leaves, which are all colors of extremely glossy green, and there, too, I neglected to leave the highlights that would make them sparkle. If I had been working on watercolor paper instead of in my sketchbook, I could have lifted some; but this paper isn't that forgiving. And similarly, the paper in the sketchbook reacts differently to big washes of color, and it was impossible to maintain "the bead," the all important wet line at the bottom of your wash that allows you to continue it top to bottom without it looking scrubby. So there are lots of things wrong with this little painting.

If I hadn't determined that this would be the day I would have a clean kitchen, I would have retried this on watercolor paper; but after having put away the first, dry rack of dishes and washed another one...after having taken the towels out of the washer and put them in the dryer...and after having cooked myself a nice lunch (onion and mushroom frittata with parmesan) and messed up a plate and a glass again, I can't refuse to confront that kitchen any longer.