A Week of Tulips

Here, in images, is a week of tulips on my desk.

Real Life People, TV People

There’s nothing like standing in the corner of a room bustling with energy and drawing it. On San Jose Day, Empire Seven Studios let me hang out in a corner of their gallery and sketch for a bit.

There’s nothing like live sketching.

Still, I kinda enjoyed watching my first-ever full basketball match (on tv) and sketching. The nice thing about basketball is that it’s easy to figure out what’s going on. So even a no-basketball-knowledge person like me enjoys it.

Machines

Some recent machine-centric pages from my sketchbook.

This is Russ, working in the front yard with a very noisy paver-cutting machine.

Spotted in Japantown on San Jose Day, and I had to stop and sketch it, of course; A gorgeous blue lowrider.

I should know the name of this classic red Italian espresso machine at Roy’s Station in Japantown. I don’t, but I do love how it looks like a very sleek, highly polished automobile.

Standing beside the trains at the Railroad Museum in Sacramento made me realize just how huge they are.

My favorite part of the trains is the beautiful hand lettering on their sides.

Pencils4Tea: Online Portraits

Pencils4Tea hosts a Zoom-based portrait sketching session every Thursday where participants take turns posing for each other. Portraits are times by the length of songs.

I drew these two spreads in one such session, mostly using a blue and brown ink combo ( I love these two colors together: the blue really warms up the brown!) with a range of drawing tools. It was a fun, relaxed way to draw and experiment.

I’ll be doing more of these soon! Check out Pencils4Tea‘s profile to see if the Zoom session works for you.

That same brown ink looks quite different when paired with graphite and colored pencil in the sketch below.

Westside Billiards

Westside Billiards in a San Jose institution that has been around since about 1947. So it was super exciting to see the sign restored.
Restorations like this might look like little projects but you can bet there’s tons of commitment and partnerships between business owners wanting to preserve history, preservation folks like Preservation Action Council of San Jose, and the San Jose Signs Project put in tons of work to make this happen.

I sketched this sign (originally from 1947) in 2015? 2016? And it’s on the back cover of my book, Vintage Signs of San Jose. So it was fun to draw it again.

Then I was back only a couple of nights later for the West Side Soirée celebrating the sign restoration, and I stood outside at dusk, painting the lit-up sign. That’s when I noticed that the neon lights up but the 6-pointed star doesn’t. Yet.

Turns out it’s going to require more fund-raising to get this sign and other vintage signs in San Jose fully restored.

Art, Play, and Community

These are four pieces I made last week. The first one is a sketch of withered daffodil heads.

This one below appeared on my page the next day as I chatted with Paul Wang (we’re bringing you a new PlayLab session soon!)

I can’t photograph this piece below well, but it’s a little zine-like thing made of tracing paper, just something I did one afternoon to break up my finish-the-taxes day. (I’ve managed to push that day out over a few weeks!)

And this last one is a collaged piece in my sketchbook. I did three versions of sketches of oranges from my backyard while chatting on Zoom with Nina Khashchina and then cut them all up and collaged them together afterward.

Looking back, I see a train of thought through them all, and an exploration of media and mark-making that I am really enjoying.

Where it will go, (if it does go somewhere, that is), I have no idea. But I’m super grateful to have lots of experimentation, play, AND a community of friends and artists, online and in person, to bounce ideas off, because nothing happens in a vacuum.

Pink!

It’s spring, and it’s PINK everywhere I turn. This glorious tree was captured from my car studio, which allows me to carry far too many supplies, and throw them all at the paper, all at once!

I know a base of bright pink ink and Neocolor II crayons were part of this mix, but I cannot remember what else was involved…

The magnolia tree below is in Nina’s neighborhood. She locates promising ones during her morning run and then I go over and get a guided sketch tour of the neighborhood trees-in-bloom.

Here is a sketch of another magnolia tree, this one with bigger blooms.

These final two are from fruit trees in bloom at Cosentino Farms. It was such a gorgeous day, we sat down and sketched and I never moved and basically did the same tree twice, switching my media up a bit.

There’s a bit more of the pink and white blooms left. They will be on the trees a while longer, but the green leaves are coming in now and will overshadow the blooms soon. But, it’s time for the warmer weather iris and California poppies, and then the hot weather Matilija poppies, so there will be a lot of flowers in my sketchbook for the next few months!

End of the Rainy Season?

We might just be done with the big downpours of the year. It is warm and sunny now and it seems hard to imagine that most of February and early March was all rain and no sun. I did this quick sketch after a very wet grocery run.

After it had rained continually for a few days, I gave up on waiting for a sunny day and headed out on a little walk in the rain, sketchbook in hand. I didn’t get far, my book got wet, but still, I’m glad I sketched.

Wrapping up “One Week 100 People”

Most years I participate in Marc Holmes and Liz Steel’s “One Week 100 People” challenge. This year I just sketched more people but didn’t count them. Until now. Here is where I ended up.

Right now I’m a bit obsessed with finding a way to use my dip pens on location. I need a setup that is hands-free, but portable. Here’s a video of my current setup that I used in many of these sketches. You can see the first few sketches had plenty of splotches and blotches till I (kinda) got the hang of the setup.

Then I took it to the farmers’ market and did a whole bunch of people in 2 colored inks. Colored pencil added later.

Everything else I did last week was from photos: the first image below is done in a half hour long, open-to-all session for all substack subscribers. If you haven’t joined yet, sign up here: the recorded version of the session will be available to everyone signed up before April 1st.

The set above was my practice run of doing 10 sketches in 10 minutes.
And the set below is done in a zoom session. We sketched 30 people in 30 minutes.

I think I just go a little past 100, and that’s if you count all of these, the good, the bad, and the barely-a-sketch ones.

Most years. I try to figure something I will learn from doing a challenge. But this year, I was just happy to get a bunch of folks- some of you included- excited to draw people.

A Lot of Noise

Last week (or was it two weeks ago, it’s been a blur!) this happened. The buckled and cracked concrete in my front yard was pulled out to make way for a paved driveway and some native, low-water plants to replace the grass patch I never water. It was SO noisy; there was that thing that I call a digger (I’m sure there is another name for it) and that pneumatic drill. And I could see and hear it all from my desk in the studio. So I tried to put it all on paper: chaos, dust, sound, and all.