A few more Friday Nights...

Free Friday Night at the Norton Simon Museum is a great monthly event, and a wonderful sketching opportunity!  I nearly always want to sketch in the gardens, even as the days became shorter--a pleasure to sketch in the changing light.  Here are a few...

Mostly it's dry media here, since the Norton Simon frowns on the wet stuff...so, mostly I sketched with ink, pencil and some water-soluble media (adding just a discreet touch of the water brush now and then).

Almost night here...


























The gardens are home to some wonderful sculpture...interesting to see how visitors interact with them.  At left, Henry Moore and Maillol's large-scale "Mountain".  Below, Henry Moore...

  

 A glimpse through the window from the garden at Maillol's Three Graces gracing the lobby...

Sketching the fading light with water-soluble Inktense pencils on a fall evening...

This one...well, it was an experiment!  Sketching mostly by feel with a soft pencil on tan paper, and some white gouache added for the very last light...

A Daily Practice...

I've tried to make sketching a daily practice for some time now...why?  Well, sketching is a bit addictive...I enjoy putting marks on paper whenever possible, but also just like recording something of where I am every day.  Sometimes I go to a place with the intention to draw it, but more often than not, the subject of my drawing is just where I happen to be that day, and what's going on around me.

I like to think that drawing every day makes me more observant, and keeps the connection between eye, heart and hand stronger and more immediate.  

More often than not, these daily sketches include people...

Drawing in a clinic waiting room, or at the Social Security office (a place that seemed designed for human discomfort)

One of my favorite places in Los Angeles is the Grand Central Market downtown...yes, it's changing all the time, with less of the old vendors and atmosphere and more upscale eateries, but still a fun and fascinating place to visit and draw...

Madcapra for falafel, the view on Broadway, G&B coffee bar with a view of Hill Street, and midweek view inside...

At Exposition Park, I sketch the whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum, and the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center, but it's important to me to include the human presence, the human scale here...

A five-minute wait in line is enough for me to pull out the sketchbook!  I like drawing people at work...

At our newly opened local Sprouts Market....











I love the classic red and yellow
of In and Out Burger...









Testing colors at Image nail salon in Pasadena...

My yellow car treated to the occasional car wash...















People at the Rose Cafe in Venice...




















More every-day stuff...

Breakfast on Father's Day...and an ordinary day at Jones Coffee in Pasadena...

Waiting for coffee, or waiting at the bank, I think of waiting as an opportunity...

Sketching on a Friday Night...

...at the Norton Simon Museum!  Over the summer I started joining the LA sketching Meetup group at the Pasadena museum's monthly Free Friday nights--what a great sketching opportunity, drawing the museum's collection and the lovely gardens on a warm summer evening.  Here are a few sketches...

A favorite gallery...with paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas...and the lovely "Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer" by Degas.  The interplay between live, moving bodies and sculpture is always so interesting to me.  Sketching here with pencil and brush marker--no liquid media in the Norton Simon!

A sketcher with Maillol's "Three Nymphes"...


















On another night, the garden is irresistible...visitors around the pond with Maillol's "Air"...









And "Mountain" by Maillol seems to command the garden with her presence...

 Sketchers with "Mountain" in August...

I'd been wanting to sketch this view of "Air"--protesting the invasion of 21st century freeway noise and signage into her garden paradise...


















In September, the days getting shorter means hurrying a bit to catch the fading light in the garden...here are some quick thumbnails...

Experimenting here with a new material (always fun!!)--a chunky water-soluble slab of "colored graphite" in ochre, pencil, and a bit of white gouache...

Sketching the Light

It would be easy as a native of Southern California to take the light here for granted...but I've found it's the thing that I always notice first in a scene--no matter the season.  

Some of these sketches were made with watercolor and gouache on tan paper--when I have the luxury of time to develop the story a bit.  I love working this way because it means intentionally painting the light...

Sketching over coffee in La Canada...

Or in Los Angeles...

Late afternoon with fading light in Pasadena...

 In Silver Lake in Los Angeles... 

At the Autry Museum...

Waiting for my car being repaired...a perfect sketching opportunity on a corner in Pasadena...

 The bell tower in front of Pasadena Presbyterian Church...

A quick sketch in Glendale...and more coffee and afternoon light in Pasadena...

JPL Open House

NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena hosts an annual Open House--and some 40,000 people show up for this free weekend event.  While there is some waiting in line to see many of the rooms and demonstrations, it's exciting to see such a diverse crowd, and so many children there to get inspired by science!

JPL employees demonstrate how this little prototype Rover with its 8 independently motorized wheels rolls over "rocks"...

 Rather than stand in line, here I sketched on top of a trashcan (which makes a good impromptu easel) above the crowd entering an exhibit of digital technology...






One of the most fascinating things on view...a wonderful demonstration of the huge, spider-like "Scarecrow" from the Curiosity Rover, as it appears to intelligently move around "Martian" rocks.  (Later I found out that the name "Scarecrow" came from its lack of a brain.)  I'm sketching elbow to elbow here with fellow visitors in a large sketchbook.  I sat on nearby steps to add some color, listening to the variety of languages spoken all around me--something I love about where I live!

It seemed that every child in attendance left with a pair of 3-D glasses--what fun!