Flanders Poppies 2026 - Part 2

Follow-up on the last week's post about my trip to paint Flanders Poppies: more gouache plein air ! 

Little Things Here and There

These are little sketches that fit between larger sketches in my sketchbook. Mostly "this is a super busy day! let me draw whatever is in front of me on my table, otherwise I might not find time to draw today" :)

Another Vase I Made

This was my second time when I was able to make a closed form on the wheel (you make a cylinder and then you make sure that it has no opening at the top). I let it dry some and made a hole for the entrance to the vase. This clay is gritty, rough, and strong, yet when completed, this little piece looked very gentle. I put some grasses from around my home in it before giving it as a gift to a friend :)

On My Table: Beginning of May 2026

April ran away from me - but I 

• enjoyed working on sharing my underwater drawing tips and tricks with a bunch of people online.
• witnessed one of the most abundant rose-blooming season in my neighborhood, and now I even have a rose in a pot! 
• marveled at the late California rains and the sudden greenery of the hills after them
• made a bunch of pots and vases
• finished a sketchbook number 164
• painted outside at least once every week!
• worked on a bunch of graphic design projects and projects that are at the stage where progress seems super slow and there is nothing to share, but I know that it will change.

Flanders Poppies 2026 - Part 1

Flanders Poppies are on my sketching calendar in May usually but since the heat wave we had this year (I know I keep complaining about everything blooming at the wrong time) I went to check the "House with Red Poppies" earlier than usual and found a field in full bloom!

This year I got to chat with the master of the poppies himself and got an invitation to check out his other crops later this year - so now the "house with red poppies is in my calendar twice! 

As you probably already guessed, more sketches are coming because there is no way to paint so much red beauty in just one sitting, but I need breaks between such colorful excursions too :)

I Mave a Vase

A few months ago, I went to a wheel-throwing class, and little by little, I got hooked :)  I've been trying to write this post forever because of how much there is to say about this activity by itself and how it fits into my practice. But since the big overview is taking forever, I decided to start by drawing some of my clay experiments and sharing them here :) 

The first vase appeared on my blog in the post with the bouquet of roses.

And here is a second vase:

For those affected with pottery bug: this vase was thrown on a wheel with speckled buff clay, I used green underglaze (UG38 - Key Lime) and then after first firing applied some wax resist and had satin white glaze inside and light blue outside. 

Bike and Sketch

I rode my bike and stopped to sketch along the path. It was a good day to be out. Some process photos below. 

This was a little more bike and sketch outing where bike works as a means to get to a sketching spot. As opposed to I go for a run or bike ride and sketch when I stop by for a quick rest / stretch. The inspiration for the expansion comes from Pedal&Paint outings by Mike Dutton, who is making very atmospheric and inspiring movies about his bike and paint process. 

Urban Garden: Two Sketches From The Same Spot

I sat down to paint an urban succulent jungle on a street in San Jose. It looked like a place where one can spend a vacation drawing plants. It was perfect. But also overpowering. I cut some stencils and made a plan, but got so overwhelmed by everything green that I saw that the only way for me to keep going was to start another sketch on the same spread of the sketchbook and keep switching back and forth. Luckily for me, there was a Jacaranda tree available for sketching - first one this year!

Trees in Bloom: Pears and Cherries That Bear No Fruit

Right before the super hot spell we had in March, I had a chance for a quick sketch of super white pear trees on google campus.

As that hot spell moved all the blooming schedules for this year forward, I found myself painting Japanese Flowering Cherry much earlier than I expected.

Neither this cherry nor this pear bears fruit, which might be a gift or a curse depending on your point of view. But the flowers are amazing, and I was overwhelmed by the complexity of trying to show these trees at their peak in both cases. With the first sketch, my solution was to get far away and see the trees as a part of a much bigger scene, and limit the amount of time I allocated for this sketch. With the flowering cherry trees, I decided to drop the building in the background to enjoy the grays and pinks of the tree against the greens of the shrubbery and grass. 

First Page on a New Sketchbook: Five New Sketching Tools I Use

I started my sketchbook number 165 on Monday. Usually, I draw "my most used current tools" on the first page. But Monday is a busy day, and my table was in such a state that finding my most-used tools was a task that would put me way out of the time allocated to my daily sketch. So I picked five odd / New sketching tools I've been playing with recently and drew they with some comments. Gave me a chance to think about what I like/dislike - win-win. 

Almost Green Hills of Pleasanton in Gouache

A wonderful trip to Pleasanton and a hike in the hills with sketching with friends. I had a plan to keep all my sketches of that day feeling like they were a series, and I think it almost worked. Gouache on all sorts of paper - one was a blotter page, I think - which is a shame - I like that sketch a lot.

Roses in a Jar

I drew roses last week in my vase and then came home from the mountains with a rose-in-a-pot (I now have my own rose - let's see how soon I will draw it and how long it will survive!) and with a bouquet of roses in a mason jar.I enjoyed drawing complex shapes and layers of these fragrant flowers as they aged and became simpler and simpler until it was time to let them go. 

My oak leaf hydrangea dry flower

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I am admiring my oak leaf hydrangea flower, and since this beautiful dry flower is still on my desk, it kept popping up in my sketchbook:

Sketchbook Experiments With Friends

One of the amazing things that happens when I go to the magical forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains is that I always get to make lots of experiments in my sketchbook! Now - I enjoy experiments any day, but they require time, space, a special playful mindset, and are best performed with a good company to laugh at some results and push others further. Plus lots of tea and snacks :)

And all of that was in abundance last week when  Suhita Shirodkar and I went to see our friends Gay Kraeger and Elyse Fairweather. Fantastic company and ideas of such different, amazing, and caring artists propelled me to a place where I covered a whole bunch of pages with marks and came home on the wings of many more things I want to try! Here are some of what I made and kept in my sketchbook after a day of work:

Pride of Madeira

I went to sketch a dogwood tree in bloom (because according to my sketching calendar, it was time, but they were long gone! But California spring got completely mixed up, and trees are covered in leaves, and there is not even a hint of flowers!

Roses are in peak at the moment, and Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans) is getting there too - so I planted myself near familiar towers of purple-flowered inflorescence growing like humongous candles on a sage-colored bush, and started to paint. Soon, I discovered that I forgot my small brush for details, my original sketch was done with water-soluble ink, and an anthill was right next to me, plus it looked like it was about to start raining. But at the end, this sketch happened, and I safely made it home :)