My Summer Location Drawing Class at AAU, San Francisco (Part 2: Yerba Buena Gardens)

Class meets twice a week for six hours a session, and at a different location each day. For our second session, we practiced our meeting up skills in this beautiful downtown park with only minimal wrangling. Having warmed up with a couple of passenger portraits on the BART train, I settled atop a high concrete planter to draw my assistant, Jonathan, here seated by some papyrus rushes and drawing a local tai chi group. This time it was a park official who asked me to move, but, fortunately, I was about done with that part of the drawing and so moved on to add the side of the Metreon building. Many people come to relax on the grassy steps on the Mission Street side of the park, facing St. Patrick's Church and the Marriott Hotel. I've drawn these two buildings from a similar vantage before, but this time I combined both sides of the street into one composition. Pencil, ink, colored pencil, watercolor, and digital. Next up: the Ferry Building

my summer location drawing class at AAU (part 1: powell street)

This summer term I am excited to be teaching a class on Location Drawing for Academy of Art University. My students and I will be sketching and painting at points of interest all over town and even in the East Bay. Everyone starts with a brand new sketchbook and will fill at least 100 pages with observational drawings and sketch reporting by the time the class finishes in seven and a half weeks. I will be posting mine here. For our first day, we drew up and down Powell Street and in Union Square. The top drawing here is the view from in front of the Westin St. Francis Hotel where they fly a different international flag each day and where they apparently don't like people to sit on the sidewalk and sketch. I was asked twice to move, once by a police officer who was quite nice and understanding and told me that there is a law against sitting on the sidewalk, but said I would be ok as long as my bag was not in the way of traffic. The hotel guy who talked to me later was not as nice about it. More soon!

sketchcrawl 42

Haight and Ashbury, SF

Sandman show at the Cartoon Art Museum

Sandman pages of mine on display at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco as part of their exhibition, Grains of Sand: 25 Years of the Sandman. The show also includes work by Dave McKean, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Michael Zulli, Charles Vess, Barron Storey, Jeffrey Jones, and many more, with new work being added as it goes. Runs through March 16th, 2014. Come check it out!

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Embarcadero - with the ferries

sketchcrawl 36: san francisco

 raygun gothic rocket - sketchers + bay bridge - bart - bird + st. pat's -  cartoon art museum - buskers

sketchcrawl 35: north beach, sf

Washington Square, sketchcrawlers - statue of Franklin, burlesque

sketchcrawl 34: the ferry building, sf

The main hall - departing

urban sketchers 2011 holiday campaign: give a little, get a sketch

Still a little time to make a donation to UrbanSketchers.org and get a high-resolution file of my sketch, Balclutha (above), or any sketch from this holiday fundraiser flickr set of urban sketches, all suitable for printing and framing. All donations to Urban Sketchers are tax deductble. Offer ends Dec. 31. Full details here.

sketchcrawl 33: the haight, sf

Anti-pigeon lighting at Crepes on Cole - cafegoers - occupy Haight-Ashbury - the dogs of Haight

the gallery girls: steampunk

Sketches from the recent Gallery Girls steampunk-themed San Francisco event.

sketchcrawl 32: san francisco

The 1886 square-rigged windjammer Balclutha along the Hyde St. Pier - iron ship propellers in the sand - sketchers at Ghirardelli Square - the boathouse of the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club.

For more sketches from San Francisco and around the world, visit the forums at Sketchcrawl.com.

sketchcrawl 31: the mission, sf

For more sketches from San Francisco and around the world, check the forums at sketchcrawl.com.

For the full story of the day, see my post on urban sketchers.

the gallery girls: the opium den

Sketches from the recent Gallery Girls drawing event in San Francisco.

sketchcrawl 30: san francisco

Saturday, January 22 was the latest World Wide Sketchcrawl. Seen here: sketchers outside of Cafe Murano, St. Dominic's Church on Steiner, California Street with dog, two views of the pagoda at the Peace Plaza in Japan Center, Bart riders on the way home. For more sketches from San Francisco and around the world, check out the forums at sketchcrawl.com.

sketchcrawl 28: crissy field, sf

The usual cold, slightly foggy summer morning in San Francisco. We met at the Warming Hut in Crissy Fields - seems to have been about 50 of us - and sketched our way to the Palace of Fine Arts. Click the images to see them larger. For more sketches from San Francisco and around the world, visit the forums at sketchcrawl.com

the gallery girls: midsummer night's dream

Drawings from the Gallery Girls' Midsummer Night's Dream drawing party held at the spectacular Westerfield Mansion in San Francisco. Great music and atmosphere and a whole lot of talented artists crowded into little ornate rooms. Click the images for greater detail.

More sketches from the night by Marc Holmes