Ten years ago, August 4, 2004 to be precise, I opened a Canson all media journal to a 9 inch by 12 inch blank page. I had been inspired to start what I titled a “Nature’s sketchbook”. The genesis for this journal was an experience I had as a substitute teacher in a kindergarten classroom in San Rafael. During the “centers” part of the morning I sat at the painting station where I took up a watercolor brush for the first time in many years. The kinders were fascinated. “Wow you’re good!”, “Are you a painter?” They watched as I drew and painted cartoonish characters with a ragged haired brush and a muddied pan of children’s grade paint. Shortly afterward I bought some pens, a Windsor & Newton watercolor set, and a Canson journal. Since that time in early August I have never stopped journaling. All events, both profound and mundane, have become fodder for my journals.  In the past decade, so many of my life’s experiences have filled up journal pages to become a chronicle of a moment, an observation, a place, or an epiphany. While the desire to journal has not waned, I have traded the big 9 by 12 journals for the smaller Moleskine watercolor journals that can be easily transported in a backpack or a vest pocket. I originally went with a smaller journal for a 2008 trip to Japan. I needed something both portable and able to take watercolor washes. In the past ten years I have filled 32 journals and I currently average about three a year. My most treasured possession is whichever journal I am working on at the moment and I rarely leave home without it.

Back to the blank page that faced me ten years ago. It now holds a self portrait titled “The Artist as a Young Man Sketch’in”. I point out the various features of a sketcher like Peterson pointing out the fieldmarks of a warbler: adventure hat and pants, sketchbook, man purse, sturdy hiking boots, and a peaceful, slightly glazed look. This page gives me the strength to journal for another ten years and more, both because it shows me that I have come along way in my vision, design and skills, but also because I am essentially the same sketcher that I depicted ten years, just a little wiser and still continuing on the same journey to illustrate my life in the pages of my journals.

 

Sketching is about slowing down and seeing and stopping to draw the metaphorical roses.

So I did the ambulatory version of sketching: I rode a bicycle. I have been in the Bike City: Davis, California. What better way to see Bike City than from the saddle of a bicycle. I must admit that I was never very impressed with Davis, its flatness, its distant proximity to a body of water, and its extreme temperatures. The campus of UC Davis was also flat and lacked an architectural cohesiveness of say a UC Santa Cruz or Berkeley. My impressions all changed when I saw Davis from a bike. I set off on my brother’s bike, early one morning at 6:40 (the predicted high for the day was 101 degrees). Davis is really made for bikes. It’s flat, every street has a bike lane, bicycle only paths flank major streets, loads of bike racks and bicycle traffic circles. The freedom of self-propelled motion was exhilarating. I was seeing campus for the first time, in the way it was supposed to be experienced. My senses were alert, I heard the scrub-jays, saw the passing cork oaks, and smelled the undefined smell of a day heating up. I passed Robert Arneson’s Eggheads, finding Stargazer in a quiet courtyard. Nearby I stopped and sketched the side of the bookstore as the shadow of a cork oak slowly stretched along the side of the building. The campus was slowing waking up. And I was also waking up to the pleasures of Bike City.

The Golden Gate Bridge is perhaps the most photographed bridge in the world, so for my first post, I add to the endless body of images of this California icon. Why? If you want to overcome your fear of sketching in public, first choose a Sunday morning in July and then select a slightly unorthodox view of one of the biggest tourist attractions in California: the Golden Gate Bridge (from Fort Point), made famous in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. I can just imagine seeing James Stewart pulling a near lifeless Kim Novak from the frigid waters below the arching span. But I can also hear the rumble of yet another tour bus that deposits it’s load of tourists, a school group in this case, all rushing to the rusted chain barrier, stopping and photographing the bridge (yet again) with camera or phone and then posing for a group photo as the tour guide barks out orders in a Monty Pythonesque voice (don’t ask, I just live here). All the while the sketcher tries to fain obliviousness to the horde that are almost perched on his left shoulder. Maybe they are even photographing me. Everyone becomes part of the scenery and spectacle in San Francisco. It was much more difficult to fain obliviousness when the big man with his big dog passed by. The big dog looks to be the breed that you see on local evening newscasts, you know, the dog that has the noose around it’s neck as three animal control officers try to wrestle the beast into the back of a wagon. Yes that type of dog. And his massive head was inches from my face!

Well, I survived (journal intact) and the big man with the big dog offered the art critique and the slightly creepy admission: “I like your picture. I was looking over your shoulder.” (I know because I wrote it down as I write down all comments I hear while sketching.)

Just another day sketching in the City.

The big dog, the big man and the big bridge.