Sketchcrawls

This one is from our monthly foray to Spanish Village in Balboa Park. There is a lovely row of cobalt pots with plants and flowers outside one of the studios. Watercolor plus ink pen.

On Sept 5, the San Diego Urban Sketchers Meetup group met at Presidio Park. This is the museum there. This is watercolor only.
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#usksd3 Third Annual West Coast Urban Sketchcrawl

I belong to the San Diego Urban Sketchers and this year we hosted the Third Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl meetup here in San Diego. It was fantastic! I was concerned when it was scheduled that it would be too hot but we had fabulous weather this weekend! There were over 100 people attending from all over the west coast and even some from Texas, Ohio and Montreal, Canada. I'm sure there were others not from the west coast, but those were people I met. Kudos to our organizers; everything went smoothly.

Friday night we had a Meet and Greet at The Harbor House restaurant in Seaport Village.  I was lucky enough to win a great Canson XL Mix Media sketchbook in our raffle; thank you Canson for your generous donations! After eating, there were a few minutes of waiting, so I quickly sketched the remains of my dinner with pencil and watercolor. This sketch was done on my old sketchbook, as it was before the raffle.

Saturday we all met in Balboa Park near the Botanical Building. I did 2 sketches during the day that aren't really finished but I didn't want to go back in and try to do more offsite. This one is a view from near the front of the Timken Museum. I started it with light gray watercolor to block in the shapes, then just kept adding more detail with a smaller brush. My friend Rachel described this technique to me a while back, so I decided to try it. This has no pencil or pen, only watercolor. I like the Canson XL paper with watercolor; it handles it quite well. I ran out of time to do more than this.

After lunch I did a sketch of the top of the Botanical Building because I think it's interesting and if you sketch the whole building, it is really tiny. I did a rough pencil sketch for guidelines, then added watercolor. The shape of the building has all kinds of roundness to it, so it was something of a challenge. After I got this far, I was pretty tired, so I popped into the Timken Museum to pay my respects to the Johannes Vermeer painting that is still on loan for another month. If you know anything about art history, you know that he was way ahead of his time in how realistic his paintings were. His command of light and color are absolutely masterful. Read more on the Museum website. The Timken is worth a visit any time; it's a small museum, but they have some exceptional paintings and a great collection of Russian icons. It's also free.

Sunday morning we all met in Old Town and were met with delightfully cool overcast skies, perfect for sketching! I sketched the patio next to El Fandango restaurant, first in watercolor, then adding details with micron pen. It has a box around it because I was feeling intimidated by the large sketchpad (didn't bother me Saturday, go figure), so my friend Stephen took a Sharpie and made boxes on the page for me.

All in all, a great weekend of good friends, good art, and good food. More information about Urban Sketchers here.
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Balboa Park Sketchcrawls

I have gotten quite behind on this blog! Here are some of the pictures I made from several sketchcrawls in Balboa Park in the last 2 months. This first one is the first time I tried to do negative painting. In other words, I painted the background first to outline the thing that probably wasn't really a fountain ever, but from my viewpoint, looked like a broken-down fountain. I liked the results too much to add any pen & ink details like I usually do. I think this was from June 5.

The bell tower from Alcazar Garden, which is a lovely garden that we like to go to regularly.

On this day, we had a small group meeting across from the Zoro butterfly garden. I made this quick watercolor sloppy sketch of the information booth.

From the same bench, I did this drawing of the palm trees by the Museum of Photographic Arts. I got very lazy with the background.

Since I was already at Balboa Park, I wandered over to the Japanese Friendship Gardens and did this sketch of the Koi pond. It was a long day. I did one more drawing that day, but I don't like it, so it's not here.

This is some strange cactus/succulent thing in Spanish Village. The edges of all the leaves were kind of dried out and the thing was just very bizarre. I added a small branch of another succulent growing next to it.

Finally we went to the gardens of the Marsten House, a beautiful location.
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Nature's Bounty

This is a yellow zucchini and baby crookneck summer squash from a neighbor's garden. I have never heard of yellow zucchini before, so I was interested in seeing it. I added the sugar plum tomatoes for a contrasting color.
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Coptic Stitch Book

I have been taking great bookmaking classes at the La Jolla Library. The last one for the season was the second of two for making a book with Coptic binding. Last month we made the covers and prepared the signatures, and this month we did the stitching. I have never tried to make a Coptic stitch book before as it always seemed too mysterious. But Bhavna Mehta made it easy (ok, maybe not easy, but accessible). I made a few mistakes in the stitching, but overall I'm very pleased with this book and will probably be making more of them. I'm looking forward to the classes resuming in the fall.
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Spanish Village Broken Pot

For our First Friday Extra Credit Sketchcrawl in Spanish Village of Balboa Park, I found this pot held together with rope. It looks like it is made of cement and has been there for a long time. Heck, it had to have been old when the rope was added, and the rope looks like it's really old, too. It kind of cracked me up and seemed like a good sketch subject.
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#CreativeSprint Day 26

"Create a Rainbow". I thought of a number of things to do, but since I recently got a new watercolor palette with beautiful quality colors, I made one with my new paints. I haven't done many of the prompts but I have enjoyed seeing the works of several of my friends.
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Balboa Park Sketchcrawl

The sketchcrawl group met today at the Rose Garden in Balboa Park. The center of the pergola has some beautiful Clivias blooming, so I sketched them instead of roses (go figure).

Then I wandered around the park for a while. The baby koi in the lily pond are growing really fast. These all are around 5 to 7 inches long, and there were quite a few more in other parts of the pond.

The guy with the snakes was there taking them for a walk. :-) He had one large python, a medium python, and an albino Colombian Red-Tail Boa, which I got to hold for a while.

He was pretty active at first, wiggling all around. He climbed up my arm, over my shoulder and started going down my back inside my shirt! I put a stop to that! After a while, he calmed down, wrapped around my arm and just chilled out.

I recently purchased a Balboa Park Explorer Pass that gets me into any of the museums. I've visited a few, but since I had my sketch things today, I went to the San Diego History Center, where they have a delightful exhibit dedicated to Dr. Seuss. The funniest part is the "Unorthodox Taxidermy" animals that are hysterical.

I had to sketch this "Flaming Herring".

I also like the Mulberry Street Unicorn. I didn't get good pictures of the others, but they are all great, with wonderful expressions.

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#CreativeSprint Day 19

"Walk aimlessly for 5 minutes, then stop and make something using whatever materials are available where you've ended up. Leave it there for someone else to discover (but be sure to document it first!)."

I've been taking care of a friend's yard & they have a greenhouse area and a lot of junk way back of the backyard. After doing a bunch of watering this morning, I sat on their patio for a few minutes while I was checking my email and found this for today. Decided to see what I could find/make amongst the junk. Started with a piece of scrap wire & tried to make a butterfly, but that was kind of a disaster as the wire was too stiff to get any kind of decent shape, and I figured getting out the metalworking tools kind of defeated the whole idea. So then I made a weird steampunk bunny sticking out of an old jar. I left it on the workbench for him to find when he gets home.
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#CreativeSprint Day 9 - Happy Face

"Open a random drawer where you live or work and create something with just the contents." Haven't been feeling into the creativity thing for a couple of days. Honestly I forgot yesterday (blush). I've been feeling grumpy for a few days so decided I needed a Happy Face today. I can't explain why - it kind of looks to me like a Labrador with aviator goggles, but it's pretty funny, so it did the trick. :-)
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#CreativeSprint Day 6 - The Box

Today's Creative Sprint prompt is to make something inside a box. I decided I would rather make the box instead. While I was making the first box from paper, I realized I didn't remember exactly how to make it so once I got it right, I made a tutorial so I can remember. Supplies: You will need 2 rectangular sheets of paper that are the same size, scissors, a ruler, and a pencil. You can use pretty much any size of paper, as long as they are both the same size.  You only need the ruler for making lines, not for measuring, so it actually doesn't have to be a ruler. If your paper is heavyweight, you might find it easier to use a scoring tool or bone folder for each of the folds, which means you will be measuring. If you don't understand that last sentence, ignore it.

Please read through all the directions before doing any folding or cutting! Let me know if you find a mistake or if something doesn't make sense and I will fix it.

Step 1. I used a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 inch decorative paper that I tore in half, making each sheet 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. Normally I wouldn't tear the paper for this as one edge will be showing when it's finished, but for some reason my paper cutter is in hiding. You can use different colors if you want. This decorative paper I'm using is just slightly heavier than text weight paper, but you can use cardstock for a sturdier box. I probably should have used some solid color paper to make things easier to see in the pictures. Sorry about that...

Step 2. With the ruler and pencil, mark the center of the paper on the back of each sheet.

Step 3. Start with the paper that will be the bottom of the box. Fold the sides into the center so they meet exactly together.

Step 4. Unfold it and fold the other sides into the center so they meet exactly, then unfold it.

Step 5. You will be cutting along the folds from each long end up to where it meets the other fold. I have marked it with dashed lines in this picture. Do both long ends.

After cutting, your paper should now look something like this:

Step 6. Fold up the long sides so the flaps you just cut meet together, and attach them with a bit of tape or glue. Tip for gluing paper: Use only a tiny bit to prevent the paper wrinkling. For large areas, use lots of tiny dots of glue. It's kind of hard to see, but I used a little tape in the middle to hold the two flaps together.

Step 7. Fold the remaining flaps up and over, taping or gluing them on the inside. I took the picture with just one little bit of tape in the middle, but later I taped it all along the edge of the flap - it makes life easier when you go to use the box. Now congratulate yourself, you have finished the bottom of the box!

Step 8. Now for the top! It is made almost exactly like the bottom. You repeat Steps 2 through 7 with the following exception: For Step 3 and 4, instead of folding the edges all the way into the center, fold them about 1/8" away from the center mark, for both directions. The amount isn't critical, but you should try to make them the same for all four folds. If your paper is a heavy weight, leave just a little bit more space from the center, or the top will be too tight.

Step 9. The rest of the construction of the top is the same as the bottom. You will end up with a box top half that is just a little bit larger than the bottom half. Yay, you are done!

Of course, your X from marking the center will show when you are done, unless you mark very lightly with the pencil so that you can erase it when you have made the folds in steps 3 and 4. If your paper is the same on both sides, you can fold up the boxes so that the x is on the outside of the box half (or make the mark on the good side of the decorative paper). I normally do that for the bottom half of the box, so the X doesn't show on the inside of the box. If you are going to decorate the top of the box, you can paint over the X or glue something down that will cover it up. Or leave them on the inside and paint or glue something over them on the inside.
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#CreativeSprint Day 5

The prompt for Day 5 is "Make something boring seem exciting." So, we start with plain, boring vanilla ice cream:

To make it exciting, I added Police Box Geeky Sprinkles and Lightning Bolt Geeky Sprinkles from the Geeky Hostess! I'm proud to say I supported the crowdfunding project for the #geekysprinkles.

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#CreativeSprint Day 4

The prompt for Day 4 is "Make something inspired by and/or that goes over an eye (yours or someone else’s)." So I drew my glasses. I tried to finish in 5 minutes, but I think it was more like 7 or 8.
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Spring Harp Fest

Every year I enjoy going to the Spring Harp Fest - a celebration of harmonica music - primarily blues harmonica. It is great fun and I love the music. This year I couldn't stay as long as I usually do because I had other things to do. But I did help a friend make the delicious homemade potato salad that they were serving up. If you ever get a chance to go, please do.  When I was sketching this, I was in the back where I could get some shade, though it wasn't too hot. On the other side of the people and tents is the amphitheater where the music was happening. There were lots more people there, but I'm not comfortable with drawing people, so you only see a few. I'm trying to learn to sketch faster too and not be too fussy with details. I actually did most of it with watercolor only, then added pen and more watercolor later.

I forgot to take note of who this is, but it was mighty fine music.

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#CreativeSprint Day 3

I'm trying to participate in the Creative Sprint this month. Day 3's prompt is to use your non-dominant had to create something, so I made this sketch with my non-dominant hand, including the watercolor and writing. Not too bad, if I say so myself!
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Spanish Village SketchCrawl

Another First Friday Extra Credit sketching in Spanish Village. As I was going to the location from the parking lot, I noticed a bunch of these little flowers from one of the trees in the parking lot. They are only about one inch long, but are cute so I decided to sketch them.
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Sketchcrawl Anniversary

Monday March 30, our sketchcrawl group celebrated its 6th anniversary with our annual birthday party in Spanish Village. April 1 is the 4th anniversary of when I joined the sketchcrawl group. Rachel printed ATCs with information on the back and passed them out to everyone who was there to decorate. This one is one of the colorful doors of the Studios in Spanish Village. At the end of our meeting we put all the cards in a hat and each drew out a random one. I won the card done by Petar, a talented artist in our group.

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More Alcohol Ink Fun

I made this in my mixed media club where we played with alcohol inks. The bird is die-cut acetate (with matching paper behind). The background is done on vellum paper.
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Purple Silly Bird

My Mixed Media club played with alcohol inks today. It was lots of fun - I love the intense colors they have! One thing we did was put a few drops of colors with alcohol on a Ranger craft mat, then smush and smear some glossy paper over it. This guy just popped out, so I grabbed a Sharpie and added the cartoon outlines, then added sky, branch and foliage with more alcohol inks.
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Journey Collage

This collage started out as an experiment for one of my online painting classes by Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen. It went through several incarnations before becoming this collage that I gave to a good friend of mine at her "Croning Party" - the celebration of her turning 60. It was lots of fun to finish something for a specific purpose! I was going through my pictures and realized I had not published it.
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Spanish Village Detritus

Today was First Friday Extra Credit Sketching at Spanish Village in Balboa Park. I wasn't in the mood for sketching the buildings, so I sketched a couple of seed pods plus a snail I found while looking for more seed pods from the Jacaranda trees.

As I was on the way to Spanish Village, I noticed some flowers with big water droplets in the petals and managed to get a good picture of one of them.

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