Oak tree in pencil

A beautiful sunny day was calling me out to nature, so I found a spot along the bluffs along Lake Natoma. I pulled out a sketch pad and pencils and sat down at an empty picnic table. The oaks along the bluff each have their own personality, with their scraggly branches turning in all directions. Even though some of the trees are already getting their leaves, the oaks still have not figured out spring is here.

Crocker art museum pencil sketch

To celebrate the 20th annual Sacramento Museum Day, I thought I would post this sketch of the Crocker Art Museum from last year. Using pencil and a notebook, I just stood outside for a little while after I had walked around the museum. The museum is really quite extensive. This section that I drew is just the original gallery section which used to be the main entrance before the new Teel Family Pavilion opened in 2010.

The Crocker Art Museum, located at the corner of 3rd and O Streets, is the longest continuously operating art museum in the West. The museum was originally conceived by Edwin B.Crocker (not his brother, Charles Crocker, known for being one of California's "Big Four", as I had originally thought) and his wife Margaret, back in 1869. Crocker had been appointed as California's Supreme Court Justice in 1863, and then served as legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad Company. He was forced to retire due to a paralyzing stroke in 1869, but he decided to use his money that he had made with the railroad to bring some culture to Sacramento. He commissioned the building of an art gallery next to his home. In order to fill it, and still being able to travel, the Crocker family went on a grand tour of Europe from 1869 through 1871 collecting many paintings and drawings, that became the core of their art collection. Once they returned home, Crocker commisioned many pieces of art as well as purchasing art from Californian artists. He died in 1875 at the age of 57, and in 1885, his wife gifted the E.B. Crocker Art Gallery and the collection to the City of Sacramento "in trust of the public". The original gallery building is an art piece itself, which was specifically designed for displaying their art collection. The 3-story building was designed by Seth Babson with a Victorian-Italian design inside and out and is now listed as a California historic landmark. The ballroom, just past the ornate staircase, is particularly spectacular. Margaret Crocker donated her home next door to the gallery in 1900 to the Penal Rescue Mission, but was later incorporated as part of the museum. In 2010, the Teel Family Pavilion was added just to the west of the original gallery creating an additional 125,000 square feet to the museum, tripling its size. This new building was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and has a sleek modern look to it that greatly contrasts with the other buildings, but "works together as a whole" according to the museum.

Acrylic randomness

These acrylic paintings are done on two half sheets of watercolor paper, front and back. There way no planning involved with any of these. I just put the paint on the page and decided later what it would be. I worked on all four at the same time using relatively few colors. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the planning, I never get to the painting.  So these whimsical pieces were just pure creative juices flowing. Which one is your favorite?

Dancing

Meditatio

The Mind

River

Patterns #2 - orange circles, blue triangles

Still working with the idea of submitting artwork to the Rancho Cordova city council's art show in patterns, here is piece number #2. I started with circles again but instead of aligning them at 90 degree angles as before (Pattern #1 - stars), I aligned them at 60 degree angles, and created a Star of David within each circle by drawing lines to each point that the circles meet. After I had it planned out in copy paper, then I recreated it on watercolor paper. I chose orange and blue because they are on opposite sides of the color wheel, complimentary colors. I had thought about red and green, but it seemed to Christmas-y, and it made sense to have the Star of David be blue. 

The challenge again was to get an even wash. I think I did pretty well with the orange, and after finishing about 5 or 6 triangles, I got the hang of it and I think most of the rest of the triangles are even. (can you tell which were my first ones?)

Pattern #1 - stars

This project was in inspired by Rancho Cordova's city council when they announced an art show based on patterns. I have always been fascinated by geometry so I thought I would play around with some new ideas.

This design is based on Arabic patterns. I started it with four 4" diameter circles. I inscribed two squares within each circle.  With the base lines drawn, I added in some other lines to create the "8 petal flower" and stars. 

This is my practice piece in pencil, then photocopied (the original circles didn't show up) and then traced the lines I wanted to emphasize in Sharpie.

I then recreated the pattern on watercolor paper and extrapolated the design to fill the page. I painted a base color of Azo yellow over the whole piece.  Then I went in with a flat brush and put a wash of Anthraquinone blue between the stars. The biggest challenge was to get a consistent color with the blue wash. It started out a little darker than I wanted, but then got too thin and created a green since the yellow was coming through. Once I stepped back from it though, I kind of liked the flow of it, so I left it as is.