Blooming Thundercloud Plum Trees

These days, there are so many blooming trees around me, I feel like there is no way to visit them all (and there is no way to visit them all) - but I try nonetheless :)

These thundercloud plum trees have beautifully shaped, slightly toothy on the edge, wine-purple leaves and small plums that are usually consumed by squirrels and birds before anyone else has a chance. But before all of that, out of cool-gray with red undertone branches come beautiful pink flowers. First they appear one at a time, and then an avalanche of blooms that gives a tree a cloud-like look. Leaves start appearing on the bottom of the tree first slowly closing in on the flowers. 

I did a portrait of one tree and then tried to capture what a street of them feels like to me from the shadow of a large coastal redwood. Process photos below.

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Carts & Kiosks!

I traveled around the world (virtually) to draw food carts and kiosks! I did my traveling via  online gathering of #streetviewworldtour organized by  Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty - they have a new website for this project streetviewworldtour.com

This months visiting artist was Sibylle Lienhard @sibyllelienhard and I learned a lot about watering holes in Germany (we visited Frankfurt and Offenbach), about elotes and esquites in Oaxaca, Mexico, and drew a gorgeous city square in Montevideo, Uruguay.  

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, Urban Gardens, and People at Work. 

Yellow Chrysanthemums Part 2

I made a series of sketches of this beautiful plant of yellow chrysanthemums before it became my Mom's flower (she enjoys it very much!). First installment is here, some little drawings I shared here, and below are a couple more traditional and I am still thinking about how to finish experimental ones to share :)

Admiring my oak leaf hydrangea flower

Oak leaf hydrangea is a deciduous shrub that can grow to be as tall as a small tree, has gloriously multicolored leaves, and strong cone-shaped panicled of white flowers that dry on the bush and winter in their warm-colored glory among cinnamon-colored bare branches. Recently, I saw that a squirrel tried to bite one flower off. Now - to be fair - I did not see it do the deed - but it was doing something in the corner where the shrub grows, and later I saw that the only thing that was still attaching panicle to the branch is a thin stripe of bark - so I cut it and now am enjoying it as an object to sketch. I decided not to press charges against the squirrel because I am actually happy to have this object to draw :)

On My Table: Beginning of March 2026

February is a short month! And I am still ironing out details for my printmaking toolkit for all the participants of my workshops at the 14th International Urban Sketchers Symposium which will be happening in July of 2026 in Toulouse, France.

I am also:

1. Using my favorite brush pen together with the pen that I am not sure about (love /hate) 

2. Use a little vial of ink to draw with a dip pen on location

3. Using oil brushes with my watercolor+gouache palette

4. Admiring dry oak leaf hydrangea flower

5. Considering taking an enamel tray as a palette to paint on location (it is heavy though)

6. Fuming about scotch changing the packaging for their tape (it is made of less plastic but is extremely flimsy - I could refill the previous holder with tape for over 10 years, but this one broke within months! (my old tape dispenser lost its sharpness for cutting the tape, and had to go to the recycling bin). And the amount of tape inside it is significantly smaller. 

Update on my Parents - Refugees from Ukraine - February, 2026.

You can read a whole story about this series of portraits here: War in Ukraine: Guide Through Posts on this Blog.

Dad's birthday (and this year we celebrated a round number of 80!) is very close to the anniversary of the beginning of the war, which means that there are lots of phone calls in one week, and the war is never too far away from being mentioned in these conversations. But there is a good reason to talk about other things, too. We celebrated with a wonderful lemon cake that he made (as usual, the recipe was modified for the occasion with new ingredients) and a new artwork for their wall and table. 

He is still playing chess regularly and looking to expand the pool of adversaries. The electric wheelchair is allowing him to get out of the house regularly and explore the area in all sorts of ways. 

Mom is reading and writing a lot, and it seems that the latest prescription glasses are actually doing what Mom wants them to do - which is a huge win. New flowers blooming under her window are helping with returning to regular walks outside. Winter in California is not harsh at all, but a memory of what winter was all her life makes it hard to believe that one can go for a walk in February, especially after one reads about the destruction of infrastructure, power blackouts, and lack of heating in Ukraine. 

They talk to family members and friends in Ukraine and spread around the world every week, and try to support people with what they can. 

I collected all the portraits of my parents from four years of war in one place:

You can see them all larger and read about my conversations with my parents during this war here: 
War in Ukraine: Guide Through Posts on this Blog

Five Minute Sketches

Five minutes is not a lot - but sometimes you get two 5-minutes in a row - or even three - like I did while waiting for friends in San Francisco recently (I did black line of a super narrow building during the first 5 minutes, then added gray to the same sketch, and then added another tree on the opposite page). 

Waiting at the Hair Salon:

Little sketches of my glorious yellow chrysanthemum:

Glorious Magnolias Day: Three Trees

I had a blast painting three different magnolia trees while catching up with Suhita Shirodkar on all the things that we did not get to discuss while she was teaching in India (if you ever wanted to travel and sketch that part of the world, I definitely would recommend Suhita's workshop - she will be announcing 2027 dates soon!).

I had two intentions: to see if I can soften some of the lines that I usually start my drawing with, and to do a view of a magnolia tree with a creek. I also wanted to start drawing the moment I see the object because I've been stalling on choosing the "right" point of view lately - it resulted in two first sketches being from basically the same spot - but use of different colors made them slightly different.

How I took Apart Posca Brush Pen and Made a Custom Color Marker

(This is a page from my sketchbook with my notes on the process)

I have a love-hate relationship with Posca markers: I want to use them because of the portability of opaque paint, but colors are often not suitable for my taste, and the flow of these markers is a question of endless negotiations. I always wanted to see if I would like them with a brush tip, and when I saw the very first one, I got two colors on sale: very artificial-looking pink and green. Neither is exactly the first color I reach for, but I knew already that I could mix a very cool purplish gray with them. 

Originally, brush tip markers worked ok - the pump would make them juicy, and I could work these colors into my sketches. But quite quickly the flow got worse and then stopped altogether. That is when I decided to take them apart, and this is a video about that story:

Blooming Trees: Magnolias

This year magnolia trees are blooming earlier than before. I took a bunch of my sketchbooks off the shelves and looked through the months of February and March. Based on my sketchbooks, my main hunt for blooming magnolia trees only begins at this time (mid-February); however, a few trees that I visited this week were already dropping petals faster than I could sketch them!
Never fear - there are still a few trees that I plan to visit - they were usually late bloomers - I like those :)

Yellow Chrysanthemums

I believe this was a potted flower destined to celebrate the Chinese New Year (Happy New Lunar Year of a Flaming Horse to all who celebrate!), but when I got it, it became a bright reminder to experiment with my art supplies! I have a whole bunch of small and large sketches of it already - and here is a first batch I wanted to share:

Nonagenarian Update: winter 2026

Winter's dark months are hard for our nonagenarian. She sleeps more and cares about her attire less. But when asked, she replies that she is happy and content. We got some additional help and things are more or less on track: doctors visited, meds taken, shots received, books read, plants watered, birds fed :)