Sketching on the Water - Kayaking in Monterey Bay

I had a wonderful opportunity to go kayaking in Monterey Bay and was excited to sketch while on the water - especially since the plan was to go around a small cove at a turtle-pace. The weather was gorgeous, and nothing could stop me from sketching for a good part of two hours! Except somehow either from looking for kelp crabs too intently (I found quite a few kelp isopods but very few crabs :) or from looking at the bottom of the ocean (the visibility was astonishing - I could count all the urchins on the sandy ocean floor!) but I got seasick and could not sketch as much as I hoped. 

Still - here are my two attempts - which are filled with memories for me but otherwise are a glaring example of how some sketching outings are not exactly successful on the art axes :) 

And some photos from an outing.

My tools were a trusty all-weather notebook from the Field Notes (with Yupo Synthetic paper) and one of the best black pencils I know - an extrasoft Nero pencils from Cretacolor.

Fig Tree Update!

My fig tree adventure touched quite a few people who read my blog (here is a link to Part 1 and Part 2), and I am happy to give you a quick update:

1. I believe I know who the culprit behind the stolen fruit is. I do not have proof, but something about the smug look on this neighbor's furry face tells me that it might be it. 

2. There was a fig that turned out to be fermented inside when we opened it up (I am still looking for the sketch I made - it did not get into my daily rotation and was not taped in on time,  and now might be lost!) But if I find it you will see the whole thing in the sketchbook walk-through video!

3. And then there were two figs that had a more ordinary fate of being eaten by the family. And both were very nice! 

One more fruit remains on the tree so there might be another update in this fig reason :) 

Google Orb!

I had a great time sketching the Orb installation at the Google Headquarters / Google Experience in Mountain View. This sculpture was created by Marc Fornes @theverymany - and we chose it for our sketching outing with @suhitasketch this week. 

I saw the sculpture in different light conditions and with a crowd of people around and by itself - and it was wonderfully intriguing every time. The building in the background is the famous Gradient Canopy and deserves a separate sketching outing by itself. I sketched its brother - Bayview last year - in black, white and pink and in gouache. 

We had a little over an hour to work on this and I feel like there needs to be another attempt (or several) but I am happy to share these black-and-white versions.

There is a little video with the process:

I encourage you to visit Suhita's version on her instagram - it is so colorful and textured - when I look at it I can feel how sunny the day was and how the shadows of the surfaces created cool areas!

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) to Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei.

I had a blast today drawing with the wonderful bunch of people at #streetviewworldtour lead by @herbcoil and @ronkiponk with a guest artist @jeffsuntala - i went completely black and white again with my printmaking - despite very colorful and inspiring street views and had such a great time drawing Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei! 

Then when the time came to share the images I realized that Instagram crops them in weird way. I took some time and then liked from crops, then hated them, then thought that I should have made these all black and white instead of preserving creamy color of my paper. All in all - these locations stayed with me for much longer than the 20 minutes that I looked at them while sketching :)

So - which one do you prefer - full versions or cropped? See below! (if you are on a desktop - you can click on any image to see it larger and move between images with your arrow keys)

Cropped versions:

If you are not familiar - A Street View World Tour is a fun, no-pressure gathering hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. You can learn more about these monthly free events and about these locations at the links above. 

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, and Light and Shadow. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

On My Table: Beginning of September 2024.

September is here and with it a new school year! This means it is time to update plans, revise schedules, see what might fit before the year is over - and don't forget to eat apples! (I just found an amazingly fragrant variety of apple which I knew from my childhood in Ukraine and they are all over my kitchen table, computer table, drawing table - see below? The light yellow-green apple is the one! (the other one is also very good - Cosmic Crisp).

Things mentioned above:

Apples Білий налив - I found an article in Ukrainian and not sure what is the name of this in English. 

Pentel Sign Pen (Pentel Arts Sign Pen Brush, Black Pigment Ink) - looks like they exist in gray and sepia as well!

Transon Palette (Transon Paint Storage Palette Box 24 Wells Airtight Stay Wet for Watercolor, Gouache, Acrylic and Oil Paint)

Sketching Neighboring City Landmarks: Campbell

A wonderful outing with friends (@suhitasketch @kavyasart and @umapaints) to catch up and try to make sense of a quite usual building: an Ainsley House in Campbell. I planned to paint with gouache but upon arrival, I realized that I had grabbed the wrong sketching kit with me and had all my printmaking stuff but no color :) 

Between this swift change of plans and a confusing architecture of the subject, I needed a palette cleanser of something easier to grasp and draw - so we moved to sketch Campbell Water Tower. 

Apple Picking Season!

I got to visit an actual apple farm during the East Coast trip and enjoyed some amazing views of the abundance of apple orchards - and collected some apples too. These are: Ginger Gold, William's Pride, Sansa and Dayton (I think :) and they were very very tasty!