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!

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:

An Orchard Past Its Prime: Saratoga

For several years now Suhita Shirodkar and I have made a pilgrimage to paint at the orchard by the Saratoga Public Library. Knotty, shapely, dark silhouettes of fruit trees covered in gentle white blossoms, lots of space between us and Santa Cruz Mountains, and yellow mustard fields are what we are after. This year we were joined by Laurie Wigham whom we promised all the things we hoped to see. However, the orchard was quite different. It was an unusually hot day for March (it reached 83F where we were located), a few days prior we had a storm, and most of the blossoms were gone. And on top of it, all the ground was thoroughly plowed - there were mustard plants here and there but no feeling of a "carpet". Our reality did not match our expectations, to say the least. 

But a huge oak tree had a very dense shadow, and the gnarliness of the trees could not be erased by wind or tractor! Plus all sorts of creatures came over to be with us while we painted - and by the end, it was a wonderful outing of talking and drawing side-by-side with great people and it filled my cup at least as much as I expected - if not more!

Drawing with Friends

This year I already had several wonderful chances to draw with other people - exchanging news, ideas, new color loves, various techniques, impressions from different events. Or just drawing side by side or sharing a cup of tea and a quiet moment.

Two quotes from the conversations that happened while I was drawing these portraits:

"you know how you work on something for some time, and then you are done and it is ok - but you want your sketch back? that is where blue line enters". 

"Try this gold. I did not expect it but suddenly there are so many uses for it around me"

A day of rest in an otherwise crazy week.

Last week was very complicated on many levels. Yet there was a scheduled day of rest (the concept of Shabbat (which I take on unspecified days) was really helpful. 

On Election Day I went to the magical forest and garden in Santa Cruz Mountains to be with my friends. The fall is not here yet and we had gorgeously clear weather with golden light. This day was a part of my work to get a hold of the election anxiety. We were disconnected from all the news for a whole day. It was a gift of being among like-minded people, in nature, using our hands, doing things we love, trying some new stuff, failing and succeeding in our experiments, laughing, thinking, trying again, sharing a meal, conversation, and silence. 

That day and knowing that I am not alone and many people share my values and are ready to work together and make choices for a world of more kindness and justice and less greed and aggression are some of the things that helped me put one foot in front of another during this week.  Thank you, Gay and Suhita and the wonderful neighborhood of people who care! 

Redwood Forest

A friend (@gaskincreative), a new hiking spot, a super tasty lunch, and a great time talking about everything from artificial intelligence to parenting! 

I brought my portable gouache palette and sketchbook and had a joyful time sketching two views from the same spot:

Everyday Life: Grateful.

I am drawing through a rather hectic time - lots of things are moving in different directions, and between deciding how to answer the big life questions and tiny life questions I am adding lines to my pocket sketchbook. I draw a neighbor in the line while waiting. Our nonagenarian while visiting. My friend's kitchen while sipping delicious chai. Drying flowers. Workers. Everyday stuff. 

One thing I am sure of: when everything is in flex and feels like you are not sure where is up or down or when everything feels like you almost know what you are doing - and during all the times in between - having people who support you is precious. Thank you!

Click on the images to see them larger and read the notes if you wish. 

A long-awaited meet-up

This week I got to spend some time sketching with friends - Suhita Shirodkar, Shari Blaukopf, Brenda Swenson, Gay Kraeger, and Elyse Fairweather. Some of them came from afar - it was a special treat and something we've been trying to pull off for quite some time! 

We went to the magical garden and forest in Santa Cruz Mountains to see Gay and Elyse and had a blast trying to fit a gigantic redwood in our sketchbooks. We listened to birds and water and looked for frogs in a fountain. We smelled flowers, played with materials, flipped through each other's sketchbooks, and drew oranges outdoors, and humans indoors. 

Chatting about life's big and small things, sharing some food, and ideas, and looking at the clouds. Below are my drawings and some photos from our adventures. And attached to them are some really good memories and a feeling of joy of friendships - and that is such a gift! Thank you to all who made this week special!

Sketching a hill, looking at waves of grass.

I went back to the fruit tree orchard where I had a painting adventure/disaster before only to find that the trees are no longer white. They still look quite bare though! But before I painted that view (see below) I tried to tackle a grassy hill that had an Andrew Wyeth vibe. Below are two of my attempts to catch waves that the wind created. 

I had a wonderful company with me for this outing - here is a link to what @umapaints created with gouache. As we painted and talked about life, work, and the future, a mowing team waited to start clearing this beauty. I am glad we got to see it! Below are two versions: the color version done in gouache and the black and white version made with ink. And the look at the orchard is done in gouache too. 

Grateful: a new hiking adventure!

The other day my friend and I took a long lunch hour and spent it in a place I thought I knew pretty well - a campus of Stanford University. But I was wrong: there was a LAKE I did not know about and a bunch of hiking paths that I'd never seen and some jackrabbits, wildflowers and an amazing view! We found a good spot to eat and sketch and then hurried back to work - what a gift!

I taped this drawing into my sketchbook next to some drawings I've done from memory after a little hike on the other side of the hill. 

Sketching with Friends: San Francisco

This weekend I finally met one of my online friends in real life! Wonderful Marie-Hélène Brohan Delhaye and I connected through Instagram, then through Urban Sketching and Uma Kelkar, and then Ukraine, and then just through the sheer joy of sharing a journey of documenting our lives, experimenting, working with direct watercolor painting and the glory of using color.

Marie-Hélène traveled through California and we met on a glorious sunny day on the top of the hill in San Francisco. The four of us - Suhita Shirodkar, Uma Kelkar, Marie-Hélène, and myself were sketching, chatting about art supplies, catching up on world and family events, exchanging plans and hopes for the year, petting dogs, and swapping greetings with passers-by. The best thing? It felt like we do it all the time - this sketch and chat together - even though this was the first time we did it in real life with Marie-Hélène :) I enjoy having friends at all distances and making them in any way imaginable - but to see them in real life, hug them, and tell them in person that they make my world better is not always possible. When it is - I celebrate!

Photo of all of us - by Marie-Hélène.

Playing with Materials: New and Old.

I had a lovely invitation for an art date with friends and spent some time catching up, trying a new set of watercolors and new paint sticks and mixing it all with my favorite gouache and watercolor set and pentel pocket brush and stencils - a lot of mess and fun at the same time. Can you guess where is what? You can see some notes on the second page below.