And Now for the Second Half....

Song - San Francisco by Scott McKenzie

After an evening of "Pipers", the next morning when waking in San Francisco Mr. B and I decided to venture out for breakfast.

We walked over to the Ferry Building but I just had to take a photo of this vintage street car from Milan, Italy that was built in 1928!  I didn't realize that SF has been refurbishing a whole fleet of vintage street cars.  You can read about them HERE!

It had stormed the night before but today the weather was beautiful.  It was also a Farmers Market day!

For lunch we chose to eat at The Cowgirl Creamery and this gentleman was making yummy plates of warm cheese on French bread.  That brown metal contraption has a heating element in the top, so when he slides the half wheel of cheese under it, the heat melts the cheese and then he slides the wheel out and scrapes the gooey, delicious cheese onto your plate! 

They have a stall of every kind of mushroom you might think of and then some! They also have shops with "pig parts", fresh Acme bread, Hog Island Oyster's, Stonehouse Olive Oil, coffee, tea, a real live book store (with our bud Taya working there!!), desserts and lots of restaurants to choose from. And best of all......delicious pork filled steamed buns! Mr. B and I brought two of those home for a late afternoon snack.....mmmmm!

And outside there were bushels of beautiful Kale.  As well as Gandhi walking through the market!

And a little jazz to sit in the sunshine and enjoy.

Mr. B and I kept looking at each other and saying "Why don't we do this more often?"

As you can probably tell, fun was had by all!



"East is East, and West is San Francisco." - O. Henry

Abstraction & Jazz

Song - Take Five by Dave Brubeck

Earlier this week I took a workshop in Orinda from Sandy Ostrau. She is an incredible artist from Palo Alto. 

Sandy painting a figure

As I seem to have hit a plateau with my painting and I needed to shake things up a little.

So I have been thinking lately that I would like to paint a little more abstractly and more impressionistically instead of being so "fussy".  You know the fussy thing I mean? It's when you paint everything down to the last minutiae so the viewer doesn't need to think about much.

Sandy's landscape demo

But when you paint more abstractly, the viewer knows it's a landscape or a figure but it is done in such rich colors and lovely form that the viewer becomes a participant.

One of my favorite figuratives of Sandy's done from the rendering below

Pretty amazing, huh?


Sandy had asked us to bring along several painted canvases that we would then paint over. I have lots of those!!!

Unfortunately, I don't have a "before" photo to share but trust me.....this was rendered fairly realistically but just didn't knock my socks off. But now it sings....not like Sandy's but hey.....it was my first attempt!

So at lunch we got to talking about how a lot of people just don't "get it", meaning abstract work.  People walk by and say "Oh my kid could do that!"  But amazingly it is difficult to break down all of the components into large, strong shapes!

I compared it to Jazz.  There is the kind of jazz that is melodic and you kind of know what's coming next.  But there are other kinds that I have trouble following.  I think abstract painting is kind of like that.  Some abstracts will blow your mind because you can't seem to get it (and maybe you are not supposed to!) and others you can follow and recognize as a landscape or a figure.  Somehow that feels a little more settling to me. 

Love this one of Sandy's as well!

It was a great workshop and I actually had fun playing with my paint!


Please check out Sandy's work here - www.sandyostrau.com

 
 "Ah, swing, well, we used to call it syncopation, then they called it ragtime, then blues, then jazz.  Now, it's swing.  White folks - you'all sho is a mess!"  --Louis Armstrong talking with Bing Crosby