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

sketchcrawl 40

Embarcadero - with the ferries

anagama

Flynn Creek Pottery

red dirt country, pt 2

The ranch, Amador County

sketchcrawl 36: san francisco

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

red dirt country

Cousins reunion at the ranch, Amador County. Arriving at ten, I help Steve and Harry fence the new chicken run with wire, fence pliers, and Tom's homemade fence stretcher. They've been at it since seven and are ready to quit soon as it is getting hot already, and, besides, brunch is on. Sara has made quiche. Rosa and the younger kids are riding Spirit bareback through the yard. Over brunch, Tom tells of watching satellites launched from Vandenberg with two Chinese who thought the world was ending, and of seeing the well-documented UFOs flying in formation in '48. He tells again of the time my Grandpa Dan and his buddies held a wake for a homeless panner and of the prank and the pact to never tell. My sisters never arrive, just me and the cousins. Tom starts up the WWII army jeep and heads into the back forty with Claire, as Glenn and Cecily and I set out on foot for the pond where Steve and Harry are now fishing with their kids. Cecily's the one who found the seven-foot rattler that time by the shed, the one that broke the shovel handle. We water up first at the solar powered well. California poppies are in bloom around the pond, yellow daisy in the scrub. The kids catch bluegill and small mouth bass, and Tom takes us in the jeep now to transfer the caught fish to the upper pond and then shows us some new land just acquired from the neighbor. I show him a USGS folio of the region from 1894 and he is most appreciative, pointing on the map where the ranch and Eldon's house should be, sure enough, on a vein marked serpentine. This is red dirt country, the gold belt. The rest of the cousins leave mid-afternoon, but I stay and talk with Barbara. I play with Buddy the dog and with Toot the black lamb who thinks he's a dog and who is best friends with Spirit, a Kiger mustang and retired rodeo roping horse. The two lie down together in the cool of the day. When apart, they wither and pine. I head down the trail below the barn to sketch. After a while, young Rosa comes down the path toward me and walks right by, says she's going to get some molasses. Comes back five minutes later with a tall brown glass and I know there is nothing but hills for miles behind me. Where'd you get that? I ask. From the jug, she says. We thought Eldon was bringing the cattle, but he didn't, so now there's just a jug of molasses.

sketchcrawl 35: north beach, sf

Washington Square, sketchcrawlers - statue of Franklin, burlesque

sketches

japanese/american cultural exchange, marin headlands - crafters, berkeley

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.

good shepherd

sketchcrawl 33: the haight, sf

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

missed connection: atl

The Kubrickian quality of empty airports at night.

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.

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.

skyhawk, hornet

A4 D Skyhawk attack bomber, flight deck of the USS Hornet, Alameda, CA.
More at Urban Sketchers.

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