People Sketching: Protests

Earlier this spring I wrote that a lot of people sketching is happening for me this year and promised to share more - this is the second installment from the "people sketching in 2025"  

This year one of my new constant sources for figure and crowd sketching is drawing during protests. Demonstrations are happening throughout the United States every week, and participation rates are growing. On June 14th more than 2000 "No Kings" protests happened throughout the USA, with several millions of people in attendance. The "No Kings" protests addressed a growing concern over diminishing democracy and the growth of the authoritarian behavior of the current administration.

I was there with the thousands of my neighbors and drew some of them. It was a very friendly, peaceful crowd - people were bringing water for each other and for the pets, people were singing and chanting and sharing chairs and supporting each other. They had all sorts of messages about freedom and democracy for all - it was an example of a functioning society. 

Below are my sketches from other protests. 

Democracy exists only as long as we take part in it - by not being indifferent: voting, attending city council meetings, knowing your rights and exercising them, making signs about an issue that is important to you, and showing them - in a window, on your shirt, during a protest. Make a call to your elected official, write them an email - make your voice heard. 

Here is how to place a call (or email) to your representative - it takes 5 minutes:
https://5calls.org/

Here are some of my five favorite signs from the protests so far:
First Amendment - Use it or Lose it
Only You Can Prevent Fascist Liars
Fight Truth Decay
Science Saves Lives
Justice For All

Reading Notes: Thinking on Paper

I've read a couple of books recently that are a perfect companion for each other. Both are "spiraling out" books - meaning you start reading a book and it sends you on a hunt for more books, authors, ideas etc. - my favorite kind of book but also the most complex kinds of books because it is really hard to finish them :) These two are

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen and 

Remarkable Diaries: The World's Greatest Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, & Letters (DK History Changers) 

Paint Accident

I opened up a tube of wonderful paint and A LOT of it came out right onto my page. It took me several passes to get it to look like a bouquet of roses that I wanted to paint to begin with. Can you guess what color it was?

After this disaster I had to paint this beautiful fragrant bouquet again :) 

These are all watercolors but very opaque kinds. I would probably use them more as a gouache, in fact, I am seriously thinking of making a palette with them but not sure that the spillage would not continue even from pans. 

Peony is a May Flower - Part 3

As the peony bouquet aged the petals opened up more, moved away from the stigma, and created a different silhouette. I no longer looked at the single flowers but at the whole arrangement. Colors were getting lighter and gentler and leaves begun to curl a bit. I enjoyed these days with the bouquet as much as the early ones and sketched it daily with all kinds of different materials: from markers to some experiments with liquid graphites and water-soluble pencils and to the printmaking tools.

Peony Garden Adventure

Well, this was supposed to be the year when I finally made it to the peony garden up in the hills above Silicon Valley. I've heard about it many times, I tried to get to it several times (all funny stories of when I followed the directions of "just up the same road" and went on foot (turned around in 30 min). Then another time I tried to go by car from the Iris garden side and almost ran out of gas... Then I was late and the garden was closed. But this year I got some bullet-proof directions, checked that that it was still open, packed a backpack with colors I wanted to use, and almost remembered to get some gas.... and... well, I got in but basically I was late. We had a few very hot days right before and I think the season was over even before that. There were many petals on the floor and many green bushes with very few flowers and all were way past their prime.

As a consolation, I used a shadow from my car to look from the top of the hill to the hills and the rest of the farm. It was a great little trip!

Peony is a May Flower - Part 2

Peonies were very fragrant but not in an obnoxious way and I enjoyed drawing them through their peak - one by one. A full vase was glorious but I did not feel that I could do justice to all of the parts if I included all five flowers and the vase and environment around it. The two flowers below were done with very different techniques.  The first one is begun with ink applied directly from my little eyedropper bottle (described in this post). I smudged some of the ink with my fingers (here is my trick to keeping nails clean in a situation like this). Then I used gouache sticks (mentioned here) and added another layer of ink with a brush that has a "custom haircut". Then I added some luminance pencils.

Sketch below is started and ended with Neocolor II crayons and I used luminance pencils in between. 

On My Table: Beginning of June 2025.

This month I decided to try a little different look at what is on my table - I pulled my backpack out and dumped on my kitchen table things that were with me during the last week or so - and in particular during the last two days of drawing - last day of May and first day of June. 

And here is what I got:

Additional notes:

1. The perfect water container to take with you outside is Nalgene Jar from the Nalgene Travel Kit I got a long time ago. 

2. Erasers are such a help in my printmaking toolkit these days that I am bringing them to the classes that I will be teaching this summer - Urban Sketchers Seminar in Chicago and Sketcher Fest in Edmonds.

3. I wrote about the Expandable Handbag Insert Purse Organizer with Handles before - there are photos and details about that bag in that post from September 2023. And it is still a very convenient way to organize a mess and move it from the table to the bag and from the plein-air setting back to the bag.

4. The First Aid Kit bag is a gentle way to carry a surprising amount of things and opens up well so that you can easily find anything inside. 

5. Gouache sticks are tempera sticks for kids - I am sure their lightfastness is a joke but they are soft and unruly and as fun as drawing with lipstick and I hoped to paint some peonies with them this weekend - hence this collection. 

The gouache and watercolor palette needs cleaning, water should be changed and I probably will remove some pencils before heading out to paint this week. Or not!

Peony is a May Flower - Part 1

Peonies are another flower that I measure time by - there are peony birthdays and peony neighborhood hunts in my life. Store-bought peonies are also wonderful - and prolong the season together with the photos of peonies that my friends send me from all over the world. 

This year I finally got to a peony farm up in the hills - but that will be a tale for another post. For now, I will start a story of my peony season by sharing the first bunch of drawings I did when I got a new bouquet at a local Trader Joe's - one sketch that will set the stage for the bouquet on a dining table and several looks at the single flowers.

Iris Garden at the End of the Season

I made another trip up into the hills to see the irises at Nola's Iris Garden. The place was as magical at the end of the season as it was at the beginning. Different colors of irises were blooming, there were very few people, and a perfect bench for painting a whole field of flowers with the hills was found. It was quite a spontaneous outing and al always not long enough, but a perfect day. I spoke to a human organizing iris rhizomes for selling and got a couple of fry flowers to bring home and sketch later. Click on the image to see more notes from the day.

Two Avocados that I did Not Eat

For a few days this spring I followed how avocados were slowly devoured by a mysterious creature. First, there was a gnawed-upon avocado on the ground. Then every morning I would find new teeth marks and a little less avocado left. I thought of fascination with these half-eaten single-seeded berries can be compared to an orthodont looking at teeth marks on a piece of chocolate, but then realized that it reminded me of Gerald Durrell's books and how much attention was given to what diet worked and what did not - for each of his animals. I sincerely was hoping the mysterious creature was enjoying the meal and toyed with the idea of continuing the feedings and installing a motion-activated camera to get to know them better ;) But then they stopped being interested in this food source! The question of avocado color remains though.

 

Alligator Pear

I've learned more things about avocados! They have the very appropriate name of Alligator Pair. They are not a vegetable but a fruit, or if you want to be more specific, a single-seed berry. And they are very much cultivated by humans - the researchers state that people of Central America started tending avocados more than 11 000 years ago.

Stanford Cactus Garden and Eucalyptus Tree

Somehow I managed to live near Stanford University for many years now, but never got to visit the Cactus Garden there. It is also called an Arizona Garden and is quite old. There were many things to draw, but the time was limited, so I think I would call this a reconnaissance sketching - I will be back to draw an old Joshua Tree and all the textures of many interesting succulents! I quickly put this sketch together from a shade of a tree where I could observe a plant being simultaneously eaten by a hummingbird and a squirrel.  

And of course, an eucalyptus tree is always a reason to stop by and sketch!

A Week of Lilacs and How to Keep them Alive

The fragrance of lilacs is one of the threads that outlined seasons in my childhood. I enjoy finding these beautiful blooming bushes every year to catch that "smell of May," and I try to paint them every year. 

They are probably one of the most exciting and maddening color challenges for me to paint! Lilac season in California is actually in March and not in May like in Ukraine, and this year I visited a few bushes that I knew and found a couple of new ones in my neighborhood too (which is always exciting). But I did not get a chance to do a proper outing to paint them. So when I saw this beautiful bouquet in a local Trader Joe's, the decision to spend a week with these flowers on my table was simple! Hot weather made it a bit of a struggle to keep them alive, but frequent trimming, accompanied by a change of water and cold water mist, helped. These sketches are chronological - so the last one - quite droopy was the one before goodbye. 

Lemons, Avocados and Thinking

I've been thinking about different kinds of backgrounds. Backgrounds as something that we grow from. Backgrounds as something that seems irrelevant but is actually part of the picture. Backgrounds as additional information, like writing next to a sketch. 

I thought about widely advertised software that allows you to erase other people or objects from your photos. I thought about how there is a lot of pressure from spell-checking and ai-based text support that suggests words for you and influences your tone in writing. I've been thinking about how different people use streaming services in different ways (both music and video). And I thought about plants and disobedience. 

Ended up selecting these lemons and avocados as an illustration for all that thinking.