30 March 26
What to Take
I’m heading out tomorrow on a trip to Germany. I’ve been studying German fairly assiduously since the start of the pandemic and though I grew up in Europe I never went to Germany.
I have some rules about traveling, which overlap a lot with Numenius’s (though not entirely, and in this case we’d have very VERY different itineraries). One is, hand luggage only, whether for a week or a month. Two is, forget cameras; bring minimalist sketching equipment (you know that advice where they tell you to put all the clothes you plan to bring and cut it in half? I had to cut my sketchbooks into a QUARTER). Three, have plenty and diverse things to keep you entertained (I have knitting, audiobooks, and access to whatever films they show us on the 11-hour or so flight in addition to my sketching stuff).
I’ll be seeing friends and exploring different places on my own, all of them in the western third of Germany. An excursion to Bingen to stay in the Benedictine convent for three nights is particularly appealing: I’ve been reading a lot about Hildegard and have to figure out how to say what I’ve learned in German in case a nun sits next to me at breakfast and asks me why I find her so compelling.
I’ll plan to blog here on the usual schedule but it might be brief and very sketch-heavy. Short stay in Copenhagen at the beginning to see some friends from Sweden; hoping for some lingering winter seabirds!
27 March 26
Riverfront Outing
Today I went on a little outing to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, walking to the museum from the Sacramento train station via Old Sacramento and the riverfront. Old Sacramento is the most touristy area in Sacramento; it developed during the Gold Rush. Since I have been reading a lot about Northern California history in the latter half of the 19th century and pondering the Gilded Age fortunes that were made during that period, it’s neat to see the actual storefront where Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins made their wealth off miners needing supplies. This is a sketch looking west across the Sacramento River downstream from the Tower Bridge.
23 March 26
Grapevine in the Spring
The landscapers have trimmed back a lot of the grapevines near the edge of our backyard, but there are still a few. Here is a sketch of one of them leafing out.
I am enjoying working with my new 72 color set of Derwent drawing pencils. It is interesting how I rotate through different combinations of media. Here I am experimenting with doing an underdrawing with the Derwent drawing pencils (it’s great having Fresh Green as part of the colored pencil set), adding in a bit of line work with black waterproof fiber-tip pens, and then doing a watercolor wash over the drawing.
21 March 26
Turkey In The Dell
I went to today’s Davis sketchcrawl which was at the eastern end of the Arboretum. My main sketch for the day was of a wooden shade structure with trees in the background, but once I finished the sketch I turned around and saw several turkeys at close range, one of which was displaying prominently.
19 March 26
New Drawing Pencils
Pica has just given me a set of the new Derwent drawing pencils as an early birthday present. I have loved the Derwent drawing pencils for many years now, starting with their original set of six pencils and then later acquiring their set of 24 pencils when the line got expanded to that size. These pencils are enjoyably soft and creamy but the colors in the 24 pencil set are muted and have a limited range of hues. To the excitement of many, late last fall Derwent released a much bigger set of pencils in this line with 72 colors in it, including some bright greens, yellows, and reds.
I swatched the pencils out yesterday and am starting to draw with them. Here is an apple I sketched this afternoon (the variety of apple is a “Cosmic Crisp”). The full set is too bulky to carry out into the field most of the time so I’ll probably be drawing with them mainly at my desk. I may also try to identify a few bright colors to supplement my set of 24 pencils and use that as my field set.
13 March 26
Backyard Ceanothus
There is a ceanothus shrub just in our backyard right up against the wall of the house that is now in flower. I don’t know what variety this is, not being particularly up on my horticultural ceanothuses. (When I lived in Santa Barbara I knew the local wild species of ceanothus pretty well.) I sketched this with the Derwent Inktense pan color set — I like the way the colors turned out.
12 March 26
Sketching with a New Palette
I recently got a new palette from Art Toolkit and was sketching people at the Upper Crust Bakery this morning… Caucasian flesh tones are hard, but I think the key is to water them way down.
8 March 26
Graphic Reportage
In Making Nonfiction Comics, Eleri Harris and Shay Mirk talk about the power of reporting on events using comics. There are advantages: a loose sketch of someone is a screen to hide behind in case they fear investigation. But it also humanizes the whole process, and I’m glad I took a pen and brush along to yesterday’s gathering in Woodland.
There are so many things to make us upset and even despair about this administration’s recklessness in all areas of public life here and in disrupting the world, but doing something, anything, to stand up to it feels helpful.
1 March 26
Caterpillar In The Park
For today’s urban sketch I drew this much-loved sculpture of a caterpillar in Central Park in Davis.
28 February 26
Introduction to Anbur
I got a postcrossing card today from Russia. The sender includes this information on the back:
On the postcard you can see the ancient alphabet of the Komi people. It’s called Anbur. This alphabet was created by St. Stephen of Perm more than 600 years ago. The first books that were written in these letters were the Psalter and the Gospel.
This beautiful script is written with the nib held on the horizontal, about 5 nib widths high.