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SketchCrawl #20
Saturday October 25th was SketchCrawl #20, I decided to stay local a few days prior to the big event.
Since I was staying local I figured it would be a great time for my little dog to spend extra time outside, and perhaps sketch a few things that have caught my attention when I take him for a walk.
I used a micron pen for the first sketch, it is always a little ‘scary’ using a pen because you cannot erase if you make a mistake. I figure by using a pen I would force myself to just sketch and not pay attention to perfection.
After the sketch was completed, i figured I should also add color, I was also curious to see how this sketchbook would handle water. Below is the result.
Where shall we go next?
The second sketch I did was that of an oak tree, but I didnt finish because my little dog was just too impatient, hehe his idea of going out was not one of staying in only one place.
Below are links of some of the materials i used, my portable watercolor (student grade) is a different model.
I buy most of my materials at Blick.
micron pen
Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolors
Niji waterpen (love these)
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Pacific Coast Air Museum
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to drive by the Pacific Coast Air Museum located by the Santa Rosa Airport, I have been meaning to go there for a while to sketch some of the planes. I figure I would take a couple of pictures so you can see a few of the planes they have there.
I also just found out that this weekend October 18th and October 19th is their Top Gun Weekend, they are going to allow visitors to sit in the cockpit of these planes F-14A Tomcat, F-16N Viper and F-5E Tiger II, now how cool is that.
I hope I can make it to this weekend’s event, most likely I wont time to sketch.. perhaps one of these days we can do a mini SketchCrawl there, so if you live in Sonoma County, Marin County or surrounding areas and want to set a date/time for some Saturday please let me know.
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Getting ready for Sketchcrawl
For the past month or so, I have spent my evening/night time dealing with website duties, so I have hardly dedicated any time to sketching.
A couple of weeks ago I found myself in front of some trees with no materials and an urge to sketch them. I had read a couple of days prior to that day of a technique for drawing/sketching trees, so I decided to give it a try.
I don’t remember the name of the book but it was mentioning that one should first use dots or little lines to define the outline and work our way into the tree, by drawing more and more lines. Not having had the time to take any art courses (last class I took was back in High School days), I was eager to give this a try.
The image below is the result… I also sketched the trunk of a pine tree, at the beginning it appeared to be a difficult task but as I continued it seemed to take shape and now when I look at the sketch It seems I was able to capture what I was looking at (definitely an improvement I think).
Materials: regular ball point pen and the back/inside of a mailing envelope. (I will scan this later, here is a picture in the mean time).
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Save Totoro Forest !!!
The Totoro Forest Project Benefit auction day is approaching, and everybody involved has been working hard to get everything ready.
I was recently asked to assist and for the past couple of weeks I have been helping Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa and Andy Wang with some web maintenance duties, analytics / SEO. I also help them set up the new Totoro Forest Project blog, so I have been busy some of the evenings/weekends as well.
If you have not had a chance to visit the new Totoro Forest Project blog, you are missing quite a lot of cool information, they said they will be posting all kinds of interesting information as the date for benefit auction approaches.
Needless to say the techie side has taken over the artistic side (I have not sketched anything lately) and with Sketchcrawl 20th approaching (date to be determined), I know I need to get into shape. I have however been reading that book I mentioned a couple of posts ago and I can say it looks very good, now I just need to try the exercises.
I also took a few pictures I wanted to share with you, unfortunately my wife’s computer experienced a glitch and I had to deal with that (her computer is hooked up to the scanner, the printer and the digital camera), lucky person uh? 🙂 By the way if you have not had a chance please visit her blog, she is constantly posting all kinds of goodies as well that I am sure you would appreciate and she would also love to hear from you.
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SketchCrawl #19
Last Saturday, June 21st was SketchCrawl #19
This time the location was decided to be Fort Point, San Francisco CA. (right under the Golden Gate bridge).
It was great as always, really a time to remove oneself from the rush of every day life, and instead just enjoy the experience of being alive, an appreciation of everything around ourselves.
I got to the location around noon and was surprised to find a parking spot close to the fort (where I typically park) and off I went.. venture into the Fort itself. Once I got in I saw Enrico Casarosa and a few seconds later Ronnie del Carmen. Finally got to meet Enrico in person 🙂 we have been communicating via email/chat for quite some time even though we both live and work close by.
Since It was the first time I had the opportunity to go inside the Fort, off I went to explore. I was surprised about the weather, just some 20mins before I was sweating in Novato, CA. and now I was enjoying the cool weather in this other location.
Made it to the top of the Fort and decided to get started. Below are the results:
Quick watercolor of the outer bay
This time in addition to using the Niji watercolor brushes, I also brought with me a little water spray bottle, so I could get the watercolor to flow more freely. Quite a change between the way the water looks in this sketch as opposed to the previous one I did last SketchCrawl.
While still standing in the same location, just turning around towards the right the next subject was found.
This is actually a minuature cannon that was inside of a case display within the Fort, all of the cannons apparently had the ability to be rotated in various different ways, something that never occurred to me. I wonder how many people took to move one of those around from side to side.
Then I got hungry, time to visit the Warming Hut, I thought that maybe this location would also be somewhat cold but it was the opposite, it was actually a lot warmer (quite frankly it felt nice after freezing at the Fort). They were quite a lot of groups engaged in their individual picnic’s and even a wedding was about to start or had already taken place.
I actually spent time going back and forth between the Warming Hut and the Fort, and while moving back and forth noticed a trail that went from the Warming Hut to the parking found next to the toll booths above. This sketch was done midway of that trail. There were a lot more trees visible but I didnt include them.
The top portion of the Golden Gate was actually all I could see from where I was standing (still midway on that trail). There were a lot of plants (possibly rose bushes) on the side of the hill and on the background was the bridge.
The second sketch on this page, was my last trip to the Fort rooftop, this time wearing a jacket. I wanted to do a quick sketch of San Francisco from that location.
As mentioned before this was a lot of fun, I actually lined up my vacation with SketchCrawl and it was very nice way to launch it 😉
I expect to do more sketches here and there as I move thru the week. I also cannot wait (well I can actually) for Friday to come so we can go see Pixar’s new animation film WALL-E
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