My Own Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums (aka Tropaeolum) are one of my (many) favorite flowers. Between their gorgeously round leaves and endlessly overlapping stems are flowers of the shape that sends me back to the drawing board almost as often as irises do. And of course, their fiery colors are amazing! I searched this blog and realized that I had not posted my nasturtium sketches by themselves even once. But now I have my own plants to refer to! It took forever to grow them from seeds, and out of many baby plants, only a few survived. But they are of three different colors and are still blooming! (Hopefully, it will self-seed and I will have these beauties to remind me to go back and draw them until I like the result!). 

More Little Outings

We had our first real rain of the season - and for a couple of days, between the weather and a gazillion things on my to-do list, I was left with my window and my own hand (drawn left-handedly - a record of some wheel-throwing injuries) for sketching. But then a gorgeous sky called for me to go out and paint it with my pocket gouache kit!

Nonagenarian Update: fall of 2025

Fall is the time of the year when I try to schedule some extra visits, bring some extra colorful flowers, and food to our Nonagenarian. Shorter days and colder weather are hard for her. But she is still very much following her schedule for the day, enjoys her favorite foods, takes care of her plants, does some sewing projects, and reads a lot - mostly on a Kindle but online too. News sites are hard for her as her beloved Ukraine is suffering from russian aggressors, and as someone who lived through World War II, she does not understand how anyone might start a war again. But she follows what she reads with her hand-drawn map of Ukraine and a big world map that is always not far from her reading chair. 

Sketching People: at the Protest.

Last Saturday was a No Kings protest: people in many cities around the United States went on the streets to peacefully exercise their right to express opinions about the current administration. I packed a whole bunch of colored pencils with me, but ended up using only one pen. I did a lot of walking and talking, saw many dogs and people in great costumes (it is October after all, and everyone is gearing up for Halloween).  My hero was a mom with a couple of kids. Kids were sitting in chairs, one closer to the action, another a little further, but both had signs propped in a cup holder.  One was reading a book in the shade of a redwood tree, and the other was talking to people, asking questions about their signs and dogs. They both waved from time to time at passing bikes and cars. 

Color Pencils or Colored Pencils?

Do you say Colored Pencils or Color Pencils? 

I've been thinking about the non-existent difference in these two and how one of these options drives me nuts for quite some time now. All while using color pencils as a part of my mixed media experimentation. Here are two recent sketches that were pure colored pencil were used - without any paints and other materials. I think I would like to keep them here as a record of some ideas that I would like to go back to. 

Little Notes From Walks and Hikes

These are three sketches from different days, but they tell a story of how some of the sketching is happening these days. I always have some drawing materials with me, but recently I started using more colored pencils but my black pen is always with me. Often when I draw on location the light situation is making me move super fast - palm trees were on a super sunny day, and the paper was blinding me. Where the evening sketch was done while the sun was disappearing. When I add these little sketches from the day to my main sketchbook, I might add some notes. And sometimes all the notes are from the moment when I was sketching - like on the very last drawing - where I was trying to find with my eyes all the birds that I was able to hear - and ants were driving me away from my perching spot!

Drawing Conversations About Time

I am a planning maniac and a time management freak - in recovery. I've been in recovery for quite some time, but it is an uneven road. For example, it means that this week I put on my weekly plans to forget about my plans :) I do try my best to let go of my attempts to have full control of my days, but I need my support group, so I read literature on the subject and listen to podcasts, too. This week, I even went further and went to an in-person event to meet an author whose books I recommend and gift often: Oliver Burkeman. Apart from several best-selling books Oliver Burkeman has a Newsletter too. His main message is deceptively simple: it is not humanly possible to do everything you want to do, and you have a very limited amount of time, so you need to choose what it is that you want to do and actually do it - today. I listened to the talk while drawing people around me. It was an hour well spent. 

Halloween Decorations

October is the season for people to pull their skeletons out in the open and display them in all the ways that can entertain, scare, educate, and pleasure their neighbors and passers by :) It is a season to draw pumpkins, doing all sorts of things too! And it is always a season to sit with a friend on a street and draw. This was an intersection of all of these: Halloween Decorations in San Jose, California :)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Urban Gardens

I missed a couple of months this summer, but was happy to be back for the October Street View World Tour! This month, we were drawing urban gardens, and a guest artist was Isabell Seidel. As we watched her weave a pattern of shapes on the page, a conversation about how she started using more flat brushes came up, and then a topic of mixing greens came up - an evergreen interest of mine! A subject of viridian green and how to survive having it in the palette was dear to my heart :) It was a pleasure to look at the urban gardens - what a great topic and such interesting places we visited!

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, Portugal, Boats around the world, and Hawaii (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!)

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!