Had a pretty productive day today artwise. I decided to go out to the city today with my mom and sister for the weekend farmer's market at the Ferry Building. Originally I planned to just take BART back home after that while they went to the Cal football game at ATT Park, but since it was such a nice day and I had my sketchbook I decided to stick around and wander for a few hours while they were at the game.
We grabbed some sandwiches at the farmer's market and went up to the 2nd floor of a pier were there were some free benches for us to sit on while we ate. I took the opportunity to do a couple of sketches. The first one was of the Ferry Building Clocktower from where we were sitting. I hadn't really gotten my hand warmed up yet so the top of the tower got kind of jacked up in perspective. Tried to fix it, but its still messed up.
This one was a quick sketch of the terminal building from where we were sitting as well. I don't usually draw buildings or architecture so I thought it would be a nice opportunity to practice. Nothing detailed or anything, just quick gesture like stuff.
Out at the end of the pier was a nice view of the Coit Tower in north beach. It looked like a nice composition so I sketched that out real quick.
The western span of the Bay Bridge also from the pier. A nice mix of practice with landscape, architecture, and perspective. Again, nothing detailed just gesture like just to get the feel of the scenery.
We walked all the way around Embarcadero St. from the Ferry Building, under the bridge, to ATT Park. After I left my mom and sister at the gate, I took a stroll around the outside of the stadium which I'd never done before. It's really nice. Surrounded by water, and with a marina full of sailboats around the backside. I thought that looked pretty cool so I captured that.
Further around there's a nice walkway, grass, and park benches. I wanted to get a drawing of the stadium since I was there, but since most of the time you're so close to it you can never get a good enough view or angle to draw it. This is from behind left field where the giant Coke bottle and glove are.
After that I walked back up to the Yerba Buena Gardens park near the Moscone Center, the Metreon, and the YB Center of the Arts where my graduation was held. Getting back to sketching people I caught a few people taking a nap on a shady hill right near where I was sitting.
I drew this from the same spot, and for some reason I really like it. Not just because it's the cleanest of my drawings so far today, but the composition and the hatching just seem to work for me when I look at it. It's probably one of my favorites of the day.
My other favorite was probably this one. I walked further into the park and parked myself at one end of the grass over looking the field towards the back entrance of the Metreon. I thought this would be another good opportunity to work on some landscape and perspective, along with some simple figures. I'm not entirely sure how successful I was at getting this down since I have the real life snapshot up in my head and know what it's supposed to be.
Walking to a different part of the park I decided to get some more perspective practice in and drew part of a walkway with some people sitting on the benches nearby.
Another shot at doing some perspective stuff in landscape gesture.
Across the street from the park was this nice looking brick built church. The drawing looks ok, but I think I was starting to get out of the zone a little. Tried to draw some detail too fast whereas other parts of the drawing have no detail at all. Looks inconsistent to me. Oh well.
Finally left the park and decided to go up to Union Square to see if I could find anything interesting to draw. I couldn't really so I just plopped myself down on the corner of the park and drew the Neiman Marcus department store building. Again, this one feels inconsistent to me.
Not finding anything else interesting at Union Square I headed back towards the park, and saw this pretty mindbending building, which is part of the Jewish Contemporary Museum. It's like a weird distorted cube. The actual building has somewhat non-linear lines making a grid on the surface with windows in some of the holes. Putting that in along with hatching to show the shadows really messed with my head since I'm not too experienced in drawing this type of stuff so it ended up looking pretty weird.
At least I ended on a higher note. Across the street from the park I was at before (and next to the church), I had a pretty cool view of the SF MOMA and the backside of the YBCA. The buildings in the background I also drew in to even out the composition of the sketch.
And that's it! Headed back over to the BART station to meet my mom and sister right after. I really enjoyed just wandering around parts of the city and doing random sketches. It was great practice and a lot of fun to do. Hopefully I'll be able to go back soon and maybe with a group of people. That would be pretty awesome.
