Drawing from male model

Nothing seems to challenge artists more than the human form. Nature is usually so forgiving, but when it comes to people, even a little distortion throws the whole drawing off. Then throw a little perspective and foreshortening, and I can see why artists work from live models regularly. "Regularly" for me seems to be once or twice a year, but its better than nothing.

Sketchbook randomness

My car...

Animals caught out in nature
 while camping...

A lighthouse while hanging
 out at the beach...

I have been carrying my sketchbook around with me everywhere recently. Although I used to carry my watercolor materials with me everywhere but my tubes of paint and brushes were getting damaged. So I put them away and traded it for pencils and sketchbook. There is quite a bit of randomness in my drawings, because I am pretty spontaneous as to when l get it out, which is whenever the mood strikes.

Random guy hanging out at
a hotel pool...

Well it's been a while...

It has been way too long since I posted anything. Life gets it the way, and posting on my blog has fallen off my list of priorities. Now, that does not mean I have not been doing anything creative, but less putting it down on paper. I have not sat down and worked on any major art projects but what has gone down on paper has been mostly sketches.
It is surprising how easy it is to stop blogging, even though it is very hard for me not to have an outlet for my creativity. But the name of my blog is "creative journey" which definitely has its ebbs and flows, but my journey never stops.

Here is some randomness from my sketchbook. More to come soon.

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.

Cornucopia

It has been too long since I have posted anything, and I'm not even going to get into making excuses for the lapse in my creative journey...life happens.
Since this week is Thanksgiving, I decided to do a cornucopia. This was originally planned as a project for some students, so the first picture here is a rough ball point pen sketch from memory during a staff meeting.

The second one is my demonstration piece that I did in front of 50 or so third through sixth graders. They were not a real focused bunch as this was an afterschool activity and they were more than ready for their Thanksgiving break. So the piece is kind of rushed and done in several different intervals as I walked around the room. The paper is 9x12" black construction paper with a mix of chalk and oil pastels. Once it was finished, it was sprayed with hair spray to prevent further smudging (but also caused curling due to the low quality paper).

Some of the students' pieces turned out really well, and I'm disappointed I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them. Overall I think the students enjoyed the project.

Model pencil sketch

This pencil sketch is from a picture of a model that I had seen on Instagram, @tiannag. I actually picked this photo because it incorporates a lot of the areas that I struggle with: hair, hands, eyelashes. I think it was a good challenge. I started by tracing the main features to make sure I got proportions right. Some people might consider that "cheating", but for the purposes of practise, I don't think it matters. I really enjoyed drawing the hair. I think it turned out with really good texture.

Rabbit in pencil

I figured I would play around with sketching a rabbit since its right around Easter. My inspiration for this actually came from "Leap", the 56-foot long bunny that is in the Sacramento Metro Airport (SMF). Conceived by artist Laurence Argent, it was installed back in October 2011 when they opened up the new terminal. According to some articles, they have dubbed SMF as the "Hare-port", but I have never heard it called that here in Sacramento!

Unlike the scupture, which is bright red and created from geometric triangles, I decided to make my sketch more realistic by drawing fur onto my bunny and just using the reference photo for the form.

I hope every-bunny had a hoppy Easter!

Saturday sketching at the cafe

On a sunny Saturday, I headed down to a downtown cafe to do some sketching on the patio. I always feel a little awkward as I "spy" on other people while sketching, so it is always a very quick sketch, and usually from the other side of the cafe. I kind of cheated with the jogger by taking a picture as he jogged by, then working from that. The chair of course was a subject that didn't move around and didn't mind me staring at it. And as you can see, the patio chairs are not very comfortable, so this whole session was about a half hour before my bottom was numb. But when you want to practice human form and you don't have a model, you do what you gotta do!

Succulant pencil drawing

This is a sketch of a succulent plant that I started a while back, plein air, outside on the patio. As I was going through my sketch book, I thought I should finish it up, so with a little shading, I think it's done.

Atmospheric effects, watercolor

I am always watching the clouds, and with this wet spring we are having, they are always there in some form or another. I thought I would try to recreate a rainstorm, with different kinds of clouds, cirrus (the high whispy ones), and cumulonimbus (big towering ones). I worked with very wet paper, letting the paint move around freely, hoping for some happy accidents.

The cumulonimbus clouds were actually  "blooms" or "cauliflower" caused by not being patient and trying to add more paint to an area that is still not dry.  By adding wet paint (or water) into an area that isn't as wet as what you are adding, it creates a bloom. Some people love the affect while some don't. I used it as a happy accident.

This second piece is more of the same, but I tried to encourage the paint to move the way I wanted it to in order to get the desired effect of a rain cloud passing through.
I used similar color pallettes in both with Payne's grey being my cloud color of choice. Which one is your favorite?

No Hands Bridge, watercolor

The Mountain Quarries Bridge, now more frequently called the "No Hands" Bridge was built in 1912 and is located just south of Auburn, CA. It crosses over the North Fork of the American River and is near the trailhead of several nice hikes in the area, including the trail to Black Hole of Calcutta Falls (which I have sketched as well as watercolored).
This concrete bridge has always caught my attention between the shape of the bridge and the shadows it casts. The reference photo was one I took last fall.
I enjoy seeing the balance created between the straight lines of structures, the bridge in this case, and the free form of nature.

Sunset watercolors

Finally got out the watercolors again after way too long of a break. My Artist Way friends were wanting some directions with watercolor and I thought some sunsets would be a good jumping off exercise. Loosely based on my Sunset along the River painting,  it was not anything planned out, just some spontaneous painting.  We experimented with blending colors wet on wet, lifting color to create clouds, as well as creating silohettes: mountains, trees, birds.

This one was based on a photo from a thank you card. It was suppose to be a lighthouse, and even though it didn't turn out quite as I had wanted, I liked the colors I was able to create in the sky. The Artist Way is about removing the creative 'blocks' we impose upon ourselves and to just let the creative spirit flow through us. Sometimes just playing around without the pressure of creating some masterpiece is just what we need to inspire us.

Mural project

I have finally completed the mural for our elementary school. I know that murals seem to be the "in" thing in oue area these days, especially since the Sacramento Mural Festival that we had here in August 2016. This is the mural project I have been working on for a while. It started out as a sketch based on some ideas the principal showed me (see above). Then we coordinated colors based on the school colors and stretched it to fit the space. Then the execution of painting it into the ball wall was done over two days, thanks to several teachers volunteering their time on a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.
The ball wall is 12 feet tall and 30 feet wide...enormous! This has definitely been out of my comfort zone, at least 10 times bigger than anything I have ever done (except for painting a bedroom). I hope the community enjoys it!

Sunset along the River

I painted this in my studio today from a photo I had taken last November, and the subject matter, colors of the sunset and even the time of year reminded me of another painting I had done back in 2013, Sunset at William B Pond. Now, I had done that one plein aire (I don't do much of that this time of year), but I think it does a good job of showing my progress over the past couple of years with my watercolors. This new piece was done on a 1/2 sheet of 11x14 (making it 7x11, rather an awkward size for framing but great for quick practice painting).

Sunset on William B Pond, 9x12, October 2013

Bark of the Ponderosa Pine, watercolor

This painting was supposed to be part of my "zoom in" themed pieces, (along with River Rocks and Eye) but it will not be included in the Rancho Cordova City Hall display because it took me too long to get this finished. In fact, I'm still not sure it's finished.
The idea originally came from some reference photos of a ponderosa pine tree, with its bark that looks kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. I started by tracing a few shapes with pencil, but then let my imagination run wild with the rest of it. The bark seemed so simple at first but then it just took on this whole other feel, very abstract. I am not one to do abstract painting so my brain keeps telling me it needs something else, so I kept coming back and adding more layers. I have finally said I need to step away from it and call it done.

Ghandi, pencil sketch

A couple of years ago, I spent this January holiday drawing a pencil sketch portrait of Martin Luther King. Today I decided to continue the tradition, but this time I chose Mahatma Ghandi, another great civil rights leader. In fact, Martin Luther King used many of Ghandi's priciples, saying that they were the "guiding light" of his technique of nonviolent social change.

The image actually came from a poster that I had seen at a school I had trainings at this summer, and I took a pic with my phone thinking I might use it for inspiration sometime...so here it is 6 months later.

If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
-- Mahatma Gandhi,