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.

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 :)

Recent Cooking Adventures

Holidays are usually a non-stop baking situation in my household, and this year was not different. However, there were some new-ish and quite colorful cooking adventures which I sketched: Sobolo, Fermented Cabbage, and Pickled Veggies. Should I go back to making a cookbook? :)

 

Persimmon Galore

This year presented me with some wonderful persimmons to sketch! Thank you to everyone who contributed :)

Magnolia Trees Give Me Gifts Twice a Year

Magnolia Trees gift me two seasonal pleasures every year. There us time to draw their Flowers and then there is time to draw their Seed Pods. 

Magnolia Seed Pods are gorgeous and complicated, they can be a reason for a walk (and walking at unusual times means I might need a reason, and my reason this season is to find "my new magnolia seedpod tree). They are familiar, yet never the same, hence can work both as a comfort sketch (when I have very limited time and/or attention or ability to draw) or a reason to experiment (when I have some time and capacity to try materials and ideas). So here are some of the pods that I drew and decided to save in my sketchbook:

You know November is Here When...

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Fall is a slow-moving season, and everyone navigates it differently. For me, when I see some maple trees worth sketching (they come before the Chinese Pistaches that put fire in the neighborhood and before ginkos that make you wish for 100 different shades of yellow pencils), and when you draw your first persimmons of the season, the fall is really here! 

Trip to The East Coast - Part 4: More Landscapes.

On this trip, every single location was worth sketching - it was marvelously inspiring in both color and light. 

All of the sketches below (except for the very last one, which was done with highlighters as a first layer and then a black zig calligraphy marker) started with a big and super quick gouache wash. Some you see as they were on location, others I finished from photos and memory, as color pencils work the best on a dry surface (especially when the paper is soft), and I really wanted to bring up some light and push back some dark parts. Now I am not sure which one is my favorite and if adding things later made such a great difference - but they all bring back lots of great memories :) Click on the images to see them larger!

Trip to The East Coast 2025:
Part 1: Packing My Sketch Tools
Part 2: People, Bids, Animals and Apples
Part 3: Landscapes
Part 4: More Landscapes
Part 5: What Materials worked and what I missed
Video of the Sketchbook Flip-Through.

Halloween Decorations

October is the season for people to pull their skeletons out in the open and display them in all the ways that can entertain, scare, educate, and pleasure their neighbors and passers by :) It is a season to draw pumpkins, doing all sorts of things too! And it is always a season to sit with a friend on a street and draw. This was an intersection of all of these: Halloween Decorations in San Jose, California :)

Summer Bounty

No matter how I look at it,  there is no denying that we are heading into the fall. But summer is still on my mind - especially since the San Francisco Bay Area does not get fall weather till the end of November. To compensate, people are trying to introduce the upcoming season with decorations (pumpkins are everywhere!) But there are still a couple of weeks left on the schedule for the farmer's market that I frequent in the summer, so I will still count this as a summer-themed post. 

I already reported on a few things that were especially memorable this growing season (avocados, figs, and eggplants). But some beauties - found, grown, and purchased - were left out of the conversation:

Neighbor's tree had an abundance of plums - I carried them in a little bag improvised with my handkerchief. We also picked up some apples and a tasty, yet angle-shaped asian pear (they are in the peak of the season by the way!) 

This strawberry was something from the other world - and helped me to make my choice of the strawberry basket an easy one (I usually struggle for at least a couple of minutes before deciding which one to buy). 

Two Last Figs of the Season

I thought that we ate the very last fig - and it was everything I wanted from a fig: sweet, colorful, unexpectedly complex inside, shiny in some places and matte in others - in one word - perfect end to the season. And then - a few days ago, while I was checking leaves for signs of fall, I saw another perfectly ripe (and quite small) fig!

Notable Eggplants of this Year

I am a big fan of eggplants - the color, texture, shape, and, as I found out this year, leaves and flowers - all are beautiful, unexpected and inspiring! 

This year we had a very first eggplant plant (in a pot) that gave us several gorgeously purple and star-shaped flowers that were looking down, and then a lovely berry (did you know these are berries??), even though someone tried to eat before us (see sketch below). 

Then my Dad scored stripy eggplants and was super excited to hear that I've never seen anything like that. And then I got a present of an eggplant with a nose! What a year!

We learned how to make a super tasty Baba ghanoush - before we learned how to spell it :) I should probably draw the recipe before the season is over and we stop making it. 

A Week of Lilacs and How to Keep them Alive

The fragrance of lilacs is one of the threads that outlined seasons in my childhood. I enjoy finding these beautiful blooming bushes every year to catch that "smell of May," and I try to paint them every year. 

They are probably one of the most exciting and maddening color challenges for me to paint! Lilac season in California is actually in March and not in May like in Ukraine, and this year I visited a few bushes that I knew and found a couple of new ones in my neighborhood too (which is always exciting). But I did not get a chance to do a proper outing to paint them. So when I saw this beautiful bouquet in a local Trader Joe's, the decision to spend a week with these flowers on my table was simple! Hot weather made it a bit of a struggle to keep them alive, but frequent trimming, accompanied by a change of water and cold water mist, helped. These sketches are chronological - so the last one - quite droopy was the one before goodbye.