The Bar César tapas place has a new location on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. I finally got over there to check it out: very nice! They’ve got a whole wall of goodies, including these paella pans of various sizes.
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Author Archive
New César on Piedmont February 26th, 2007
Road Trip: a Sketching Workshop February 21st, 2007
Pasadena Street Corner
Classes and workshops solely focused on sketching are rare, but I love to take them when they pop up. Over time I have managed to take quite a few. Some are great, some are terrible, most are in between. However, the right class at the right time is a great boost to my motivation and resolve.
Last October I was lucky enough to take a wonderful workshop towards the “great” end of the scale, a three day intensive called Road Trip! Travel Sketching for Designers, taught by Richard Scott. The photo of me sketching over on the right was taken by Richard during that class.
Here are more sketches and a full report.
The next Road Trip class is a streamlined two day version in San Francisco this June. The workshop is not cheap, but I found it rich and inspiring: well worth it for me.
Huntington Library Botanical Gardens
A word about other classes that are less than ideal; I often find that something important comes out of them too. I may meet someone interesting, get turned on to a new book to tool, or just get more focused on what I really do want to be doing.
Related Post: “Road Trip!” Workshop: a Review
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Berkeley Sunset February 16th, 2007
We have been having near perfect weather for several days: kind of creepy in February! I’ve been indoors at work though and haven’t gotten to enjoy it yet. Hopefully it will hold through the weekend.
The sunset tonight was spectacular.
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USS Vodka February 15th, 2007
We recently spent an interesting day in Alameda, California with friends. Alameda, an island in the San Francisco Bay, was dominated by the Alameda Naval Air Station until 1997. It is now becoming a zone for light industry, but it still looks quite “base-y”. We started our day by touring the WWII aircraft carrier USS Hornet. I’m not a big fan of creations built for warfare, but what was achieved using only slide rules is indeed impressive.
We then went to the Hangar One vodka distillery, housed in an old aircraft hangar on the base. They “hand craft” vodka in large copper pots and have a tasting room with an incredible view out over the old runways (now closed as a wildlife refuge) to the bay and San Francisco beyond. We arrived just in time to taste the spirits and watch a hazy sunset.
Hangar One makes fruit flavored vodkas by infusing them with actual fruit (as opposed to flavorings, natural or otherwise).
My favorite is Buddha’s Hand; a lemony vodka with complex, delightful flavors in each sip. It’s made with a rather bizarre looking citrus fruit called “Buddha’s Hand”, which looks sort of like a bunch of carrots with lemon skin on them.
We finished our day with sushi then hot fudge sundaes: perfect!
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One Hundred Bottles of Wine on the Wall February 8th, 2007
I always enjoy spending time in my favorite tapas bar, César, in the heart of Berkeley’s “Gourmet Ghetto”. It’s a foodies dream; the food is divine and the drinks superb.
It’s always packed in the evenings, but afternoons are calm and quiet. It’s also a fun place to sketch; this is the same restaurant where I did the tapas sketches that ended up on my note cards.
This sketch shows just one of the many wood lined pantries behind the bar. The sketch is done on half of a spread in my (reloaded) Pocket Moleskine, so it’s a small one. It still required a full glass to wine to complete, however!
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More on French Travel Sketching Books February 5th, 2007
I have had some requests from folks who would like to see inside the three books discussed in my previous post.
Here is a sample page from each book:
Click on the images to see larger views, and on the titles for links to amazon.fr.
Créez et Composez Votre Carnet de Voyages:
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It was hard to pick representative pages, but hopefully this gives you a flavor of each. The first book is a bit more focused on traditional watercolor painting and also has information on making the book itself. The other two have looser styles, and include information on collage techniques as well as drawing and painting.
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Travel Sketching/Journaling Books from France February 4th, 2007
One of the highlights of my Paris trip last June was the ongoing search for books on travel sketching (carnet de voyage aka carnet de voyages aka carnets des voyages). Books on how to keep such a sketchbook, as well as all kinds of travel sketchbook/journal reproductions, are quite popular in France and large bookstores have entire sections devoted to carnets de voyages.
I spent an entire morning in FNAC, sitting on the carpet, pouring through book after book. Pure heaven for me! And, although it was hard to choose I did end up bringing back eleven books. Most are travel sketchbook reproductions, but my favorite finds are the three how-to books shown below.
Click on the images below to see larger versions,
and on the titles for links to amazon.fr.
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Créez et Composez Votre Carnet de Voyages |
Créer son Carnet de Voyage |
Carnets de Voyages |
Luckily, one does not need an extensive comprehension of written French to understand these books; you can figure out most of the content from the pictures alone. They each have a different style, but in general include tips for
drawing, watercolor, collage and adding text, with emphasis on creating a personal record rather than an artistically impressive result.
There are few books written in English about keeping travel sketchbook/journals (but there are some; I’ll be posting about my overall favorites soon). Are these French books earth-shatteringly great? Probably not, but they are precious to me because they are not something I can find at home.
Update: See sample pages from these books in this post.
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SketchCrawl 12.5: At Home January 28th, 2007
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| The Fireplace Mantle | |
| Today was SketchCrawl 12.5. SketchCrawl is series of drawing events conceived by Enrico Casarosa. Usually a date is named and groups get together all over the world in different cities to spend the whole day sketching together, then everyone shares their sketches online. A SketchCrawl is like a pub crawl, except with sketching instead of (or in addition to!) drinking. | |
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Today’s crawl was a little different though. The idea was to have a mini SketchCrawl (and thus the in between numbering) where everyone stays at home to draw. I couldn’t spend the whole day drawing this time, but did manage three sketches. |
| In the Living Room | |
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| In the Bathroom | |
People will be posting their SketchCrawl 12.5 work in the SketchCrawl Forums. There is also a SketchCrawl Flickr Group where you can find sketches from some crawl events.
Drawing for a full day is an intense experience. Doing so even when you don’t feel like it can yield some interesting, even positive, results. I am always completely wiped out at the end of such a day and others report the same. Such an immersion can really shake loose your drawing brain though and I highly recommend it.
Related:
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In the Kitchen January 24th, 2007
As I drew this, my husband and friends were cooking dinner and I was sitting on the carpet in their living room watching the kitchen. Although the sketch makes the room look empty, it was actually packed with cooks and movement. And, we had a scrumptious meal!
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Rebinding a Moleskine Notebook January 13th, 2007
With rare exceptions, I do all of my sketching these days in a Pocket Size Moleskine (outdated planner) notebook rebound with my own paper. I have created quite a few of these journal sketchbooks and have honed my binding technique along the way. There has been lot of interest in how I do this project/moleskine hack, and so I have written up the instructions for “Moleskine Reloaded”.
The bookblock is sewn together with a form of Coptic binding, which opens flat and complements the Moleskine very well. This binding method can also be used to produce books with exposed spines, as the stitching is plenty durable and quite attractive. I hope that these instructions are useful, and perhaps inspire some ideas for related projects.
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Sushi & Tapas Note Cards January 5th, 2007
After my recent success with holiday cards, I decided to order some smaller note cards from Shutterfly featuring food sketches I did recently in local Berkeley restaurants. The tapas sketch was made at Bar César, and the sushi at Miyuki. I am very pleased with the results!
These cards are smaller, 3.5 x 5.0 inches, and just big enough to send in the mail. The production on these is not as fancy as on their holiday cards, but they are quite nice none the less and these will be very useful.
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Year End Review January 3rd, 2007
Mt. Tamalpais
This little painting is 1.5 x 2.5 inches, in the moleskine journal as are all my sketches.
I used to think that nothing ever happened in my life, then a few years ago I began ending each year by reviewing my sketchbook journals and making a list of all the significant events that came along. What I discovered, to my amazement, is that many things do happen to me, and most of them are good.
Somehow the routine of life tends to dull our memories of the unique moments we’ve experienced. Life seems more exciting to me now even though nothing has actually changed!
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