Washington St. from Waverly Place (larger)

Saturday was the worldwide SketchCrawl 17 event, and over sixty of us gathered in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco to spend the day sketching. It was a blast!

On Jackson Street (larger)

My friend Lisa joined me for her first SketchCrawl, and we met up with Cathy who I had met at the last Berkeley Crawl. The three of us spent the day wandering Chinatown, sketchbooks in hand. It was sunny but cold, and bundled up we persevered.

We had a great Chinese lunch and joined the full group at the end of the day to share our work. There is a lot of talent out there! It was very inspiring to see everyone’s work. I am always amazed at how differently we all tackle the very same subjects.

Storydesign took a picture of Lisa and I sketching on Clay Street, and made a close-up of my sketch:

Sketching on Clay Street (original)

Sketching on Clay Street (original)

At Grant & Clay (larger)

On Clay Street (larger)

Funeral Procession (larger)

At Stockton & Broadway (larger)

Related:

• More SketchCrawls

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Sketch Calendar Cover (larger)

This holiday I just didn’t feel like shopping so decided to make gifts: one something that would work for everyone. I toyed with numerous ideas but settled on a calendar.

I started late and didn’t have time to produce the whole calendar myself so decided to have them printed online. There are many services that will make custom calendars for you (Shutterfly, Snapfish, etc.) but those calendars are full-sized: 8.5 x 11 inches, closed. I envisioned something smaller. Ultimately I found Zazzle who offer a 7 x 5.5 inch (closed) calendar for under $20 each.

Sketch Calendar (larger)

I choose twelve sketches from my travel sketchbooks and set to work on the website. Unfortunately, the Zazzle facility for customizing calendars is sorely lacking: inadequate to the task and very buggy. My dogged determination did not serve me well: I should have given up and tried something else but instead slogged through, learning the bugs and carefully working around them. Photoshop helped too: the Zazzle tools for adding borders and lettering don’t work so I added those elements directly into my image.

Sketch Calendar (larger)

Despite the ordeal the results are quite nice. There are a couple of small problems (the spine is too small for the depth of the hole punches and sloppy cutting left crop marks on most pages), but the paper quality and printing are both excellent.

The calendars were well received, and I am glad I decided to make my gifts. Sadly, I can not recommend Zazzle right now but hopefully by next year their tools will improve.

I do recommend using your sketches as calendar content though. Sketches don’t have to be fancy to make a charming calendar and it’s fun to plan out the project and see the results.

For those of you who are curious, I have scanned all of the calendar spreads and you can take a look:

2008 Sketch Calendar Pages

Update: I have had several requests to purchase this calendar. In fact you can, directly from Zazzle:

   http://www.zazzle.com/trumpetvine

Right now it seems to be $17.95 plus shipping. I am not seeking to make any money on this, nor will I, but you’re welcome to order one if you like.

Posted in Holidays, Projects, Travel Sketching | Leave a Comment » | View 27 Comments »

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Cafe Sketch, Berkeley (larger)

As the weather gets colder I find myself sketching indoors a lot. Last weekend I took my sketchbook to the Espresso Roma Cafe on Hopkins Street in Berkeley and made this sketch. /2008/01/06/cafe-sketching/

The perspective was a little quirky because I was sitting close to the subject and had to turn my head a bit to see the whole thing. It couldn’t be helped, there was a wall right behind me, but I’ll keep that in mind when choosing indoor subjects.

What have you been sketching indoors?

Posted in Berkeley, Food, Interiors | Leave a Comment » | View 19 Comments »

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