More San Franciso and back to Sebastopol!

pen and watercolor in 5X8″ Canson Mixed Media sketchbook

Another busy day in San Francisco started out with meeting my urban sketch friends for a ride across the Bay on BART to the Ferry Building, where I have sketched several times before.  (see previous sketches here) It was a Saturday and it felt like a good portion of city was out to enjoy the culinary delights and bayside views. It reminded me a lot of Pike Place market in Seattle with its crush of humanity! Multiple live music, horns, screeching brakes, every type of public and private transportation converging in this one block area of one of the most fascinating cities in the world. And all under beautiful sunny skies. 

I planted myself in the traffic island, listening to the crooner nearby with his medley of S.F. love songs, enjoying conversation with my sketch friends whom I’ve missed, and then tried to settle down for some sketching. The Jesus Saves guy was just one of the many colorful characters in view!

And there she was again! The young violinist from the deYoung parking lot again (in the center with the yellow hat), and this time with her fellow musicians. I quickly set up my sketch stool and got ready to sketch, just as they played their last notes and packed up to leave. Aargh! This may be another one to do from a picture, though it’s always more engaging to absorb the live music experience in the sketch.

The Chinese New Year parade was next on the day’s schedule. I’ve attended other urban sketcher meet ups for this event over the years, and it’s one of my favorite with unbeatable color and human vitality. (see past year sketches here and here The groups of adults and children of all ages assemble colorfully on Market Street in preparation for the parade. 

By the time I got there my energy reserves had depleted, so this was done later from a picture I took!

Kay’s garden in Monte Rio on the Russian River

The next four days I was on my old familiar turf in Sebastopol and the Russian River, which is always a bit of heaven in the early spring. A long lunch in the garden of Kay’s home on the River, watching her flock of “designer” chickens that produce a rainbow of different colored eggs.

marveling all over again at the bountiful lemons and the pottery studio overflowing with treasures. There was too much to catch up on with kay and Liz and lots of eating, so no sketching happened that day!

The temperatures were plunging, but not so much that a walk on the beach wasn’t possible, with a little bundling up against the wind. Bodega Bay is often windy and a bit chilly. Not your southern California year round beach, though there was a surfer out that day enjoying the waves. But a long clean stretch of beach with abundant birdlife and radiant sun. Ahhh!

It sometimes feels redundant to sketch on the beach, like I’m copying the art that is already so abundant there in the form of seaweed and shells and undulating sands. So I just gathered up some dried seaweed in an expression of how I felt about this part of our planet and about my week of revisiting.

Next, one last thing to share from my week in California – a Muse Group reunion with inspired artmaking which I will post soon!

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On the beach with Drew

We’ve spent a great many days of late trying to avoid excessive heat and smoke from the fires. So my son Andrew (alias Drew or Droob) and I headed out to Doran Beach in Bodega Bay mid week. The sky was hazy but the air smelled cleaned and it was strangely still on the beach. Even the birds on the bay side were immobile on the beach. We put up the umbrella even though the sun couldn’t quite make it through the haze.

And then we got out our sketchbooks. Drew is one of those people who draws from memory and imagination. It just flows off his pen unimpeded. Creatures of all kinds that come from a fertile imagination that tells visual stories of the most unimaginable and yet somehow recognizable sorts.

So I asked him to give me a prompt and I would try. He said no, that would be cheating (or something like that). So I offered what I thought might help me to get started on a creature. . .a Ralph Steadman style splatter beginning.

So that’s what we did, using my credit card sized watercolor palette and the water brush I’d brought to start splattering. And he was totally game. This is what he did in approximately 6 minutes.

(I thought it looked more like a worm, but he said it was a tongue.)

And here’s mine.

I think I must have been feeling a bit out of my element and it came out in the tipsy drawing.

Well, I told Drew he should do the Inktober challenge with me. You know, the annual 30-day- October-do-an-ink-drawing-a-day challenge. And he agreed! So I’ll be posting both of ours here. And maybe you’d like to join us!

Ahh, summer!

Ahhh, hot! So we scrapped the idea of getting our shed cleaned out today, which would have been suicide in this heat, and packed up the umbrella and beach chairs for a morning at Doran Beach in Bodega Bay. It was heavenly.

I enjoyed watching the little boy play in the sand while the pelicans swooped and the harbor seals barked from their island off the coast. I couldn’t help remembering with bittersweet yearning those days when we would take our rambunctious little boys to the ocean and get to see it all fresh again through their eyes.

As I’m enjoying my musings one of them, 6’2″ of him, lay engrossed in his book by my side under the umbrella. Well, that part is fun too. Always nice to have that fresh 26 year old energy to liven up our home!

Challenging myself here for a few minutes of painting those distant shapes that my eyes can’t quite get in focus. Then it was time to hit the Fishetarian Fish Market for dripping, finger licking fish tacos.

Last weekend I met up with the monthly Ready, Set, Sketchers! gang in Geyserville, in the heart of Sonoma County wine country. About one block of historic buildings, housing gourmet restaurants like Catelli’s, wine tasting, and other assorted stores.

. . .like Gin’gilli’s Vintage Home, with a little bit of everything you might want in your home. I found a chair in the shade outside and just kept adding on to my nutty picture.

 

Visitors and more summer music

My son Andrew and his partner Maura have been visiting this week. They both live in “the city” and seemed happy to just hang around with us, making good food and eating it. Fun summer things like opening a watermelon and eating it sloppily over the sink. We threw in a handful of activities, like a trip to Doran Beach where the north coast wind was so cold that we hunkered down in the protection of the dunes and they practiced headstands and stalked the creatures.

Yesterday we attended the Rivertown Revival Festival in Petaluma, which combines music with boat races and steam punk style and interactive art and $5 weddings. . . I watched a very large snake wound around the body of a guy drink water from his dixie cup. Things like that happen everywhere. I shared my sketches of this festival three years ago here.  Only thing is that this year it was so hot there, that even with my parasol, two water bottles and loose fitting clothes I felt like passing out!

Even the sketching didn’t quite revive me. But here she is Miss Moonshine, the opening act with Andrew and Maura on the hay bale seats.

Next we caught the Cahoots on the Barn Stage with their sassy cute violinist, before checking out the porcupine who came out of his cage to get petted and misted with the spray to cool down, (while we also stood in the spray to get cooled down enough for the trek back to our car.)

Back at home under the fan I sketched from my pics. It was definitely a parasol day!

Catching up on some music sketches here. . .on another very hot day the Rosetown Soul Band was playing some serious hip swayin R + B music in a narrow courtyard packed with people at Montgomery Village Shopping Center. There was standing room only, not the best for a steady drawing line, but great for getting the vibe. This was a kind of sketch/dance combo.

Now the kids have left and I’m packing my bags to head to Chicago tomorrow for the annual Urban Sketchers Symposium. There has been an insane flurry of activity on social media in preparation for this much anticipated event. In preparation I have been obsessing for weeks about what should be in my palette, what paper, pens, etc. should come in which bag. Not to mentions clothes. . . We sketchers are as bad (almost) as photograhers (I’m married to one so I know) when it comes to gear-mania.

I won’t have time for blogging while there, but have learned to use Instagram and might even try a bit of instant video there if you want to tune in. And the pics I take will also be on Facebook, so please join me there this week.

The Travel Sketching workshop is coming up August 26. It is full at this point but there’s a short wait list and space may open up, so contact me if you’re interested. Also I will be scheduling another sketch workshop for the fall.

 

Beating the Heat

In an effort to beat the heat on Father’s Day Bob and I left early for the beach and were rewarded with sparkling sunshine, no wind, and temps in the 70’s. I think we got one of the last five parking spaces at Doran Beach.

When we arrived at 9:30am many families were setting up camp on the beach with tents, coolers, chairs, sporting equipment  and more. Our north coast ocean water does not beckon most of us to want to swim.  We’re content to soak up sunshine without the blistering summer heat of inland.

By the time we left around noon, all the parking at the beaches was taken and the coastal road was jammed for miles and miles with folks from inland trying to make it out to Bodega Bay to escape the record breaking temps!

Holiday time with family

Happy New Year! Much of the blogging world is reviewing the past year around this time. I find the whole idea a bit exhausting. It’s been a busy week, with lots of visiting and mostly, well, eating!

What do you do the day after Christmas with family visiting? We drove out to our local treasure of a bakery, Wild Flower Bread in Freestone to savor the gooey, delicious savory and sweet breads fresh from the oven.  Mmmmmm!

You walk in to see a mountain of golden breads and melt into the aroma of fresh baked. . .

Then off to Doran Beach for a brisk walk. Brrrr! We were treated to the sight of a pod of dolphins surfing in the waves.

Then home for more eating, this time the younger ones feeding us a lovely meal. (Droob is a nickname for Andrew, one of many).