Sketches 2016

I found some sketches I forgot to put into the last post. Then there are a bunch more that I have done this year.

I managed to make it to a lot of our First Friday Spanish Village Extra Credit sketchcrawls. This is a banana plant in one of the side areas of Spanish Village.

When I need something quick, I often do some of the blue pots that are outside of several of the studios.

Last March we celebrated Pi Day (3.1416) with what else but Pie? It was also the 7th Anniversary of the Scetchcrawlers group. My 5th Anniversary of sketching with the group.

I couldn't stay the whole time one day, so I just sketched some pods. I think they are from the Jacaranda trees.

One day last spring a few of us die-hard sketchers met in spite of the rain and sketched from under the gazebo.

Here are some plants and cactus outside of one of the studios.

I don't seem to have many sketches from the zoo this year - I didn't manage to go as often as I like, and wasn't sketching much I guess. This is Otis, who was at the Hippo exhibit one day when I was there. He was just chillin' with his back to everyone. I love his cute pink ears.

Even though this is the Bell Tower and Museum of Man, I made the sketch from one of the picnic areas of the Zoo.

This is a flower from one of the Sausage trees in the Childrens' Zoo area. After I did the sketch I realized that the flower is upside down from its orientation when it's on the tree - I had picked it up off the ground to sketch more conveniently.

And I did make it to the Wild Animal Park Safari Park in the spring. Don't get me started on what I think of how they are [poorly] managing the crowds for the tram and butterflies. Grrr!

 I did manage to go to a few other sketching. This is in the cactus garden across Park Blvd. from the main park.

And this is from the Old Cactus Garden that is behind the Balboa Park Club and Puppet Theater.

If you ever get a chance to go to the Queen Calafia Magic Circle at Kit Carson Park in Poway, do it! It is fantastic! There are so many kinds of wonderful, magical statues. Everything is covered in mosaics of pebbles, glass beads, and semi-precious stones. I did this with just watercolor.

I was lucky to be able to go to PyCon 2016 in May/June in Portland Oregon. I had a wonderful time, learned so much! I didn't have much time to sketch, but took a few minutes from a lunch hour to make this very quick sketch of a Japanese bell outside the convention center. I really enjoyed Portland and am looking forward to going there again in May 2017.

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Go make art!

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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Go make art!

Day 173 - Tree Trunk

I was cutting up some really cool netted ribbon to use for something else when I happened to turn it on its side and realized it looked like a really old tree trunk. So I added the leaf ribbon and the vaguely foliage-looking postage stamp. More of the painted background paper that's impossible for me to photograph well. Excuse me, I have to go cut more ribbon for my other project...
Painted paper, ribbons, postage stamp.
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Go make art!

Day 79 - Bonsai Jade Plant

Yesterday we had a sketchcrawl at the house of one of the members of the group. She had this Jade plant (a succulent) that she kept as a bonsai tree. It was lovely; I especially liked the way that the leaves at the ends of the branches formed cute little rosettes. The day was somewhat overcast still at the time I drew this, so there was very little shadow definition. I made up the color of the pot (I think it actually was a very pale muted green) but I tried to get the tray color approximately right.
Watercolor.
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Go make art!