Sketchcrawl With Waffles

As Pica related previously today we had a sketchcrawl meeting at 3rd and A Street in Davis. Pete Scully who organized the sketchcrawl said he likes sketching along A Street since it marks the border between campus and there is a lot of interesting activity at this boundary. He also remarked upon the arrival of the Little Gem Belgian Waffles shop; he quite liked the one in Berkeley but hadn’t eaten in this one yet.

I sketched the restaurant from the other side of 3rd Street and then crossed over A Street into campus to sketch the Social Sciences and Humanities Building aka The Death Star. Pica meanwhile tried one of the waffles and found it yummy.

Sketchcrawl Tomorrow

The Let’s Draw Davis urban sketchers has been for over 20 years (not sure exactly, but we participated in the very first one along with one other person, Pete Scully, who is now a personage on the worldwide urban sketchers scene).

I always mean to draw things other than people during these sketchcrawls, but it’s the one time when you can draw your fellow sketchers without getting weird looks (the couple in my drawing figured out I was drawing them and I think it made them uncomfortable, which is sad).

I’m going to take the minimal kit I took with me to Germany: fountain pen and tiny watercolor palette from Art Toolkit.

Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks are in bloom throughout our neighborhood now, including some straggly plants in our backyard. This is a sketch of some hollyhocks growing in a little public garden across the street from our house. This is my second field sketch using my new Folio Palette kit. It’s nice to have lots of colors to choose from between the 26 colors in the filled pans and my expanded colorful set of Derwent drawing pencils.

Stamp Designing: Behind the Scenes

Following on the heels of the exciting announcement of the new Postcrossing stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service (I should be receiving my pre-order this Friday; see my previous entry on this topic), the folks at Postcrossing interviewed Antonio Alcalá, an art director at the USPS. It’s a wonderful interview and very heartening to know that he really understands the postcrossing project and even participated in it before time constraints drew him away.

Designing something as tiny as a postage stamp is one of the most difficult challenges I can imagine, and it’s no wonder that each set of stamps takes about three years from concept to counter. As Alcalá says, a stamp is part of a country’s brand. How many stamps do you issue in a series? (the more, the greater the cost and also time commitment.)

The USPS has been going through the wars in the past few years but it remains an excellent service. I am happy to add to its coffers in my own tiny way by my postcard habit. Below is the card I received yesterday from Ukraine; the sender not only wrote a lovely message (and selected birds for me, which a surprising number of people manage to do), but also responded to my acknowledgment in which I sent sympathy for what her poor country’s been going through. It is an awesome way to connect with people all over the world, a light touch in a heavy time.

Folio Palette Is Filled

The paints I ordered for my Art Toolkit Folio Palette arrived yesterday and I have filled the palette with the 26 colors I selected. I painted a swatch chart which is to the left of the palette in the photo. I am going to mount the swatch chart on cardstock and carry it around in my art supply pouch with this palette.

The other component to expanding my field kit is adding additional pencils that are in the new Derwent drawing pencil set to make up a field set of pencils. This is a project for tomorrow or the next day.

Skills: No Longer Required

Whole Earth Day Three

I returned to the Whole Earth Festival today to do another sketch. This is of the main stage at the south end of the campus quadrangle. Performing on the stage when I was sketching was a singer named Dakota Dry.

A Really Good German Lesson

I have found the quality of instruction at Lingoda to be very high and worth what I pay for it, but this morning I had an outstanding private lesson. With Lingoda you have the choice to be in a group class (maximum five students) or a private one; I have a lot of class credits saved up so have transferred some of my group credits to private. I always learn a lot more. You also have the choice, when private, either to follow the class content you signed up for (in today’s case, Konjunktiv I Wiederholung, or review of Subjunctive I, which is almost always reported speech) or just to chat.

What made this class in particular so good was that the instructor zeroed in very quickly on where I’m struggling and gently corrected my errors, but also gave me tips on how to remember things. The introductory topic of the lesson was about an astrophysicist discovering a black hole, not something I’m in any way familiar with but which is inherently interesting, and it provided a jumping-off point for a much wider conversation with someone who is interesting, intelligent, and a bloody good teacher. It made me feel great.

(And I still make dumb mistakes.)

Whole Earth Day One

Today was the first day of the Whole Earth Festival, a hippie fest that has been happening at UC Davis almost every year since 1969. The festival runs three days over Mother’s Day weekend. I walked down there late this afternoon to scope the event and perhaps do a sketch. I ended up sketching the outside of this booth displaying wares from the Harmony Tie-Dyes Company.

Other Perspectives

I had a doctor’s appointment in Sacramento on Tuesday… for various reasons I elected not to drive a borrowed car across the Causeway, which is under massive construction, and took an Uber both directions. My first driver was Iraqi (I think, though am not sure, he was Kurdish); the second was from Venezuela. He was given political asylum three years ago; because of the Trump administration’s moratorium on green cards for refugees, he finds himself in an uneasy limbo. He was able to bring his wife and son over from Venezuela eventually through hard work; his wife has a degree in business administration but is selling fruit.

When I asked my driver whether it was better here than in Venezuela, he was very clear: at least here they can eat three times a day and his wife doesn’t have to use ripped up shirts as sanitary pads (he choked up as he was telling me this part — the shame he felt at having to put his wife through this ordeal was still very real for him).

These stories are not unique. What struck me was how buried they become in the anti-immigrant narrative. People are working so much harder than I ever have, and can barely make ends meet… It’s a reminder that those of us who are fortunate to have enough to live comfortably shouldn’t take any of that for granted, when a lot of it is just an accident of birth and/or geography.