More from Cheeseboard and Kitchen on Fire

Cheeseboard and Kitchen on Fire

Tools of the Trade at Kitchen on Fire

 Kitchen on Fire is a cooking school in Berkeley where we ended our Tuesday evening sketchcrawl after it got too dark to sketch on the street.

Guys enjoying pizza outside the Cheeseboard Collective on Shattuck and Vine, Berkeley

 We were sketching by the light of the storefronts and streetlights on a bench outside the Cheeseboard, a wonderful cheese store that also sells their pizza of the day to people who line up for it in the evenings.

Freddy Hughes Band playing inside the Cheeseboard

The Cheeseboard also hosts musicians who entertain the people in line and those eating on benches and cafe tables and the median strip of street. I drew them while standing in the dark outside. You can read and see more on my blog, JanasJournal.com.

Ambulance Between Calls

Solano Avenue, Albany

Solano Avenue, Albany

Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park

A perfect day for a sketchcrawl at Miller-Knox Park

Beautiful weather and scenery at Miller-Knox Regional Park. In the Bay Area, even when you are surrounded by trees, water, and birds, in the background there is almost always the view of a bridge, freeway or transit system.  

... where I learn about business on the streets

San Francisco: Valencia and 22nd

I hope you all had a lovely weekend,
.
Your visual flaneur

Albany Cinema

Moffet Field, California

Francis Ford Coppola Winery

In keeping with my plan to start biking to sketching destinations, my friend Phil and I took to the streets last Saturday. The morning was sunny and warm, as we each rode high on two wheels, heading to our first destination, Francis Ford Coppola’s winery, just north of Healdsburg.

As I suspected, riding bicycles instead of driving a car opened up a whole new world of visual treats. We saw turkey vultures resting on fences, old rusted tractors in pumpkin fields, and wooden water towers located off the main roads. I’m looking forward to all these new sketching opportunities.

Once we made it through the gate to the Coppola estate, it wasn’t long before we found a good spot to sketch. Coppola had a “wine wonderland” in mind when he built this facility, with wine tasting bars, two restaurants, a full bar, a swimming pool, a movie gallery, a performing arts pavilion and a park area with game tables and bocce courts. He designed a place the whole family can enjoy and it is truly a destination unto itself.

I sketched the east side of the winery with it’s most prominent spire and a patio restaurant covered with umbrellas. The vineyard to the left had already been picked but trucks thundered down the road behind me carrying bins of fresh picked grapes to the crusher.

Evening Outside the Burger Depot

Burger Depot, Albany. Ink & watercolor, 5x7"

Trying to get in one last outdoor evening sketch session of the season, we sketched at the bottom of Solano Avenue in Albany. I stood under a street lamp and by the time I finished drawing it was dark out.

The proprietor of the Burger Depot who has owned the shop for over 30 years saw me trying to paint standing, with my palette and water on the ground, and brought over a plastic chair and a little table for me. The street light and light from inside the shop gave me just enough light to see what I was doing.