Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
Showing posts with label SF bay area. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SF bay area. Show all posts
Drawing Trash Bins and Back Alleys with Friends
Back alleys were on my list for some time, but there was always something blooming or an event happening or a new building there or an interesting tree here. But this time I got my wish - a whole morning of drawing trash bins behind the actual businesses! A joyful way to spend time with friends - thank you for joining me, Suhita and Uma! Below are my sketches and process photos.
Drawing With Friends in San Jose
When a sketching friend is in town, it is always a reason to get together with even more sketching friends and have a little sketching party! This time, a long-time reader of this blog, a art friend of many years, an unstoppable daily sketcher, pencil-connoisseur, art supplies conversation companion, and a Mazda Miata aficionado, Tina Koyama from Seattle (known on instagram as miatagrrl, was in the Bay Area! And we got to sketch, talk art supplies, all the urban sketching news, and try (first time for me) a bunch of sweets. It was such a great get-together!! Thank you, Tina, and I hope you will visit us again - I promise I know more wild power lines for us to draw!
Click on the image to read all the conversation bits I recorded.
Thank you Suhita Shirodkar and Uma Kelkar for the wonderful company, laughs and sweets!
Let's Draw Google Bikes!
On a day with some amazing clouds I had a little drawing adventure / art materials testing session at the Google Visitor Experience Center. I enjoyed Etchr Hot Pressed sketchbook for the first two sketches and Strathmore Drawing Paper for the last sketch. Lots of different materials were used here and there, but my freshly cleaned flex nib fountain pen was my main drawing joy for this outing.
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 :)
Redbud Tree (aka Judas Tree) in Bloom
My Friday outing was a lot of fun as I ventured into the google campus to draw some blooming trees - and will be back for more as they have some amazing specimens!
Right now redbuds (aka Judas tree) are in bloom, and their delicate branches are covered in magnificently magenta flowers and just a hint of leaves to come (I love the shape of their leaves and the fact that old seedpods are still hanging on many branches). And California Blue sky provided an amazing background - on a bright (and HOT for March) day it was a joy to sketch!
Waiting as a Gift of Time
This week, I had to wait for some time in an office with no windows and no people to draw. While the wait itself was inevitable, I had the freedom to walk outside, and despite the fact that my "to-do" list was calling my name, I chose to sit on the grass and look at this amazing power line pole. I could not count all the wires - but I could sketch them!
Here are some process photos and close-ups. I used my gouache+watercolor palette and tried out correction pen for the white lines over gouache.
I am working on reframing things. This time it worked.
A Surprise New Garden
I have a new addition to my list of places where there is always something to sketch. I was introduced to it by a friend when giant purple candelabras of Pride of Madeira were in high bloom. I found some really interesting juxtapositions of plants in this garden and some amazing workspaces that I want to come back and draw.
Later I had a chance to stop by to look at one part of the garden with two different sets of tools (dual marker with two purple colors and my modified parallel pen with black ink) and then a direct gouache. In both of these sketches, my interest was to show how many different foliages are there in one little space.
Redwoods in a city of Tall Redwoods
A ring of redwoods on a relatively cool morning in the middle of an unseasonable heat wave. A solid hour of looking at golden light behind these trees, sketching with a friend. What a great way to close a work week! 
p.s. Can you spot a bird (it was a dark-eyed junco) and a squirrel in my sketch?
Sketching Historic San Jose
Last week I jumped at an opportunity to learn more about the history of San Jose and sketch it too! An "after-work mid-week" event was organized by Creekside Socials. The historical part was led by a wonderful urban sketcher Ben Leech - a leader of the Preservation Action Council of San José and the sketching activity was led by Suhita Shirodkar whose sketching energy and teaching brought together a lovely group of all levels in a united urban sketchers front!
We looked at the San Jose Diridon Station and several buildings in the area - places I would normally just pass but now have names and context and I know how to point you some cool little details about them!
Below are my sketches and photos from the event and you can see more photos at this instagram post - one of the images from this post is screenshotted below.
A gorgeous color of a tree in full bloom - in August!
This tree captured my interest from afar - it is a rare sight to see such a grand blooming one in August. This is a Crepe Myrtle also known as Lagerstroemia. July and August are a blooming season for these trees - usually covered in beautiful foliage in addition to flowers that range from dark burgundy to almost white pink.
But this one either by nature or nurture has fewer leaves than flowers, and instead of one trunk, there are many - dancing with each other - creating support for a wide canopy. I used my watercolor and gouache set and some Neocolor II crayons from Carand'ache.
Two Museums: Looking at Life through Art from Japan, Europe, and Africa.
I recently had a chance to visit two museums and below are some of the notes and sketches I did there.
The first exhibition was "Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World" at the Legion of Honor Museum of San Francisco centered around 250 years of the history of Japan seen through many woodblock prints by many artists. Some of these were pieces I knew and there were many discoveries. I had a lot of fun tracking down different patterns, plants, cats, and facial expressions! A very interesting part about propaganda and pop-culture too. If you get a chance to visit this art show I would highly recommend it!
I am now on the hook: getting books on Japanese folklore and art books filled with more woodblock prints!
The second museum was Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University where I split my time between In Dialogue: African Arts and Auguste Rodin: The Shock of the Modern Body. Rodin's exhibit nicely segues to the outdoors where sculptures were available in a park setting with lots of live people around them. A lovely experience!
p.s. an idea of a fantasy coffin sent me down the rabbit hole of exploring this amazing part of culture of Ghana. (This is how I found out about existence of The National Museum of Funeral History).
Gouache Plein Air Outing
As soon as I picked my new sketchbook and recorded my limited tools on the first page, I decided to do something about it and went for a wonderful little gouache plein air outing in a great company.
The moment I put down my chair in front of these gorgeous olive trees framing the entrance to the house with multicolored ceramic tiles I realized that I had forgotten my new sketchbook :) But fortunately, there were other paper options in my painting bag! Here are some snapshots from the on-location painting.
How wind helped me sketch.
It was a super windy day and I am not a big fan of the wind. But I wanted to make a quick sketch and because of the wind, it was a super quick one. I am happy I did it and like this more after I had time to be apart from it. I do not think it would have been better without the wind.
Sketching While Waiting
I took the nonagenarian to see her eye doctor and had a wonderful time in the waiting room. First - the air was purified and easy to breathe despite double masks (one mask for the smoke and another for the covid). Outside I could not see most of what is usually there: San Jose was very smoky with AQI above 200 because of all the fires along the West Coast. And the waiting room had some people for me to sketch!
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