Sign Painting, The Great Highway, Book Recommendations
I’ll take you with me to paint the Great Highway, learn sign lettering in Seattle, and, in a new section of the newsletter, recommend some books and events that are on my mind.
Welcome to April!
In this newsletter I’ll take you with me to paint the Great Highway, learn sign lettering in Seattle, and, in a new section of the newsletter, recommend some books and events that are on my mind. Coming up soon you can find me at Santa Rosa Zine Fest, and at the end of the newsletter I’m starting a new recommendation section with books and articles for you to check out! Rest assured, you still get a photo of Ruby, as well.
You might not know it from following my fine art career, but I started out in theater. I began learning the ropes of the backstage world in 8th grade, and I attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle for Performance Production, with a focus on scenic design. These days I keep my toe in by building models as an assistant scenic designer. If you see theater in the Bay Area, chances are good that you’ve seen a set by Nina Ball that I assisted on!
Each year of high school and college, I attended the annual United States Institute of Theater Technology conference, in cities all over the country. This year the conference was in Seattle, so of course I had to return to my college town to catch up with everyone and reconnect with the theater world.
I took the opportunity to attend a sign painting class with my friend Miriam Avital Levenson, taught by Rachel Keebler of Cobalt Studios. I had so much fun and I am eager to find a reason to use my new skills!
Naturally, I also squeezed in a little time to sketch from inside the convention center:
I was happy to come back to a beautiful spring in San Francisco, and I took the opportunity to return to Sutro Heights Park and do a painting of the Great Highway. I organized a few painters to go out to the edge of the world with me to take in the breathtaking view. I was joined by Mila Kirillova, Sabine Belofsky, and Kate Lamoure.
I was paying special attention to my thumbnails on this one, because I was just a few days away from my Composition through Thumbnails class at ARCH Art Supplies.
We had a small group this time, and we enjoyed playing around and exploring compositional possibilities. I was excited to have my fellow plein air painter Jaimen Perez attend, knowing that he doesn’t yet use thumbnails in his regular practice. I’m always impressed with artists who seek out opportunities to learn, grow, and change.
I may teach this course again, if I hear from enough of you that you’d like to take the class, so let me know! Keep an eye out here for future class announcements. Most likely I’ll teach the full Cityscapes in Gouache class again next, in a few months.
However, if you are unable to take that class in person, or just can’t wait, I have decided to adapt my extensive class packet into a zine! It is now available on the Spooky Haus website as a PDF download, and I will have physical versions available at Santa Rosa Zine Fest on April 20!
If you have been following along for a little while, you may remember that this year I have been helping facilitate Sketchboard figure drawing sessions! This means that I have been creating lots and lots of drawings. What you may not know is that these drawings are available for sale! There are simply too many of them for me to list on the shop, but I have just begun a new page of my website where you can browse them. They range from $55-$85 depending on the materials used and time spent on each. Please reach out if you are interested in any of my drawings! And if you are the model depicted in a drawing, I am happy to give you the drawing, just reach out.
left: Ximaps right: Allan
If you would like to join us for figure drawing, it’s a great community and a transformative practice for any artist. Sketchboard has weekly sessions in San Francisco on Mondays at Syzygy, Tuesdays at Madrone Art Bar, and Wednesdays at Monument. Twice per month we have a session at Firehouse in Oakland on a Tuesday. Mondays are one long pose for the evening, so a great opportunity to work on portraiture or any particular skills you’d like. Tuesdays at Madrone are shorter gestures ramping up to slightly longer poses, and Monument is similar. You’ll find me most weeks at Syzygy and Madrone! For Mondays and Wednesdays you can buy tickets online ahead of time here, Tuesdays are cash only. Arrive early to any session for a good seat!
If you haven’t been to Studio Gallery recently, the current show, Interiors, is really exciting! I was delighted by the variety of interior scenes and still lifes up in this show. Last month I shared my painting from inside my house. Both Maura Carta and Mila Kirillova painted the same room, and those three paintings are hanging together at the gallery now!
Also in this show I have my recent painting of the interior of a legacy BART car. Your last chance to ride one of these is coming up on April 20, which I am sadly going to miss while I am over at Santa Rosa Zine Fest, but maybe you can make it to both.
Lastly in the show I have this painting done from the inside of Coit Tower! The elevator was broken, so I carried all of my painting gear all the way to the top of the stairs. I cannot recommend it as a plein air painting location, because the security guard was not particularly happy to have me there. She kindly put up with me for about 45 minutes, then she warned me that the person on the next shift was “not gonna go for it,” and that I should be gone by the time she arrived. Luckily, in that time I managed to paint the view through the windows, and I filled in the rest from home.
This month I am trying out a new section at the end of the newsletter: Recommendations! This will be books, articles, artists, events, or other things that have been on my mind this month that I’d like to share, which may or may not have much to do with my art. Let me know if you enjoy them!
While I was in Seattle I picked up a copy of The Undressed Art: Why We Draw at Twice Sold Tales. I previously borrowed this book from the library and read the whole thing, but I was delighted to pick up a copy of my own and begin re-reading it. The book examines the experience of drawing, and has particular references to figure drawing culture and history here in the Bay Area, making it fascinating to me. I also picked up a copy of Tuesdays With Morrie, which I haven’t yet finished but I am enjoying it immensely.
One of my favorite bars, Stookey’s Club Moderne, recently opened a new space called the Blue Room. Coming up at the Blue Room is Crooners, a lavender live sing drag cabaret!
Join Chester on the fourth Sunday of each month for an evening of jazz standards and smoky ballads, in the sumptuous atmosphere of the inimitable Blue Room!
Queer elegance abounds, with Chester's cunning co-hosts, drag luminaries EnSeanTé (6pm) and Polly Amber Ross (8:30pm)-- and monthly guest vocalists! Put on your sassiest duds and reserve a table today-- seating is extremely limited, for this premiere Fancypants production! As always, celebrity bartender MK is onhand, pouring out your favorites as we're pouring out our hearts to you.
In honor of my great finds from Twice Sold Tales, here is a bonus picture of some of their cats:
Thank you for joining me for another month! While you await the next newsletter, you can check out my website to see my portfolio of plein air paintings, still lifes, block prints, figure drawings, tiny scale model houses, murals, and you can also find information on commissions! Please feel welcome to email me and ask about any ideas you have that aren’t covered on my commission page, I’m always willing to discuss!
Stay tuned for next month, and let me know if there’s something you’d like to hear about in the newsletter in the future.
Lastly, as always, here's Ruby!
Thank you!
-Nathaniel J. Bice
he/him