SF Sketches

Here are a few sketches done around San Francisco over the past few months. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the California Pacific Medical Centre‘s Castro Street branch lately, and on my way there and back I sometimes stop by the Market and Castro intersection to eat prior to riding the Muni-M line. Here are some left-handed sketches of the vintage streetcars.

17thCastro_streetcar

As well as drawing the streetcar on 17th street near Castro (above) there’s a place to watch the streetcars turn around at Market and Castro, and I sat there for an hour or so one afternoon, attempting to draw the action. I still have trouble balancing all my watercolours when outdoors (without my full drawing rig and chair) so the watercolour washes were added when I got home.

MarketCastro_streetcar

This next sketch was done when Julia and I went to the San Francisco Zoo to sketch a few months ago. It was hot, and all the animals were hiding from the sun, and many were deep in their enclosures and not visible at all, so it was a failure in terms of finding picturesque subjects to sketch, but I did manage to get a scribble of my Australian brothers lounging around in the shade.

SF_zoo_Roos

Unlike the streetcars, which come to a complete stop and wait a while before starting a new run, the roos were either bounding about or, if they were at rest, they were way off at the back of their enclosure almost hidden in the shade, but I tried the best I could to capture a few lefty gestural scrawls of the distant critters. I still have a hard time drawing quickly, partly because of the dexterity required on site, but I’m getting better at it.

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