Drawing Bikes with Kids!

Every year, my local community hosts a wonderful event where kids (and parents and other family members with tails and without) come together to have some bike-related fun and knowledge. 

There is a chance to fix your bike, tighten straps on the helmet, find a good route to school or library, get a blinking light or reflective tape for free, there are mock urban courses to check if your knowledge about road signs is up to date, snacks and sunblock stations, and an ART TABLE! Where I draw with kids :) It is a great chance to be a part of biking community in the Bay Area. This year, I decided not to bring any black markers and ended up having lots of conversations about colors. My favorite expressions from this year's event were:

- I will have a cookie riding a bike - a golden one!

- Do you want to draw? Never! Give me a pencil!

- I will have a bike riding a bike!

- There will be sushi riding this bike.

- Shhhhh - I am listening to what my drawing needs.

Pumpkin Outing: now a tradition!

It is officially a tradition! If you do it three years in a row - right? Here are pumpkin outings to this particular place from 2023 and 2024.

So it is now a tradition to go check out one of the cutest pumpkin patches of the Bay Area - Cosentino Family Farm in San Jose (especially if you are more into finding many different kinds of pumpkins, gourds, and squashes than rides and hay mazes (I had that period too, but taking a break from the mazes and jumpy-houses at the moment). 

Suhita Shirodkar is the one who introduced me to this wonderful orchard and farm stand (and she teaches classes there every season! So if you are in the Bay area, it is a really double-win!). We went on a lovely sunny morning and got to draw pumpkins (and I even had time to try my hand at pomegranates!)

Gouache and mixed media in a Hahnemühle watercolor book.

On My Table: Beginning of October 2025

October is here, and with it all the pumpkin-related things suddenly are legitimate! I suddenly find myself playing with neon colors and making list of experiments to run before the year is over and there are some new and really cool crayons from Caran d’Ache - they are called Neoart 6901 and are actually "Wax Oil Pastels" - to me the translation is "if you like Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils - these are leads from those pencils - on steroids! I got myself some colors to try: Violet Gray, Primerose, and Dark Indigo. They work as a stand-alone palette by the way (mid-tone, light tone, and dark). The indigo I am in love with in pencil form as well - it is so dark it is almost black - but with an undertone of blue that definitely makes it not black!
After hearing Uma Kelkar searching for a tool to make white lines over gouache painting during the Street View World Tour Demo, I decided to try a white-out pen - and (apart from a stink of it) it seems to work!

I am trying to limit the amount of stuff I am bringing on location, and there are some interesting plans in that line of thinking - we will see if the beginning of November table will look less messy!

Summer Bounty

No matter how I look at it,  there is no denying that we are heading into the fall. But summer is still on my mind - especially since the San Francisco Bay Area does not get fall weather till the end of November. To compensate, people are trying to introduce the upcoming season with decorations (pumpkins are everywhere!) But there are still a couple of weeks left on the schedule for the farmer's market that I frequent in the summer, so I will still count this as a summer-themed post. 

I already reported on a few things that were especially memorable this growing season (avocados, figs, and eggplants). But some beauties - found, grown, and purchased - were left out of the conversation:

Neighbor's tree had an abundance of plums - I carried them in a little bag improvised with my handkerchief. We also picked up some apples and a tasty, yet angle-shaped asian pear (they are in the peak of the season by the way!) 

This strawberry was something from the other world - and helped me to make my choice of the strawberry basket an easy one (I usually struggle for at least a couple of minutes before deciding which one to buy). 

Waiting as a Gift of Time

This week, I had to wait for some time in an office with no windows and no people to draw. While the wait itself was inevitable, I had the freedom to walk outside, and despite the fact that my "to-do" list was calling my name, I chose to sit on the grass and look at this amazing power line pole. I could not count all the wires - but I could sketch them!

Here are some process photos and close-ups. I used my gouache+watercolor palette and tried out correction pen for the white lines over gouache. 

I am working on reframing things. This time it worked.