Presence

I don't often copy so closely from a photograph, and certainly not from one taken by someone else; the etiquette in working from photos when you paint is that you work from your own, using them as a reference rather than slavishly copying them. And if you paint something from a photo belonging to someone else, you ask permission.

My friend Susan Sabo is a professional photographer and a dog lover, and these two things have combined in a wonderful way. Not only does she shoot great portraiture of people's dogs (many times including the people themselves), but she also uses her considerable skills to photograph dogs at her local shelter in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and then the shelter posts the photos to help them find homes for the dogs.

Even before she became a photographer, though, Susan was always concerned for the welfare of shelter dogs; she and her daughter, back when Jenna was a teenager, made it a project to go weekly to the shelter in Sherman Oaks, California, to pick up blankets and towels used and soiled by the dogs, launder them all, and return them fresh and ready for re-use. She periodically canvassed her friends to donate towels, blankets, and sheets for the dogs' use, and was always outspoken in her efforts to get others to be active supporters of shelter animals. It was her casual reference to S.T.A.R.T. (Shelter Transport Animal Rescue Team) that led me to regularly sponsor a "seat on the bus" for dogs being shipped from euthanizing facilities here in Los Angeles up to no-kill shelters, foster homes, and new permanent homes in Oregon and Washington, where there isn't the glut of abandoned animals we have in Los Angeles.

Some of her best work, however, is her spontaneous shots of her own beloved dogs. She posted one recently on Facebook as a reminder that winter won't last forever, and I found this shot of T (alias Señor Escabeche) and Mouse so appealing that I couldn't resist making a little drawing. I totally messed up the perspective of the fence receding at a nice angle, and I simplified the background, leaving out a couple of buildings and a whole lot of shrubbery, but I think I caught the essentials. Although it wasn't so noticeable in the photo, once I made the painting I realized that the title HAD to be "He casts a long shadow." If you asked Susan, I think she would definitely agree. Susan, please forgive me for appropriating your photo.

Odds and ends

Not a lot of artwork made in the past couple of weeks, but here's what I did do:

Breakfast out on Saturday, at Farmer Boy. I had never been there before, and got a kick out of the wall art picturing a regular-size farmer digging giant potatoes the size of boulders.

Two book covers, to go with a book review on my readers' advisory site, http://bookadept.com/blog. I enjoyed these books a lot, but now it's a long wait for #3 in the trilogy, so if you don't like waiting (or rereading), put it off until next summer!

And today's sketch, of several of the innumerable ornate brick buildings on the UCLA campus. I had to take some paperwork to personnel and sign it, and since I had paid for three hours of parking but my errand only took 30 minutes, I sat down and sketched for a while. It was such a pleasure, after weeks of rain and extra-chilly temperatures, to sit outside in shirt sleeves and sketch in 75-degree sun!

I despair at ever being to convey all these solid walls of vari-colored brick, let alone get the perspective right, but I'll keep trying.

Out of commission

My computer hard drive died for good last Thursday, so I haven't been blogging at all. As a fast, 10-finger typist, I just can't handle trying to input long paragraphs of text using two fingers on my Kindle or one on my phone! So while the computer is in the repair shop for back-up and a new hard drive installation, I haven't been posting much on either of my blogs.

My cousins, however, were kind enough to let me come over this afternoon and use their computer from noon to 5:30, so I caught up everywhere; I posted one long piece on bookadept.com/blog, and then wrote and lined up four more to post over the next week and a half; and I'm on here to put up my paltry art turnout during that same time period. I only have two pieces to share: One of them goes with one of the posts for The Book Adept, and the other is an urban sketch from this morning's breakfast at the deli.

Here is a book cover of a book I reviewed (this one won't post until March 1):

Here is a sketch I did while waiting for my breakfast (and also waiting for it to get cold!) at Brent's Deli in Northridge this morning:

Fortunately, all the people who were sitting there when I started to draw stayed there until the end; I did miss out on the legs of the lady in blue, so just pretend like she's really limber and sitting cross-legged on her bar stool!

This will probably be the last post here until I get my computer back, which may be as late as next Thursday.

Micron pen #3, watercolor.

Pan Asian Museum

Yesterday, I met the Los Angeles Urban Sketchers' group at the Pan Asian Museum in Pasadena. Our entire sketchcrawl was intended to include the decorative courtyard as well as the interior, plus (one short block over) the outward aspect of City Hall; but because it was raining fairly steadily, we instead opted to draw only inside the museum and then walk two blocks to a coffee house.

It was a lovely afternoon; but a physical problem made it a little difficult for me. My lower back tends to lock up when I stand still; walking, it gradually loosens itself and does okay, but standing for long periods just doesn't work. I entered the museum through the gift shop and start wandering through, looking for a display room with a bench. Alas, this museum doesn't seem to believe that people will want to linger long enough to sit, and doesn't feature a single bench in the entire permanent collection. There are benches in the one section dedicated to current displays, but I didn't discover that room until the end of my stay, because it was at the other end of the building.

I found just two rooms where I could sit; one was showing a looping documentary about the making of fine porcelain, and had a few cabinets with examples and exhibits of porcelain to go with the narrative. I stopped there to watch the interesting film from the comfort of a small wooden stool, and stayed to sketch a vase on one of the shelves; but soon after that, a whole flock of museum-goers came in and obviously coveted the stool, in order to enjoy the movie for themselves, so I moved on.

Down the way and across the hall, I came upon a room with a convenient shelf where I could perch, and I hastily drew a pottery camel, before the security guard could show up and shoo me off the ledge (so hastily that I misjudged proportions and had to leave out his feet!).

I left there and moved one door down, which turned out to be a combination of demonstration and children's playroom. Around three of the walls were baskets containing various examples of fabrics made by various Asian peoples for the curious to take out and examine; along the fourth was a velvet-covered bench where children and their parents could read books together. In the center of the room the museum had pitched an open-ended tent made from all kinds of colorful fabrics and lined with pillows, in the manner of a seraglio or Ali Baba's lair, beautifully backlit from the light coming through the door behind it. This was so colorful and inviting that I sat down and tried to capture all the details of the many fabrics attached to its framework with magenta ties.

After our sojourn at the museum, we went to our intended coffee place, only to find it jammed with late-afternoon lunchers, so we made our way a couple of blocks down and across the street to Tender Greens, which was blessedly half empty and could accommodate our entire group of 16, umbrellas, sketchpads and all. So we got either lunch or dessert and sat, showed what we accomplished at the museum, did some watercolor, drew our food, and caught up with or got acquainted with each other, depending. I ate half my falafel wrap, and then drew the other half:

I think I liked this last drawing the best of the day, because I was able to use my pen to draw it with; the museum only allows pencils, so all my other drawings felt a bit pallid to me, used as I am to the pen outline for my contour style of working. I must someday learn to draw more ably with a pencil, utilizing its shading capabilities!

Lino!

I hadn't mentioned it here yet, but I dropped the class at Moorpark College. The only thing I was really interested in learning was linoleum block printing, but in order to get to that, I had to go through six weeks of intaglio printing. Sanding and incising the metal plates aggravated my lungs, and I didn't enjoy either the process or the results. Also, I found out the teacher was going out on pregnancy leave before the lino-cutting part of the class was due to begin, and knew nothing about the substitute, so I decided to bail. I figured that sooner or later a class or workshop would come along, and two weeks later, I was rewarded with one!

There is a "book arts" track for the library masters degree at UCLA, and one of the things the Horn Press student group does is offer workshops throughout the year to MLIS students. One of these popped up on the UCLA listserv last Monday, and what do you know, it was a linoleum block printing workshop! I didn't know that staff weren't technically invited, so I signed up and went; fortunately for me, the president of Horn Press this year is one of my Readers' Advisory students, and Yoonha was gracious about including me. So I got to make my first linocut.

We each were given a piece of gray lino material and a tool, we had a short safety lecture about the best way to use the tool without cutting ourselves, and then Yoonha said "Think of an image or find one on Google, and give it a try!" I opened up my phone and googled "raven," because I'm always and ever fascinated with the mighty corvid, and drew an image in pencil on the lino.

Here is my "plate" that I carved. It's a hot mess: I carved out things I shouldn't have (like the feet); I didn't know at what angle to hold the tool, so some of it is gouged almost to the lining while other parts aren't deep enough; I carved out the background at various angles, thinking none of it would show (but it all did); and because we were running out of time, I was unable to empty out the entire background (shoulda made the bird bigger, I kept thinking) and had to leave a "vignette" with some of the lino untouched.

And here is my one and only print I made from it. It is likewise kind of a mess: I got the plate crooked on the paper, I smutched a couple of times out in the margin, and the dark gray ink I used makes it seem a bit faded and maybe not inked enough.

But you know what? For all of that, I am inordinately proud of it! It was a really fun experience, one that I hope to repeat soon. It makes absolutely no sense to spend hours gouging something out of rubber that I could easily paint better and faster in another medium; but I loved it. Yoonha nicely complimented it by saying it looked like original woodcuts from the 16th century, which I understood as "primitive and amateur," but I still didn't care. I had fun!

People reading

I haven't gotten too far with my "real people reading" series; I'm having trouble finding models. When I go to the library looking for surreptitious opportunities to shoot photos, most of the people are either on a computer, scrolling through their phones, or, if they are reading, it's a newspaper, which is not what I have in mind. (I guess all the real readers come to the library, check out their books, and take them home to read.)

This past week, I decided that if I couldn't find real-life readers to paint, I would look at Google Images and see if I could find some photos of people reading. I did...but the problem with most of them is that they were taken by modeling agencies, so the readers are all young, all pretty, most of them are white, and they are smiling (yes, sometimes books are amusing, but do you typically smile at your book when you're sitting alone reading? I think not). And even if they're not smiling, they have that self-conscious look that screams "I know someone is taking my picture." Also not what I had in mind.

Although it's a bit extreme to paint someone without their head in order to lose that self-conscious look, that's exactly what I did here. The focus becomes the book, the relaxed pose sitting on the bed, and the cup of something hot she's holding in her hand.

I guess I'm going to have to get some friends and family to pose for me, and adjure them sternly not to smirk while I'm clicking away.

Valentines

After enjoying making Yule cards and sending them to five strangers so I could get five back from strangers (members of Sketchbook Skool), I somehow found myself agreeing to repeat the process with Valentine greetings. I haven't been quite as inspired this go-round because, let's face it, it's kinda weird to send lovey-dovey cards to people you don't know. So I pondered for a while, and I thought of one card with a pun, which I made. Then, baffled for other ideas, I Googled "Valentine puns" and hit the jackpot. So while the illustrations for my postcards are original, the puns are already out there in the world, the inspiration of others more quick or clever than myself. Here they are, on their way to the Netherlands, Montreal, Oregon, Florida, and Columbus, Ohio.

The backsides of the postcards (which I mailed in envelopes because of the varying postage) all had some take on "My Punny Valentine."

Yes, sometimes when you are semi-retired, you spend an entire day doing, well, THIS.