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!

Sketching on a Campus of San José State University

Two views from the same bench on the campus of San José State University. 

Stencils, printmaking tools, ballpoint pen and actyling markers. Click on the image to see a larger version and some finger smudges (somehow drawing with markers always ends up being a finger painting ordeal for me!).

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. 

San Jose History Museum and Park

History San Jose has an attractive collection of historical houses that were transported to a lovely park setting from all over the city. Most are carefully restored (though one was wonderfully dilapidated and became the first one to be sketched of course!). I went there to sketch with Suhita and Cathy on a lovely Tuesday morning when there were very few people in the park but a lot of activity in preparation for Halloween! 

While we were sketching this old fire station, a park ranger drove past in a little cart and waved to us with a bright smile and a coffin in the back of his cart. For this sketch I will share two variations - first is a cleaned-up version - with all my notes removed and some mistakes (not all - but the most glaring) corrected. But since truth is a complicated thing I am sharing another interpretation which is also truthful - but not about how the building looks like - I lied about that. This rendition is truthful about me and my sketchbook. It has my mistakes and my notes - this is how I will remember this building and the day enjoying a conversation, lovely view, and doing what I love - with friends. 

There were at least two stray cats - one was guarding the dilapidated house and you can see it in my sketch if you look carefully (Cathy later found out it was an old tankhouse) and another was a lovely shiny black cat who passed by us while we were sketching the poet's home. I think I saw another cat but I was running out of time and chose to finish the sketch instead of investigating the cat situation. By that time the sun came out and I managed to get yellow paint all over myself :)

100 Views of Silicon Valley: Downtown San Jose State - University Campus and Art Museum

San Jose is a lovely city - constantly changing and evolving - at least that's how I feel. Every time I visit it I am a little lost and frustrated about something not being "as it was last time" but by the end of the visit there is usually something new I love. This time I was painting with Suhita and we saw that city was flooded with scooters to ease traffic in the downtown and people were really having fun riding them :)

100 Views of Silicon Valley: San Jose / Mustard Fields

Mustard Fields in spring are all over the valley and San Jose has an amazing contrast of the urban and developing landscaped with these bright yellow flowers all over the place!

Sketchbook #93: Sketching with a friend

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook outing with Suhita Shirodkar this December!