Odds and Ends and the Winchester Mystery House

If you’ve been a tourist anywhere in the South Bay you’ve probably been to Winchester Mystery House. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for atleast 15 years and only went a couple of weeks ago. It’s a strange, crazy mansion made up of more than 160 rooms, built without a master plan (and it shows!). You can’t sketch inside because you’re on a tour with a lot of people and move quickly through many, many rooms ( I did manage page 2 that you see here, but only just about). But I would go back to the grounds to sketch views like this one of the assortment of roof and turrets: and you can visit the grounds and gardens for free anytime.

 

In ‘other sketches from that week’ are a few little ones.

My daughter and her bubble tea.

And an attempt at gouache. I need to get a hang of this medium soon so I can use it to sketch some lit neon signs in the night!

And in “happenings this week’. If you live near San Jose and can make it to the SoFa Market on Wednesday evening, bring your sketchbook and come! SoFa Sketch meets once a month: it’s easy, it’s casual: a bunch of artists bring their sketchbooks and current projects and come work on them and chat and draw together.

Here’s my little poster I did for this month’s meeting. It has my cats Samson and Moshi in it.  The inspiration for it? I wanted to stay in the vein of these pieces created over the years by artist Frances Marin who started and still organizes SoFaSketch. Oh, and I forgot to note it in my little poster… see you there between 7 and 9pm!