Jana Bouc's blog about painting in watercolor, gouache and oil paint; sketching and drawing with pencils, pens and ink; and learning to create art and an artful life in and outside the studio
Who knew it could be fun to sketch at the hardware store? There were laughs (see end of post) and artistic discoveries galore at our Tuesday night sketchcrawl, now forced to go indoors for the winter. When I first arrived I started to ask one of the helpful employees that Pastime Hardware is famous for, about the part I needed for my toilet. Before he could show me where to find it, my phone rang with the ringtone I made from the Cake song “Never There” (click below to hear the ringtone). An employee who was standing nearby said, “Hey! That’s Cake.” and then began whistling it. Throughout the evening I could hear him whistling the tune from all around the large store, which gratefully, is one of the few stores in existence that does not play annoying music 24/7 over the loudspeakers.
I had no idea how many differently shaped toilet seats there are. I discovered that looking at the negative shapes between the seats helped me to better find the shape of each seat. Then, looking more deeply and trying not to generalize, I discoverd the piles of boxed and/or wrapped toilet seats on the shelves behind the display. And then I noticed and added the pegboard behind that. I fell in love with the pretty color I mixed from cerulean blue and yellow ochre for the pegboard. This, to me, is the joy of sketching in a nutshell: seeing more and more deeply and the fun of making lines and dots and shapes and playing with color.
Next I faced the opposite direction and drew and painted these large metal watering cans up on a tall shelf.
Watering Cans version 1, ink and watercolor
When I got home I glued a bit of my receipt (from the toilet flapper I bought) to the edge of the page in my sketchbook (above). Tonight I thought the page might look better with a dark background so I added some ink, didn’t like that, and then painted with gouache over the ink to get more what I had in mind. (The receipt is still there, I just didn’t scan that part below).
Watering cans, ink, watercolor, gouache
The last sketch I did was of Cathy sketching a row of hand trucks in the room filled with bins of nails. I messed up her face but fixed the FAIL by pasting another piece of receipt over her head.
Last Sketch of Cathy Sketching
I would have liked to sketch more but it was nearly time for the store to close. It had been a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the comments and questions of passing employees and the few customers shopping on a very quiet Tuesday night. Cathy said that when she was sketching outside the employee break room she overheard employees talking about us and saying, “There’s a lady out there painting… TOILET SEATS!”
At 8:45 a man announced over the loudspeakers:
“Good evening customers…and… ART STUDENTS [giggle]. The store will be closing in 15 minutes so please bring your purchases to the [giggle giggle] cashier …[giggle]…”
…and then laughter ensued throughout the store, employees, customers and us artists alike! It was a slow night at Pastime, with twice the employees as customers, so I’d like to think they enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs.
Fruit Fail Flap Fail, graphite and watercolor 9x6"
When my toilet decided to start saving water by only doing half flushes, a knowledgeable friend took a look and said I needed a new flapper. He showed me how to remove the old one and told me to take it to my wonderful neighborhood hardware store, Pastime Hardware in El Cerrito, to get a replacement. I knew I would be going to Pastime to sketch with my Tuesday Night Sketchcrawl buddies so I waited until then to remove it.
Tonight was our sketchcrawl and it was so much fun. When I got home I wanted to sketch this intriguing failed flapper and thought it would be an interesting juxtaposition to pair it with this failed persimmon. (I waited too long to eat it and now it’s squishy and I just can’t eat squishy fruit.) This is the kind of persimmon meant to be eaten crisp.
I will post my hardware store sketches and a couple of amusing stories from our evening there, next time as sleep seems more important right now.
Meanwhile, if you aren’t familiar with the concept of something being “FAIL,” and have never seen the hilarious FAIL blog, I highly recommend a visit! Who knew there were so many ways for things to go wrong, from stupid signs, to stupid people. It always makes me laugh.
Hayward Japanese Garden (revised), oil on panel, 12x9"
Despite the encouragement to leave this painting and “don’t touch a thing” I wasn’t satisfied with it and made some adjustments to the color. I’m much happier with it now, although I wish my photo was more accurate. In real life the color is less fluorescent than it is appearing on the screen, although the actual scene in person was so brilliant it nearly was fluorescent.
Lone Tree Park, a funky little waterfront spot in the funky little town of Rodeo, CA alongside the railroad tracks. Sunday I joined Benicia Plein Air Painters there for an afternoon of plein air painting. I was determined to simplify, find big shapes, get them down on my panel with bold color, and stop. It was so much fun, made even more so by painting alongside Leslie Wilson, an inspiring watercolor painter.
Today I finished the painting at home from memory (above). I had to work from memory because the photo didn’t even come close to capturing the colors from the setting sun.
Below is the painting on site, just before I filled the white spaces I’d left between shapes to avoid smearing as I worked.
Lone Tree Park, Rodeo, in progress
And here’s my easel set up at the park. Since we were painting in the afternoon the sun began to set and glow with wonderful hot colors the last half hour of painting.
Painting in Rodeo
It was good practice to finish the painting (at least I think it’s finished) but it also felt good to do what I set out to do on-site, simplifying down to big shapes and colors.
It also felt great to be out painting from real life instead of from a photo as I’ve been doing for the book. I got permission to share some of the steps in progress which I’ll do soon.
It’s not a cold, a fever, a pill bug or a lady bug, and probably not something from getting a flu shot on Wednesday. It’s just a sleepy, coughing, red-eyed, sneezey, sniffly little bug.
And it looks like I’m winning! I hope so. Tomorrow is a plein air painting day at a winery in Sonoma, the last of the season with my primary plein air group, and I’d really like to go.
Tuesday night sketchcrawl met at Miyuki Japanese Restaurant on Solano and it was a feast for the eyes and the stomach. It took tremendous willpower to sketch and paint each morsel before eating them. I started with the miso soup, delivered with steamy wash cloths to clean our hands before dining.
Edamame (soy beans), ink and watercolor
They brought edamame to our table while we looked at the menu. I sketched and ate them after the delicious miso soup. We sat at the sushi bar and had fun watching the sushi chef. He seemed to enjoyed watching us sketch,e specially Cathy’s sketch of him.
Maguro sushi (tuna), ink and watercolor
Next was the maguro sushi on a wooden plank. Spectacularly fresh and delicious. Then it was time for the star of the show, the Country Roll, stuffed with perfectly crisp asparagus and covered in spicy and slightly sweet seaweed salad.
Country Roll Sushi (seaweed salad & asparagus); Ink and watercolor
For “dessert” I ordered Unagi (grilled eel with a teriyaki-like sauce.
Unagi sushi (grilled eel), ink and watercolor
The waitress couldn’t quite make sense of us but since the restaurant wasn’t too crowded they didn’t mind us sitting there for two hours sketching and eating. And we left a big tip.
Miyuki Japanese Restaurant, Berkeley, ink and watercolor
All of these were sketched and painted on site except for this last one, which was sketched in the dark from across the street when I first arrived. I took notes about the colors and added color when I got home. I highly recommend Miyaki. The food is always fresh and beautifully prepared, the staff friendly, efficient and helpful and the prices very reasonable. It’s spacious so there’s never a wait and it’s not too noisy. And it’s a great place to sketch on a Tuesday night!
The little known Hayward Japanese Garden is a lovely and a very peaceful place. I set up my easel inside one of the little structures sprinkled throughout the gardens as it had a good view and nice shade on a very sunny day last week. It was also a popular spot for wedding and family photos, as two different wedding parties came to take photos at this spot while we painted.
There were a number of challenges with this painting. First was the complicated scene I chose. Also painting under a roof in a shaded area looking directly at a bright scene was tricky.
I was attracted by the rhythm of the crisscrossing diagonals of the bridge, the building, the tree and the reflections. While I was pleased that I met my goal for this session: to focus on composition, I only got as far as an underpainting on site (after starting with thumbnails, value study and a fairly careful drawing). I worked on it some more today from a photo on my computer screen.
Now I see a few things I’d like to adjust (toning down the bright yellow greens, shrinking the rocks under the tree that somehow grew while I was painting, and adding some dark accents). But that will have to wait because…
Book commission
Now it’s time to get to work on the first watercolor for a book commission that is due in two weeks. I’ll be making three paintings for another book about painting flowers in watercolor by my previous publisher. I love the first photo I was assigned to paint from and am excited about the project. It’s so cool getting paid to paint flowers! I’m supposed to photograph 6 stages of the painting and then ship it off to London for them to make the final photo, Then they’ll send me back the painting and the digital file.
I’m hoping I can post some of the steps here, but my guess is that since they get publishing rights, I probably can’t. Either way, first I have to get painting!
I celebrate this day each year as a sacred holiday because of the precious gift of an extra hour. I wait until Sunday to change my clock. Then I pick an hour and spend it consciously, savoring every one of those 60 minutes by doing something especially satisfying.
And then at the end of the hour, if it was a good one, I set the clock back, feeling grateful. If the hour didn’t live up to my expectations, I just pick another hour and try again.
What are you going to do with your shiny new hour?
I wanted to sketch fall colors in honor of halloween and the end of daylight savings even though it’s warm enough here that my roses and hibiscus are still blooming and the grass is green from recent rains. This is a branch from the Japanese maple tree near my front door. It was a gift from my-coworkers in honor of my father’s death, who passed away 9 years ago today.
Update: Instead of picking an hour, I ended up doing it differently: Sunday afternoon I decided I would take a walk and if I timed it right, I could be home before I left. But I’d been having so much fun playing with taking that hour again and again that I didn’t change it on Sunday. I didn’t change it on Monday either, just hung out in the studio still relishing the possibilities. But Tuesday I had to work (from home) and realized I didn’t want another hour of WORK and since I needed to be at the restaurant to sketch at 6:30 I finally changed my clocks. Instead of one free hour though, I probably experienced at least a couple dozen over those three days. Goofy but fun!
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #3, ink and watercolor, 9x6"
I just needed some peaceful time at my watercolor table tonight to unwind. I’ve been admiring this hydrangea that’s been on my dining table in a little cow glass, the last remaining from a bouquet I’d picked. It’s soft pinks and greens were inspiring so I put on a book on CD and sketched and painted and listened to the story unfold.
Above is the third one, drawn first with a Pitt Artist Pen Sepia Superfine and then painted quickly with watercolor.
Below is the second one, painted directly without drawing first except with my brush and paint.
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #2, watercolor
And here is the first one, drawn first with pencil, then I wet the flower area, dropped in different colors and when dry painted a bit over it. This one got a bit overworked but had some nice moments along the way:
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #1, graphite and watercolor
You can see my notes in my sketchbook about never being able to remember the name of these flowers. I always go through a list of wrong names first and then have to look it up. It’s like the spot on my mental hard drive that once held the name “Hydrangea” has been corrupted and I just can get there anymore. But then I never really learned the name until a few years ago; we always called them “popcorn ball plants” when I was growing up.
I hope the colors look OK. I updated my computer to Windows 7 last night (finishing the final steps this evening) and things look a little different. Windows 7 is fantastic so far and the upgrade process was almost flawless. (Just one glitch with my graphics card driver that got resolved pretty easily.)
This afternoon I went for a hike with Jessica and Mariah in perfect autumn weather and then J made tacos for dinner. After dinner Mariah (age 10) plopped her sketchbook, watercolor pencils, and Niji waterbrush on the table, pulled the bowl of fruit over in front of us and said “Let’s sketch.” How could I resist!
Mariah’s sketchbooks are such treasures. When we first started sketching together a couple years ago she preferred drawing from her imagination but now avidly draws what she sees too. Watching her abilities and understanding of what she sees grow is such a pleasure. Especially since she’s around the age when many girls stop drawing when they realize they can’t do it perfectly.
I also really admire how she has many pages of “just practicing” as she called them in her sketchbook (pages someone else might tear out thinking they were “failed” drawings). She doesn’t fear leaving them there or “wasting” the page. They’re just practice. Sometimes there are three pages in a row like that. No big deal. Such wisdom. I wanted to post her fruit sketch too but she turned the page while it was wet and it got all blurry. She just couldn’t wait to start the next sketch: the box of taco shells she said she really wanted to draw but didn’t know why.
I’ve managed to squeeze in a few other nothing-special sketches in the middle of a two-week, too-busy period (work, family, life!) and here they are:
Subway Ladies, ink and watercolor
Friday night my watercolor group came over and we painted together. I did a couple quick sketches of them while we sat around the table. Judith had a new shorter haircut.
Judith, ink in Niji waterbrush
Sharon worked in water-soluble oils instead of watercolor and somehow got yellow paint on the wall that wouldn’t come off until I tried my Magic Eraser and it came right off.
Sharon, ink in Niji waterbrush
We were all so tired after a long week but it was great to get together and paint. By request, I demonstrated how to get a good “bead” of juicy paint when making a flat wash and everyone took turns doing a few rows of the wash down the page. Together we created a really nice even page of purple.
A few more days of craziness and things start settling down again. Can’t wait!
Now that it’s getting dark right after work, we’re having to find indoor spots to sketch and this week we visited another planet known as the Albany Bowl. Since it was early evening on a Tuesday night, the customers were mostly people who like to bowl while drinking pitchers of beer and eating vast quantities of fried food, rather than the gang-types known to hang out there during the later hours.
Their bar, pictured above is the cleanest smelling bar I’ve ever been in. There wasn’t the slightest scent of beer or cigarettes, just fresh air and a whiff of chlorine bleach, oddly enough. It was also nearly empty since most people were doing their drinking while they bowled. Semi-hidden in the sketch above is the bartender who I “erased” with scribbles and paint after I goofed up his nose.
Cathy and I sat in tall comfy barstools along the back wall and sketched, creating a great deal of confusion for the bartender who couldn’t figure us out, though he didn’t seem to mind when we politely said, “No thanks” when he came over to take our orders. We just kept on sketching.
Albany Bowling Alley Cafe, ink & watercolor
We had a similar experience in their little cafe, which from the outside appeared to offer retro-diner sketching opportunities, but in fact, had very little going for it besides the stools and miles of formica. When I said we didn’t want food, just wanted to sit and draw pictures, the young waiter didn’t get it until I showed him my sketchbook. Then he said OK and left us alone. The waitress asked to see what we’d done when we were leaving, and she squealed and laughed when we showed her. I pointed out the waiter’s little beard in my sketch and he smiled.
We tried drawing the bowlers in action; I did a page of gesture sketches and then we decided we’d had enough of the noise on this planet (constant music, announcements, bleeps and bloops from video machines, people yelling) and decided it was time to go home.
Condiments at Albany Bowl Cafe, ink & watercolor
I really miss being able to go outdoors for our Tuesday night sketching. While urban interiors are interesting, and drawing anywhere is fun, I miss gardens and birdsong which I much prefer to neon lights and the annoying sounds of video games.
Better Bowl of Fruit, Watercolor on paper, 7" x 10.5"
I’m so much happier with the way this watercolor of my bowl of fruit turned out than the one in my sketchbook. It makes such a difference to use Arches 140 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper. It also helped that I was painting consciously and taking my time, instead of rushing through it, half asleep as I had been when I made the sketch.
Even more fun is that I made the the large porcelain bowl when I was a potter and had glazed it with two of my favorite glazes…and now I was “glazing” it again, in watercolor.
I enjoyed every bit of the process, from planning the composition, to drawing (see below) from life, to masking the whites, then painting one shape at a time, using juicy washes, adding color wet-into-wet, as well as glazing over dried washes, then removing the mask, softening the highlights and some edges.
Fruit bowl pencil sketch on watercolor paper
Since I’m teaching a watercolor class right now, I tried to also pay attention to my process so that I could better explain to my students how and why I did what I did. I surprised myself with the range of techniques I was actually using in one painting. Even though in class we study them as separate techniques (flat wash, graded wash, wet-into-wet, etc.) you often need them all in one painting and sometimes in one passage of a painting.
(Boring technical stuff follows…read at your own risk…) For example, after the fruit, bowl, and shadow were painted I did a flat wash of Ultramarine Blue mixed with Burnt Sienna for the neutral background. Then it felt like the table top, which I’d initially left white with just a light blue shadow, needed paint too. So the first layer was a pale flat wash of Cadmium Yellow. When it dried it didn’t feel warm enough so I glazed over it with a flat wash of Permanent Rose (so that the whole table top was the pale apricot color now only seen on the right of the table top). It still wasn’t warm enough so I did another wash of Permanent Rose mixed with a little Cadmium Yellow and let it fade out 3/4 of the way across. I liked the way that looked but now the shadow was too pale. So I glazed over over the shadow a couple of times and then softened the edges of the shadow where it meets the table top.)
On my walk to Peets Coffee and the bookstore today I saw so many things along the way that I would have liked to sketch. But I was feeling tired and under-caffeinated so I made a mental note to take the same route on the way back to sketch them.
It struck me as ironic to see a sign saying “STOP” beside a tree (above) with leaves that are changing colors and falling. We can’t stop the seasons, time keeps steadily moving on, the days get shorter, and I’m so aware of each passing day being one less to do all the things I want to do.
As I wrote that, I pictured myself with a quiver of arrows that represent my days, and each day I select an arrow and shoot it from my bow…and that gave me an idea for a sketch….
Arrows of Time, ink and gouache
And that made me wonder which is better:
To carefully select the daily arrow (of time) and aim to make sure the day is spent intentionally, doing the things that matter;
or
To be adventurous, pick an arrow at random and shoot without aiming and (as my old yoga teacher used to say when instructing us to take a seemingly impossible pose) “just see what happens” — let each day be its own adventure.
UPDATE: Diane Patmore just left this most wonderful comment:
“Perhaps that sign is telling us to stop and look at the tree?”
That snapped me right out of my melancholic meanderings. Indeed, the only way to slow time is to live in the moment, and enjoy it as it’s happening! Yes! Stop and look at the tree; appreciate its beauty and the color of changing leaves. Accept its reminder that change is inevitable and resisting change causes suffering.
Breathe in the wonderful October air and be grateful to be breathing at this very moment. Ahhh. I feel much better now!
It’s been such a busy week that I haven’t had a moment for my blog until now. When my work week ended Friday afternoon it was time to prepare the studio for my watercolor class that started today. I’ve converted a second room to studio space for the duration of the class and I think everyone fit comfortably.
I feel so privileged to have such a great group of wonderful women artists in the class. And what troopers they were today, so determined to get the hang of doing flat washes, graded washes and glazing. By the end of the class everyone was doing beautiful, abundant, juicy washes.
I’d put out a couple of bowls of fresh fruit for class but nobody was hungry. So now I get to paint (and eat) all those yummy pears, apples and pomegranates.
After all the work on good paper today, I got frustrated by sketchbook paper that quickly muddies and doesn’t allow reworking. But I was so tired tonight it was either a quick sketch or nothing and since there’s been way too much nothing on my blog this week, here, at least, is something, as funky as it may be.
Tomorrow, rested up, I will try again on good paper.
I have a theory about the paths we take in life, and how important it is to notice what I call “Angels Holding Up Signs” along the way. Sometimes those angels take the form of a person offering helpful information or silently pointing the way by example, an intuitive thought, or an unexpected turn of events that makes you pause. When I see or hear an angel holding up a sign, whether it’s “Yield”, “STOP,” or “Go This Way” with an arrow, I consider it a gift and give it serious consideration.
Disclaimer: I’m not a New-Age angels and crystals sort of girl. But I do believe there are angels all around us; good, kind, generous people, like Adam at Kragen Auto Parts today who helped me dispose of gallons of old motor oil and their containers that had been abandoned in my garage (long story; don’t get me started!). Thanks Adam!
…And like the angels who’ve held up signs in my art life lately, including Kathryn Law and Ed Terpening who’ve both helped me to a breakthrough in my understanding about why simplifying is important in oil painting, especially when painting plein air. I’m always attracted to details, and so I’ve fought against that principle, and then fought my paints trying to put those details into my paintings.
Then I saw these paintings (below) by Ed Terpening on his blog, Life Plein Air, made during a workshop in which the instructor, Peggi Kroll-Roberts, challenged the class to break the scene into as few large shapes as possible and paint those shapes with a large, fully loaded brush in one brush stroke.
Each study evoked in me a mood and my mind created a whole life story for each of these women. A mom at the beach trying to keep her kids in line; a sad, matron, wondering where her life had gone; a glamorous, young society lady at the country club watching a tennis game while sipping a martini….
How did so much come from such simple paintings? Leaving out the details left it to my mind to fill them in. This is something I so needed to learn: that simplifying and omitting detail doesn’t make a painting boring—it lets the viewer’s mind play and be creative, making for an exciting, rewarding experience. Thanks, Ed, for holding up that signpost!
Another sign-toting angel came via email this week: a request to purchase this plein air oil painting I made last summer at Lake Temescal. There I was at the crossroads, wondering whether to give up plein air oil painting, and this angel popped up with a sign saying, “You’re on the right path, don’t turn back.”
And now about my process with today’s painting. First I tried to simplify by painting large color shapes with the plan to create a color study for a work to be done in the studio. I also focused on the composition, picking a focal point, being careful not to divide the canvas in half as I have a tendency to do, making the subject (the water) the largest portion.
Here’s how it looked when I’d covered the whole panel:
Lake Temescal Reflections, Phase 1
I’d worked quickly, using a palette knife, going for big shapes of color. I should have stopped there and gone for a walk. But instead I messed around for another hour and muddied up the design and the colors:
Temescal Reflections (muddied), Phase 2
But the great thing about palette knife painting is that it’s easy to scrape off passages and repaint them. So later that evening I put the photo of Phase 1 on my computer monitor side-by-side with a photo of the scene and worked on the painting until I was satisfied with it (as posted at top).
And I’m very happy with another breakthrough: the way I was able to enjoy the plein air painting process without worrying about making a Painting with a capital P while I was out there.
Most artwork shown here is available as prints or originals. Email janabouc@gmail.com for more information.
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