Apple-Pine: 2025

Magnolia Season

Magnolias are among my favorite plants and when they bloom it is one of my "great color experiences of the year." So when it is upon us, I try to make it count. As we have many microclimates in the San Francisco Bay Area, the season rolls south to north and depends on waves in weather - so I got to sketch some in Suhita's neighborhood on a very hot day, and when trees near her started dropping their heavy petals on a sidewalk, trees near me were in peak - so we arranged for a second outing and got some time with these glorious flowers.

One Week 100 People 2025

This week I took part in #oneweek100people challenge hosted by @lizsteelart and @m.holmes.art - they run this challenge every year - sometimes via facebook, sometimes on instagram - but the idea is to give your people sketching muscles a workout for a week. I tried to take part in this challenge in 2020 - here is a post that details how I prepared (the world closed up by the end of that week - not many people drawing happened for a long while after). Then I did a fun one in 2021. In 2022 and 2023 I skipped these as the war in Ukraine consumed all the spare resources. But 2024 this was one challenge that I went back to and actually completed.

For 2025 I decided to make it about my community and sketch on location. During the week of March 3rd I walked, biked and drove around my neighborhood to capture people as they were going about their week.

What helped me was

Having a very simple set of tools in my shoulder bag (see below) ready to go
Scheduling time (mostly at the end of my lunch hour) throughout the week to do this.
Having a list of potential places to go ready (so that if there is no energy to make a choice - I have a good default - see below).

Here are my 100 people: kids at school, people in the park, at stores, in the old folks home and in the library and at the protest.

On My Table: Beginning of March 2025.

February was full of many things - I did some fun clients projects, interesting experiments and had many sketching opportunities!

Participating in Democracy

Last week was filled with many events that were hard on many levels. Here is what I am doing in response:

1. As I live in the United States I called my representatives and left a message (there were answering machine options and humans who picked up the phone. You can also write an email). My message was super short: Name, zip code of where I live, and these words: I would like to encourage (name of your senator or representative) to support Ukraine and I do not want my country - USA - to be aligned with russia who is an aggressor in this conflict. Thank you.

It took me 5 minutes from clicking on a link (see below) to find a phone numbers to hanging up after the last phone call. This is how democracy works - we tell people who represent our interests what we want and stand up for what we believe in. Nobody can change what is happening alone but every single one of us can make a choice and add to one side of the equation or another. Not making a choice is also a choice.

Find your senator: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

Find your representative: https://www.house.gov/representatives

Or use an automated reach-out tool.

2. I joined several local in-person events concentrating on supporting Ukraine and also on protesting against the corruption of truth and democracy in this country. I believe that the United States is shifting toward authoritarianism and we as a nation need to fight for democracy and the rule of law. So I painted a sign, packed my sketching kit, and went to join people who were expressing their opinion about gutting the United States and all it stands for by people whose main qualification is loyalty to one person - but not to the law, constitution, or country.

Here are some images for you:

If you are interested in more ideas for how to move forward - here is an article that I found very useful: How *you* can protect democracy.

Three Years of War

This week marks three years since a full-scale invasion of russian army into a sovereign Ukraine began. Three years ago we did not believe in what was happening. Three years ago we did not believe it could last this long. Three years ago my parents were living in their apartment in the center of Kharkiv and heard the first explosions in their city. My Mom was still working at the University where she started to work in 1963. She lived in this apartment all her life - since she returned with her parents from the evacuation in 1943 during World War II. Dad lived in this apartment since 1973. Because of health reasons, they could not go to the shelter when the bombing started. Kharkiv received a daily bombing during the first year of the war and continues to be pummeled to this day. My parents stayed home for as long as they could but as it was harder and harder to support them with food, medicine, and basic needs, as the power grid was targeted and electricity and heating became uneven, they joined thousands of people displaced by this war and eventually came to the United States on United for Ukraine Program.

In the last three years, they moved from one temporary home to another 6 times. Their beloved Ukraine was attacked a countless number of times. An unimaginable number of people died. Every Ukrainian lost someone, everyone was displaced in some way. And everybody wants the war to end and tries to do something - even from afar. My parents try to do something too - they pay their utilities as if they live in the apartment - to support the budget of Ukraine, they support friends and family members by calling, texting, and sending what little money they have, what little hope they can master. They keep Ukrainian language alive, they have Ukrainian flag on their walker and outside their window. They stay on top of all the news and never stop believing in Ukraine, and its right to exist and defend itself.

Nobody wants this war to end as Ukrainians do. But submitting to the aggressor will not end this war - just delay of continued aggression.

The image below is a look at my drawn history of this war - through my parents. I started drawing them during our video calls when the war began. You can see all of these and read transcripts here:

https://blog.apple-pine.com/2022/08/war-in-ukraine-guide-through-posts-on.html

Update on my Parents - Refugees from Ukraine - February, 2024.

Since my last update in November 2024, we found a different housing solution for my parents. It is more suitable for older people (wider doors for people who use wheelchairs/walkers, handles to help move throughout the apartment, and there is an elevator). There are more people of their age around - so more chances for connection though most of the residents do not have a common language. Still - people are caring for plants, playing chess, celebrating birthdays, and sharing benches - and you do not need a common language for many of those activities.

My Mom has new hearing aids which help a lot with whatever language she is hearing. We are three more steps closer to getting her new glasses. She reads an art book with both French and English text for each drawing and enjoys finding discrepancies and sharing them with us. She stays in touch with family and friends dispersed throughout Ukraine and the world. And she writes in her diary.

My Dad plays chess every day - in the morning on his phone, in the afternoon - in person in their building. He continues to try all the new foods that cross his pass and if something tastes not exactly how he expected he adds some cayenne pepper to it - lately, I've seen him mix it into grape jelly, and orange juice and put some on the marshmallows. His new favorite vegetable is bok choy. His knees and back bother him a lot but we are trying some new meds and hoping that he will agree to go to physical therapy one of these days.

Dad is not happy when I draw him lately - so there are mostly portraits of Mom - but I think I have an idea for an argument that I might present to fix this for the next update :)

A complicated start of my new sketchbook

I was hesitant to start a new sketchbook. Or rather I did not want the previous one to end. It was full of great moments. I started it in mid-October - it was a different era - the world was different - more hopeful, more reliable, with a different outlook - I miss that world. This sketchbook went with me on a couple of great trips - one on the other side of America, another on the other side of the world. It went with me on many drawing outings with friends and on some cool family hikes. It saw me through some hard days when only a tiny moment was spent drawing or only a tiny drawing could come out of me. So I was holding onto it quietly - I kept cutting sketches out of larger pages, taping and gluing them at the end - at the last few pages.

And then last week I went to draw with a friend and brought a single-sheet paper with me instead of a sketchbook, ready to add it (again) to my Sketchbook 158. As we drew, I talked about having a hard time finishing my old sketchbook and while I was listing all the reasons, I let go and decided to move on the very next day. Because there is no way to go back. And because drawing keeps me more hopeful and resilient. And because this different season means different tools and approaches are needed to shift my drawing practice forward. Plus I got super moved by looking at my friend's sketchbooks - they were living breathing stories with lots of color and texture and light and lines - and I knew that the world is better because of these drawings! And every time I look at great art I want to make some too and try a whole bunch of stuff that I kept "for the next sketchbook", "for when this is over", for "when I have a plan".

And so on the very next day, I made a little video weighing a new sketchbook and signing the number, and then I enjoyed drawing my traditional "what am I using now" tools on the opening page. After which I flipped the page and started on my experiment! It involved some monoprinting, a new type of ink and... it spilled all over and soaked my pretty first page - a disaster :) But such a pretty one :)

Thank you, Suhita, for sharing your amazing sketchbooks with me!

Here is my last sketch from sketchbook #158 during and a disaster reportage from the beginning of Sketchbook 159 :)

A messy table on a busy day keeps the news away

On super busy days I keep my sketchbook open and add things when I get a few minutes. This was quite a productive day, but with several long waits for my computer to do its thing - so I had a choice: read the news or sketch. And a very messy art table helped me keep some sanity - and fill my page with little sketches in little breaks.

Drawing People

My people drawing these days has a few stable outlets: my mirror, my parents, and two fantastic online portrait parties (I am a fan of Pencils4Tea on Thursdays and DrawingIsFree on Mondays).

I will share some results from my encounters with the mirror and my sketches of parents in separate posts - but here are my latest portrait parties:

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Lisbon, Portugal!

I traveled (virtually) to Lisbon this week! (It is definitely on my list of places to visit in real life - but for now this was great! :) I joined monthly online gathering of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing with a nice group of people (there were MANY this time!).

This month a guest artist was Koosje Koene whose art I've been following for quite some time. Her presentation was wonderfully candid and her love for pentel pocket brush is something I share!

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, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles (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!)

Avocados on Bookshelves

I learned recently that avocados (at least from the tree that I know) do not ripen on a tree - which is very convenient. We get one or two avocados every few days, create a chain of avocados on the bookshelves and then eat them as they slowly get ready. Or draw them.
Here are some from the last week's sketchbook :)

My Table Garden: Dark Red Ruffled African Violet and Not Lavender

I am in a hectic season at the moment and have only little snatches of time to work in my sketchbook. So having a table garden (a plant or two sitting on my art table) is my way to ensure that when I sit down and face the page and clock (which often says "5 minutes") - I spend no time debating what to draw. It also presents me with a chance to notice little changes in my plant. Create an interesting pattern made out of drawing the same object - like when you draw with a spirograph - the first line usually looks strange but when you make several they start to look like magic. The same is happening with me and drawing the same object several days in a row: I begin to see magic :)

Presenting my January Table Garden Heros: Dark Red Ruffled African Violet! (it needs a repotting so next time you will see it in a completely new light) and "I picked you from the garden trash can" stems of not lavender.

On My Table: Beginning of February 2025.

January was a long month - so many things are happening in all corners of life! But drawing plants, playing with the art supplies (I am organizing my brushes!), and enjoying textures, are a great constant to have during all sorts of times.

Sketches from my Pockets of Time

I enjoy a proper sketching opportunity and have several sets of materials to bring with me on location or paint in my little studio. But as a strong believer in sketching everywhere, I also sketch in any little pockets of time. Knowing this, I carry some options in all of my bags/jackets: a little watercolor kit here, a few markers there, a folded piece of paper in a jacket pocket with two pencils, a pocket sketchbook in my little shoulder bag with a pen, a spiral-bound sketchbook in my backpack, etc. At the beginning of each day (or sometimes at the end of the day), I sit down to add these little sketches into a story that's unfolding in my main sketchbook. Below are a few glimpses of some of these little moments :)