visiting an Oakland landmark

Went with my girls to see the Oakland Ballet & the Oakland Symphony perform the Nutcracker at the Paramount Theatre. The theater is a fabulous example of art deco. Above are some rough sketches from the walls in in the lobby and the theater proper.

Memory sketches done during intermission. The set designers did a great job of carrying the art deco theme onto the stage. After a while I began to look, not so much at the dancers themselves, but the negative spaces  highlighted by their moves. 

My next LIVE appearance!

On the off-chance that you are in the Bay Area this Thursday, I will participating in the California Academy of Sciences craft fair. The Craft Fair will be held on Thursday, November 29 in the Forum gallery (2^nd floor above the café), inside the Academy. The sale will go from nine o’clock am to four o’clock pm (9:00 to 4:00). I will have cards, buttons, the latest issue of Toast, and will be signing copies of my field guide, Golden Gate Beach Wrack.

Golden Gate Beach Wrack makes a great gift!  You can also order it here: http://hotfromthetoaster.com/fieldguide.html

no *@$^*% turkey, thanks

We continued with our no-turkey Turkey Day tradition of eating Dungeness Crab. By the time I thought to sketch, there wasn't much left. :) Thus, I turned my sketching skills to something less edible - 

We finished off the meal with pumpkin pie (from pumpkins I had slaughtered myself) and pecan pie. Yum!

Then today we had a lovely drive to Cow Girl Creamery in Point Reyes Station for a picnic of cheese, bread and fruit. The weather was lovely and though I drug my supplies everywhere, as the only driver, I didn't get much of a chance to sketch. I have a head full of pretty sights and a yen to paint in my studio, which is what a vacation is for if you ask me.

The Bear Bones

Posted this image over at the From the Stacks blog for the latest Illustration Smackdown. This fuzzy wuzzy smackdown I took on (unbeknownst to me until yesterday) the great Tracy Irwin Storer, founder of the UCDavis Zoology Department, author of California Grizzly, and the man who did the sketches of Monarch. Monarch was the last of the California Grizzlies whose image adorns the California state flag.

Election Night USA

I have worked Tuesday nights for at least the last four years. In 2008 I started what might well be a sketchbook tradition - Draw a map of the USA and spend the 4 hours on the reference desk (between questions, of course) filling in the "winning" colors. Due to time zones and all, the map does not get completely filled in for a day or more. However, there are updates below......

letter writing is awesome!

I have totally gotten back into letter writing. Seriously. I write 5-10 a week. Letter writing is fun. I get to send paper "hugs" to friends & family I haven't seen in a while. AND the best part is that often they write back!!! While I was working long hours yesterday, no one gathered the mail at our house. I found the pile this morning. Underneath the scads of election mail I had not one, but three letters waiting for me. My friends are AWESOME! Thank you for making this Tuesday a much better day. :^)

what baseball has done for me lately

It has been quite some time since someone offered me money for services in a bar.
While at a conference earlier this week, I wandered into the Mucky Duck with a colleague to watch game seven of the Giants/Cardinals series. I'm not a baseball fan, really, so I was doing what I always do in these situations. I pulled out my sketch book to draw. I was trying (and mostly failing) to draw the batter in his batter's helmet while he shifted, adjusted and the cameras kept switching to other angles. My sketches were a little pathetic, but I suppose when one is confident enough to draw in a bar, some skill is assumed by observers.
One of the waitresses came up on my blind side and said, "oh my god, you draw? Do you want to draw my daughter? I'll pay you."
Within moments of my half-mumbled, "sure" she was back with a stack of really nice photos of an adorable blonde ~2yo. I sifted through them as my companion alternated between yelling encouragement to the Giant at bat and gushing about the child's extreme cuteness.
I selected the photo that showed the child's happy personality and set the others off to the side. I started in pencil to be certain that I had proportions correct. Errors in drawing people are noticeable in a way that an error in drawing a spiny lobster is not. We as people look at other people all of the time. Whether we realize it or not, simply by interacting with other humans we have internalized the basic measurements between facial features and have an inatate sense of "rightness". We judge a portrait by how well the artist placed the nose, mouth, eyes in relation to each other.
Once I got the basics down, I came back in with ink, shading, tweaking. The light in the bar was not ideal, but I was able to shift along the bar toward the kitchen and borrow some illumination. 
Additional challenges: happy baseball fans pounding the bar. The waitress bringing people over to look at the drawing in progress.
I took several bad photos with my Blackberry before signing the bottom. I carefully ripped the portrait out of my sketch book and handed  it & my card over. The waitress was thrilled.
At the end of the night, Giants world series bound, we fled the odd live music. Our tab for 4 drinks and food came to less than $20. All for a sketch. Works for me.

greetings from Monterey!

On day two of my recent conference, I played hooky and spent the morning walking to and from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The public biking/walking path runs along the water front. I saw many harbor seals on the rocks, sea lions, sea otters, brown pelicans, canada geese, hermeen gulls, CA gulls, western grebes, pied-bill grebes...and other shore birds I couldn't readily identify. I had a relaxing morning collecting fish faces and talking to kids about drawing as I painted the horn shark. Have sketchbook, will travel!

what i'll be doing next week..

summer in a jar

One success from this week: taking the tomatoes & yellow zucchini from our garden, adding the onions, garlic & green peppers dropped off by a neighbor, plus a few store bought carrots and turning it into a case of salsa. I make it without heavy spice. At first this was because my kids were anti-spicy-anything, but now it continues because I found it to be more versatile After all, you can always add spice later, but you can't take it out. As is it can be added to the rice cooker, used as spaghetti or pizza sauce and as traditional salsa. Hooray for gardens!

divergent thoughts

I should be preparing for my conference talk on Monday. There are "slides" to be assembled, digital files to be uploaded. There are finer points of a study that I need to memorize, an outfit to be picked out and obsessed over, carpool details to finalize.... Instead I find myself thinking about mouse lemurs.  

These smallest of primates are nocturnal, and like all lemurs, natives of Madagascar. Mouse lemurs range in length from 23-29cm - that's 9-11in nose tip to tail. Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur has a combined head-body length of 3 inches. How cute is that? 

Today is also a day to celebrate the woman who inspired Alan Turing in his creation of the first "modern" computer system. Not through her feminine whiles (Turing was gay), but through her grasp of math. Lady Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, 'Enchantress of Numbers" published the first computer program around 1843. 

What do either of these interesting subjects have to do with my talk on Monday next? Nothing, except for the inner workings of my brain!

Homework Helper

Years ago I helped write a rubric for science education on the use of the sketchbook as a science tool. Well, last night I used my sketchbook as a tool of mathematical instruction. Making bar graphs (now called histograms in today's sixth grade) is like coloring with math. Maybe that's why I like them so much. All those different levels and hazards in boxy formation made me think of V's favorite video game of the moment, and the drawing continued. :^)

urban sketch II

A quick sketch I made while waiting for E. to finish piano and V. to finish her ballet class on Saturday morning. Turned out to be one of the only moments I had to myself all day. :^)

(yes, there are vegetables in the background - it is a seriously weird journal. I have to try new journals occasionally - if only to remind myself of all the reasons I like my ol' standby brand.)

today's bear sketch..

Camouflage is a wonderful thing....

The week no books would die...

 

Even if I didn't work in a couple of libraries, I have enough book-loving friends to remind me that this is ALA's Banned Books Week. I am always interested in what makes the list of most challenged books and why. The message for me from this whole publicity campaign is to keep reading, and not to let others dictate what is and is not acceptable reading (rather, you should read them and decide for yourself - a typical librarian attitude, I suppose). Most years I do not participate by reading something currently on the list. This week, however, I intend to reread one of my favorite books that has made the "decade lists" for 20 years:

A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck. It was #16 on the list from 1990-1999, and #80 from 2000-2009. Set in a small rural community during Calvin Coolidge's presidency. It is slow-paced, full of descriptions of farm life and animals. My favorite scene involves the grey squirrel and the chocolate cake. I won't spoil it - you need to read it. It will change how you view both.

Ursine surprise

I got a new journal/sketchbook thingy. Most of the pages have pre-printed patterns on them, which I usually avoid. Drawing on plain white paper is usually my preference. But I think one or two of these pages might just work out fine. For now, I'll grin and bear it!

Earthquakes and Sherlock Holmes

When I get stuck on a drawing, I often work it through by thinking about something else entirely. Today it was earthquakes. Earthquakes usually need to be over 3.0 on the richter scale before I feel them. However, this morning's 2.7 banged into the studio when I was working (see above map courtesy of the USGS). For some reason, this map made me think about Sherlock Holmes - I don't know why, I haven't read any of those stories for years. One of the things that always drove me nuts about those books was the way Holmes would meet a shady character then declaim to Watson later that he couldn't have been the murderer because the ink stain on his right hand clearly means he was right-handed and the knife was obviously wielded by a left-handed man wearing Ugg boots (or some such). Below is a photo of my hands at the end of letter writing yesterday. Tell me, Sherlock, what hand do I write with, huh?

Roadworks photo essay

I usually shy away from putting my photos on display - they tend to be crappy. However, last Saturday we went to the SF Center for the Book's Roadworks event. My sketchbook came out long enough to allow my younger daughter to make vegetable prints using tempera paints (which took forever to dry). I didn't take the time to sketch - I was too busy looking. We wandered the mini-fair area. I bought a new journal from the pickypocket booth and discovered the cool cards made by Clandestine Press. At the end of the block lithographic prints were being made on the street using a construction steamroller. It was super cool as the following photos show....

unBEARable posts

I have taken on yet another project that is bigger than what I thought I was signing up for. Isn't that always the way? You think to yourself, "Oh, sure. That'll be easy." But it's not and you have no one to blame but yourself. For the moment, I think I'll stop obsessing over it (because I have learned that obsessing never solves anything) and go back to drawing bears. There aren't any here, which is plain unBEARable!

Little kindnesses

My garden is in my front yard - because the front gets more sun than the back yard. As I have spent time tending the plants in it over the years I have gotten a chance to chat with my neighbors as they walk by. There is no fence. As far as I can tell, no one takes any of the veggies I grow. Every now and then orphaned plants arrive by anonymous hands. This past week I came home to a bag of bulbs on the porch. There was a lovely note attached (see below) explaining

Let's hear a cheer for friends.

If you look closely at the right side of the second photo, you will see the statue sketched here - though I drew it from the other side...

Today I am thankful for friends and the way they keep me sane when all else seems to be falling apart; for friends who remind me I have something to give; for friends who surprise me with the unexpected.

One of the better visual examples of an unexpected surprise are the following photos my friend, Stephanie, took during our visit to the Legion of Honor last June. 

The photos are shown here....

caught bear handed

Another image from my vault -

probably meant to illustrate Goldilocks & the Three Bears. Though what the bears are doing living in a fabric warehouse, I no longer know... Done in gouache, or possibly watercolor.

It's funny how one image leads you to another.... 

This next sketch is from a trip I took to Yellowstone in 2001. 

ballpoint bears

For all of the fancy pens I own, I still like drawing with a ballpoint pen. If I haven't used one for a while I get surprised all over by the range of grays possible. 

I just like the way these two different sketches seem to work together.

I come Bear-ing sketches...

When I got the latest scientific name for the Illustration Smackdown, I spent some time staring at the ceiling trying to remember a class I took nearly two years ago. The class was on wildlife illustration, and while I knew we had covered bears, I couldn't remember for a while if I had previously drawn Ursus arctos, the American Brown Bear. Once I got home from work, I was able to go through...

Back to School Night

It's that time of year again. School has begun for my urchins and I got to spend most of yesterday evening in an over-crowded, unventilated auditorium listening to a lot of things I already know (and some I didn't). This, of course, was the perfect opportunity....

Today's memory sketch

As my family will tell you, I'm pretty good at sketching just about anywhere. Today, I unpacked my folding bike from the trunk and rode for a couple of miles along the path beside The Great Highway, across from Ocean Beach. The weather was perfect, the path was not crowded, and my sketchbook remained in the trunk. Even I have my sketching limits, and being behind the steering wheel (or column) is my biggest. I've been thinking about the ride ever since as the above image will attest.

From the Smackdown!

Paniluris japonica (c) Diane T Sands

I posted the above image earlier today on the From the Stacks blog. I used carbon dust on Canson Illustration Board. My carbon dust kit once belonged to Elaine R.S. Hodges, co-founder of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. While I am not certain my piece quite lives up to her legacy, I felt better knowing she was looking over my shoulder on this one. Thanks, Elaine. 

Vacation sketches

It doesn't seem to matter how much I want to use my vacation time to draw the new surroundings, or bring back a sense of place. I am the only driver of the rental car. I spent a good deal of time talking and catching up with folks. Which left time on the plane, or when waiting for food at restaurants for me to crack open the sketchbook. The following...

Staff meetings are like that

Just once I want to be the mouse on the top of the pile, rather than the one on the bottom. If only to get a different view.

Urban sketching of a sort

I had some time to fill before meeting my crew for lunch. I wandered down Valencia Street looking for possible lunch spots and thinking about the Urban Sketch movement. I feel intimidated by folks who can fit an entire city skyline behind the cafe they are sitting at complete with people onto a tiny page. The only way to get over it is to go out and practice drawing until I can do something similar (or just more satisfactory from my own point of view). So I set out to capture some of my adventure. Two of my favorite places to wander into on Valencia are Paxton Gate and 826 (alternatively known as the home of McSweeney's and the Pirate Supply Store). Being Sunday, both places were full of folks. Rather than sketch one fully existing tableau, I shifted from spot to spot, putting together my own display of things that caught my eye. Then I bought a bottle of dark green, Italian ink for my dip pens and a six-sided die with words instead of numbers. Each side offers one of the following: who, what, where, when, why or how.  

Sneezes with Goats

I have never been able to do things the easy way. If left to my own devices, I will come up with the most complicated way possible (and then beat myself up about it when it fails to work).

Today I am trying to slap-together an illustration using a “lost” technique that looks best on a board that hasn’t been manufactured since 1971 - but first the board must be smoothed with the skin of a goat native to the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Really.

Smooth, continuous-tone illustrations made with a pencil were

What I really do in meetings....

But only to keep from making snide comments all the time.

Really.

Waiting at the bus stop

My car is in the shop, so I've been taking public transit to and from work. I only had 20 pages left in my hardback reading book, so I left it at home. Waiting for the bus, I pulled out my sketchbook to capture the odd roof of the dentist office across the street. I got the basic outlines done before the bus came. On the bus I did some detailing and started to lay down the color.

I use a brush pen - a watercolor brush with the water in the pen handle - and a miniature kiddie paint box with dabs of Windsor Newton watercolors squeezed from the tube. The paints are pretty muddy from years of mixing, but they get the job done. A quick transfer to BART at twelfth and Broadway. Again I managed to get a seat, and was able to finish laying down the color before switching to Muni for my last transit leg. And all before my "working day" began!

Sketching as a way of seeing

I suppose it is not surprising to any of my long-term art followers that when I start to feel comfortable with a subject I begin drawing cartoons of it. Today's case in point being the above spiny lobster. Quick sketches like this are my way of seeing what I have learned, and what I still need to know. For example, I know that spiny lobsters have four pairs of walking legs and roughly how long they are in relation to the body. How many segments are there on each leg? What shape are the final segments? More research is needed!

Cross-posted ramblings

Penny, N. (2002) "Lacewings of Costa Rica" Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, vol. 52 no. 12. Image 117 by Diane T Sands. Images 118, 119 by Victoria Saxe

Over at the From the Stacks blog today I rambled a bit about the different reasons one creates a scientific illustration. The highlight of which (I think) is the above illustration. I probably inked the wings in 1996 or 1997. The head and body were done by my fellow-illustrator, Victoria Saxe.

Wild Boars, Feral Pigs and Me.

Earlier today I posted this, my latest illustration, on the From the Stacks blog, along with all kinds of added content. Take a look, and tell me what you think.

Good Grief

Went with my kids to the Charles Schulz Museum last weekend. We spent the most time in the "education" room, drawing pictures and watching an endless loop of Peanuts t.v. specials. Fun! I hope to channel some of that calm fun tomorrow night during my live drawing demo at Nightlife. I'll be on display from 7-9pm. Come by and say hello!

Live Art Demo

I'll be doing a Live Art Demo this coming Thursday, June 28, at the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife event.Come by, watch me paint from 7-9pm, and pick up a signed copy of Golden Gate Beach Wrack!