Black and White Counterchange
I was ready to quit for the night, but this caught my eye. These up-lit windows are on the south (I think) side of the civic center square. What worked for me is the black and white counter-change going on.
Black branches on lit window, lit branches on dark wall.
Something you’d only get in winter when the leaves are off. Damned cold sketching tho.
Palace of Fine Arts
The monumental dome at the Palace of Fine Arts (one of the architectural highlights of San Francisco). The place is fairly bristling with the overblown gothic detailing I love to draw.
I’ve always wondered what’s going on in with the sculptures – the male figures in the niches seem like they should be holding some relic aloft – yet their hands are empty…and the female figures on the colonnades are turned away from the viewers, heads down, staring at something that we’ll never be able to see from ground level. I suppose I could do some research on this place – the story must be on a wiki somewhere. For sure I’m bringing binoculars next time!
Funny story here – this is actually the second of two identical(ish) drawings from the same sitting. A passing stranger bought my first sketch right off the drawing pad. That’s never happened to me before! As soon as he left I pocketed his $20, turned a new page and did the drawing again.
I mean, I’d come here specifically to get this sketch, so I wasn’t going to leave empty handed! The only thing is, I think he got the better version – but I’ll never know I for sure :)
Night Sketching!
We’ve been back and forth to the city a lot lately (we’re rat-sitting for some friends). So I’ve been grabbing some sketches while I can. Here’s a view of city hall, a side door to the opera house, and one of the awesome capitals in the Jaguar dealership on Van Ness.
Afternoon at the Dickens Fair
This event is a fun Bay Area tradition. [Dickens Fair]
For years now, a group of costumed enthusiasts have been gathering in a fake village full of Dickens characters. You’ll see characters from the books, and re-creations of everyday people, along with a carnival atmosphere and a few gift shops, bars and eateries. Great fun, sort of a holiday spirit, and an excellent opportunity to sketch interesting people.
Sketching in San Rafael
The Mission San Rafael
Had lunch in downtown San Rafael…very “pleasant” town :) What can I say – maybe not the most exciting place on the planet, but hey, it’s got a good hardware store…man, that’s damning with faint praise…sorry San Rafael – really! It’s not you, its me.
Actually, they have two different drop in life drawing classes and some decent galleries, so I shouldn’t cast stones – I might be spending a fair bit of time here in the near future.
Classic Billards
November Nightcrawl
In case your new to my sketchblog (hello everyone reading Imagine FX!) nightcrawling is my variation on sketchcrawling – but I do it at night.
I enjoy the dramatic lighting in the city. Plus, the shadows don’t move. I live in San Francisco, so the weather is good for it. Plus there’s less people around while your drawing. And you don’t need the day off work…so ya – overall, if you liked sketchcrawl, try a nightcrawl!
World Wide Sketchcraw #20
Once again artists all over the world hit their streets in roving gangs wielding miniature watercolor kits and kneaded rubber erasers.
Filling up cafe’s and bookstores, congregating in milling scrums passing sketchbooks hand-to-hand. How many times are confused passersby heard to say: “Whoa, what is this, a class or sumthing, geeze”.
Here’s my architectural fragments from San Francisco’s Mission district:
Read about the event on the main site: http://www.sketchcrawl.com/
Night Sketching: Fire Escapes
Erik Tiemens Watercolor Sketching Workshop
We’re just back from a wicked two day workshop with artist Erik Tiemens. Check out his gallery page: watersketch.com or his blog: virtualgouacheland
Erik had us working on two main topics; developing tiny thumbnails and sketches (captured in the field) into more finished studio paintings, and learning his powerful watercolor technique; which involves the use of gouache mixed with traditional watercolor.
His paintings often start as conventional watercolor washes over which he gradually builds more and more opaque gouache/watercolor mixes. (I believe this would be called ‘body color’). His final results have a deep rich tone that brings to mind the paintings of the Hudson River school. It’s a surprisingly flexible method – I found it easy to wipe out whole sections, push back areas with glazes, scrub or scratch back to the original staining pigment…generally it’s a very oil-like way of working with watercolor.
First Exercise: Mark-making random landscapes:
To get us feeling out his watercolor technique, Erik had us work on pages of tiny thumbnails. We’d do a dozen of these at the same time, allowing washes to set up on one, while we worked on another. The idea is to start with random brushwork, and gradually transform the blobs into imaginary landscapes…
Here’s some more taken a little further:
Second Exercise – Field Notes:
Heading out to the rocky coast (only blocks from the studio) we spent an hour sketching in the field. Just making his tiny thumbnails, or ‘note taking’ sketches. The goal was to take these compositional notes back to the studio, and create paintings from memory.
We weren’t meant to try and reproduce our thumbnails exactly, just use them as a jumping off point. These are done back at the workshop, based on what we’d just gone and sketched at lunch. The idea was to keep the spontaneous paint handling from the random landscapes, attempting to force it into a specific scene we’d just observed.
Overall, a great workshop! – besides the magic of ‘gouachercolor’ I discovered the totally hilarious attention deficit fun of working on six paintings and the same time, plus got to watch some impressive start-to-finish demos.
If you ever get a chance to study with Tiemens – grab it if you can. There is talk of future workshops, so watch his blog.
Sept 30 Nightcrawl
Citizen Sketcher 