Off to Seattle

Later, mans. Catch you bayside next week.

Dr. Sketchy's: ONE

I can't believe it's been over a year since I attended a figure drawing session. My figure drawing skills right now are... well, you know how when you sit with your leg tucked under you for a really long time and then you get up and try to walk and your knee is killing you and your leg is all limp and disobedient and generally just completely lame? Exactly like that. It's painful and wierd and cringe-inducing but it feels great and it's good for me. I just need to keep it up.

These drawings are from two different sessions done at Dr. Sketchy's, a monthly burlesque-themed figure drawing event held at a gallery downtown. I need to find another local figure drawing session so I can start going weekly again. Spoiler alert: Proportional issues!


It's worth noting that I arrived late to the first session and had to sit way in the back where I couldn't see the model's legs below the knees. Rather than fake the rest of the drawings, I just didn't draw her whole legs. I only drew what I could observe. Just so's you know.

Above: My figure drawing sessions have men in drag playing live jazz versions of movie and video game themes. Don't everybody's?

Below: Yeah, that was cropped. You don't want to see the rest. But I like the portion I showed.

Remembering Alamo

Here are some of last week's sketchbook pages. The paint sketch below was done in 3 sittings over the past month. I painted a brown base and sketched over it with a pen in the first sitting but soggy weather forced me to come back a couple weeks later to fill in the darks with sumi ink and lay down some basic colors. I finally polished it off last week. I stopped myself from taking it further because it was supposed to be a paint sketch, not a painting.

Above: Evening in Alamo Square. Pilot Hi-Tec pen, Sumi ink, gouache, watercolor.

Below: Sunday at Arlequin in that gorgeous garden they have out back. Triplus Fineliner pen, Tombow markers.

Above: The paper in the sketchbook is really water resistant and doesn't favor washes at all. Occasionally I'm able to get some cool effects from it though. I almost didn't throw a wash over the motorcycle but it actually came out alright. Thanks, fountain pen! On the left page, you can see the bleed through from the car on the page below.

Below: I painted the highlights on the car with gouache and then scratched most of it off with my house key and left only the brightest highlights full white.

It seems like only last month that I abandoned my reliable old brown sketchbook and started this book and here it is, almost filled already! It's definitely been an exercise in patience. I've had to fight the paper this entire way and while it yielded interesting results, I'm going to have to opt for something more textured and water-friendly next time. Something that doesn't discriminate against mixed media. I'm thinking watercolor Moleskin.

O Valencia!

I underestimated how much work I've done the past couple weeks that I wanted to post.

I'd like to do more color sketches as long as the weather holds up. I should probably invest in an actual paintbrush (I've been using a gnarly old water brushpen) and a real gouache set (I'm using a $6 kids' set). I can't get a full range of values and the colors aren't as vivid as they should be although I'm extremely surprised I've been able to make the paints do what I've been doing with them. Six bucks well spent!

I took an unexpected detour this weekend through the Mission District on my way to the beach... not quite sure how that happened. Never made it to the beach either.

Above: A condemned house across the street from Cafe Cole, in Haight-Ashbury.

Photatoes

I have plenty of arts on backstock but I thought I'd take a quick break for some recent photos taken while out and about in the city. I recently got an iPhone and there's this gimmicky app called ShakeItPhoto that makes all your pictures look like polaroids. You even get to shake it to make it develop faster (thus the name). For some reason, I've become addicted to it. I imagine I look pretty strange standing on street corners shaking my phone in front of my face intently all the time.

Above: The Tenderloin near sundown. Tempting fate, apparently. Dumb.



Above: Waiting at the platform at an Oakland BART station at sunset.


Above: Obligatory pet photo. Yeah, that's my dog.


Above: Definitely not the city. Uh, somewhere along I-580? I think.

fillMORE: An Ode to the 22

The theme of my last week's collection of sketches was (unintentionally) Fillmore. With the exception of the car (a holdout from the previous weekend's Sketchcrawl), all of these drawings were done somewhere along Fillmore Street in San Francisco.

Above: The top drawing was done sitting in the window at Alamo Square Cafe. I only drew the tops of the buildings not just because the lighting was more interesting but because a lot of buses come through this intersection, obscuring the view much of the time.

The bottom painting on the same page was done at a park in Pacific Heights, Alta Plaza. The park has killer views in every direction but I actually picked the least picturesque view to paint. Partially to be contrary. Partially because this particular view lent itself best to this composition. But mostly because it was the least windy spot and thus, the least annoying.

Above: This was originally intented to be a painting... the lighting was incredible. I did this in a Tapioca Express on Fillmore where all kinds of road construction was going on in front. They had the music cranked to 11 and then some so after finishing the initial drawing, I just had to leave. A painting was not meant to be. Heh, I totally tried to sneak an extra L in O'Farrell like I didn't totally just mispell that sucker.

Above: The bottom drawing is from Sketchcrawl in the Presidio. It got too windy to continue... paint kept drying right on my brush and I had to leave for the end time meetup anyhow. I wasn't going to share this because it was in an awkward stage when I abandoned it but I sort of dig it now. It's a charming painting-drawing half-breed.

Sketchcrawl 23 (and then some)

This Sketchcrawl was held at San Francisco's Presidio and I definitely plan on returning there another day this summer for more painting when the weather is supposed to be nicer.

Below: Done in two sittings at Buena Vista Park in Haight-Ashbury. I had a rather peculiar run-in with a hammer-wielding junkie and thought it was probably best to finish this another day...

Above: Drawn while the stage was being set for a concert at Berkeley's Greek Theater.

Below: Same spread but with color added to the Alamo Square Park sketch on a second sitting.

Above & Below: These two spreads were done in front of the same cafe... I just drew different buildings. I may add color to the one below in another sitting. The top one was sort of a warm-up over breakfast.