My last visit to Jerusalem was almost ten years ago. I photographed some red flowers billowing in front of the Old City of Jerusalem.
A few days I was looking for inspiration. I found a printout of the photo I had taken. I thought about shapes, colors, and composition. I wanted to capture the beautiful Jerusalem light and bring a little joyous color to my viewers.
I hope you enjoy these watercolors.
And to end off, here is a shofar. We approach the New Year of 5786. The shofar tells it is time to do teshuva (repentance). May we all be blessed with a year of happiness, health, prosperity, and good deeds.
Tisha B’Av is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. The Beit Hamikdash (holy Temple) was destroyed. In addition to fasting, one is supposed to limit activities to those that are mournful. I wrote more about Tisha B’Av in past years in particular about the story of the fox in ruins and another fox in ruins watercolor.
In this version I added an abridged version of the text from Makkot 24B. I added a volume of Makkot, one of the volumes of the Talmud, to the right.
They saw a fox emerge. “Why are you laughing, Rabbi Akiva?” The prophecy of Uriah was fulfilled. Akiva, you have comforted us. – Makkot 24B
This year I also worked on my calligraphy by copying sections of Eikha (Lamentations), the megillah (scroll) that we read on the night of Tisha B’Av.
My eyes are drained of tears
My innards churn
My liver spills to the ground
Because of the brokenness of the daughter of my nation
— Eikha 2:11
This sketch was created with ink and watercolor on Tisha B’Av 5785.
Streams of water flow from my eye over the brokenness of the daughter of the nation.
My eye flows and does not stop, refusing to cease.
(Eikha 3:47-48)
I love the feeling of painting water with watercolor.
This was going to be a post about rudbeckia or black-eyed susan. However, a deer ate my beautiful yellow flower that miraculously blossomed in front of my house. So I looked for inspiration elsewhere.
Borage is growing in my plant cage. I had the cage built because the deer ate most of my edible plants. This year I am concentrating on growing cucumbers. A good companion to cucumber plants is borage. I originally put three borage seedlings that I bought at the Highland Park Farmers Market in my backyard. However, despite my deer fence in the backyard, something nibbled at the borage. So off it went into the cage.
Borage is grown as an annual in New Jersey. It is native to the Mediterranean. Some special notes about borage: you can eat the flowers and the leaves. I have seen the flowers described as cornflower blue or as smoky blue. To me the blue is slightly on the purple side.
I sketched several pages about borage in my sketchbook.
Borage is a quick growing annual with hairy leaves and cornflower-blue star-shaped flowers.
Days to Germination: 5 days at 70° F
Source: The New Seed-Starters Handbook by Nancy Bubel
Are you looking for more energy? Want to serve a delicious and nutritious soup to your family? This magical elixir healing soup is easy to make, and you can freeze any leftovers.
This soup is my version of the meat stock for Stage One of the GAPS diet, a healing diet. Also on Stage 1 are ferments (the juice of the brine, not the vegetables) such as sauerkraut (just sea salt and cabbage).
Ingredients
2-3 lbs. chicken bones
3 beef marrow bones
Filtered water, enough to cover the chicken and beef bones
3 Tbsp. Redmond Real Salt or Celtic Salt
2 small onions
2 carrots, peeled and cut into coin shapes (optional)
2 stalks celery with leaves
1-2 garlic cloves (optional)
2 peppercorns (optional)
3 white turnips, peeled and cut (optional)
Recipe for the soup
Put chicken bones and beef bones in a large pot. Fill water to cover the bones. Add the salt. Cook on medium, then simmer when it comes to a boil. Add the vegetables about 1 hour before serving. Cook for 2-3 hours total.
For more on the GAPS diet, see the blue book called GAPS Diet by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. You can also learn by watching videos in which she is interviewed.
Note: whenever you can, use local produce. Get to know your local farmers.
In June 2024 we visited the Galil (Galilee in English), the region in the north western part of Israel, west of the Golan Heights. Some of the places we visited were Beit Keshet, Tsefat, Tiberias, Yodfat, and Maalot. Pictured above is the illustration of the view from my friend’s house in Maalot.
In Maalot my friend and I went on an Maalot sketch crawl. Maalot is hilly. The name Maalot means “steps.” We walked down her block and stopped at some long steps, a common scene in Maalot. The jacaranda tree was in bloom, so I was attracted to that spot. I drew first with my black uniball pen. Next I added some color.
This is another scene of Maalot. The hills around were peaceful and calm.
Yodfat is a small community on top of a hill. Historically, it is famous for a Roman siege of Yodfat that took place many years ago. We stayed in a house with many amenities, especially in the kitchen. When I woke up in the morning, I went for a walk all around the village. After a while, it started to get hot, so I came into the air-conditioned kitchen, took out my paints, and began to draw. I drew a corner counter with some windows. I added the ballpoint pen marks later.
Pots and pans are a lot of fun to draw and paint.
I spent the early morning in Beit Keshet with my paints and the Galil scenery.
The Beit Keshet cottage had a lovely back porch with an amazing view. I loved the little table in the corner.
red pepper, zucchini, and lemon, watercolor on paper
If you want to cook an impressive, nutritious, and filling main course, zucchini stuffed with meat is a lovely dish. I love painting beautiful vegetables, so this recipe post is also an excuse to show off my zucchini and butternut squash watercolor paintings.
Optional:
– 1 tsp. chopped turmeric root
– 1 tsp. chopped ginger root
– 1 tsp. paprika
– 1 tsp. ginger
– 1 tsp. garlic powder
– 1/2 – 1 cup of cooked rice
– herbs such as thyme or oregano
Recipe
Cut 3 zucchini in half. Then cut each zucchini lengthwise so the zucchini can be made into a boat. Scoop out the inside, being careful to leave a hull opening for later storage of the meat. Cut the scooped out zucchini into small chunks and set aside.
Take 1 lb. of chopped meat and add these spices:
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 clove chopped garlic
Mix and place in refrigerator for 1/2 hour or more.
Sauté onion in coconut oil for two minutes. Then mix in the spiced chopped meat.
Add these ingredients:
– the previously chopped zucchini
– 1/2 cup chopped mushroom (I use shiitake or lions mane from Zell’s farm)
– chopped celery, one stalk
– 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
– 1/2 cup cooked brown rice (optional)
Stuff in the zucchini shells. Sprinkle with juice of a lemon. Adding tomato sauce mixed with the lemon juice is optional. Bake for 1/2 hour at 400°.
Notes: if you don’t have cilantro, use parsley. It won’t have the cilantro flavor, but not everyone is crazy about cilantro anyway.
Optional: add chopped turmeric root along with the chopped garlic clove. Or chopped ginger root. See also optional spices in the ingredients list.
This recipe can be made in stages over a few days.
Variations
One variation is stuffed butternut squash. Cook the butternut squash in the oven for 1.5 hours at 350°. Peel when it cools down. You have to cut and scoop just enough to add the chopped meat stuffing. You won’t have lots of boats like the zucchini, just 2 or 3 big stuffed shells.
You could also stuff some peppers, but I haven’t tried that version yet.
Have you ever been to a paint night? What did you paint? Was it a learning experience, or were you just given some paints and told: “here ya go.”
This past year I was privileged to host two paint nights. For the first one, I did a slide show. I showed perspective, a value study, and a possible finished project. I got feedback later: “I wanted more instruction.”
So when I had the opportunity to host a paint night for a smaller crowd recently, I decided to teach people one on one or in small groups. I publicized the paint night with a poster; I painted the Tsfat or Safed scene that I photographed years ago as a border. The materials given out were acrylic paints, not the sort of paints I have used much. I handed out pencils and some paper, and I showed the participants how to divide up the page into parts, so what they thought was a difficult subject became easier to handle. I pointed out the natural mountains at the top of the scene and the architectural, man-made elements below. Some chose to just paint the mountains. A few tackled the whole scene and did both. Others just played with the paints and chatted with their friends.
This was my first attempt at a border for advertising the paint night. I made the white too small.
So I painted again, and this one became the border for the details of the paint night.
At the top of this post is a watercolor that I painted from the Tsfat or Safed scene that I chose as the subject for the paint night. Since there has been a lot of upsetting news coming from Israel lately, we went with an Israeli theme for the paint night.
Due to the disheartening news, I decided to post a subject that was Israeli but warmer in nature. I revisited a photograph that I had taken years ago of Yemin Moshe, an old, elegant neighborhood outside of the Old City of Jerusalem. I did an interpretation in gouache:
Getting back to posters, I have been publicizing a series of talks by our local rabbi. Each one is a “parshat hashavua” or Torah portion of the week. For each poster I read the Torah portion well in advance and look for visual ideas that I can put in a poster. In the Torah portion of Hayei Sarah, Rebecca feeds not only Eliezer but also his camels. Camels! I took out children’s books about camels from the library, and I had fun drawing and painting a few camel scenes.
Back to paint night: I have two ideas for upcoming ones:
Teach how to mix a palette of hue, tint, shade (color, lighter version of that color, darker version of color). Start with a blue, red, and a yellow (primary colors).
Only black: only allow black for the first half an hour. Then they get treated to pink, turquoise, and lavender/purple.
The inspiration for the only black paint night was a participant wanted some black paint. I had left out the black paint on purpose, so students would mix their own darks. It got me thinking: how could we make good use of black? Using only black would force the students to think about darks and lights. Am I being too strict?
Autumn: what comes to mind? Oranges, yellows, and deep reds. Colorful leaves, first on the trees, fall down and scatter the streets with their inviting hues.
I was walking outside. I saw this leaf. I picked it up and put it on my dining room table, next to my watercolor paints and brushes. A day or two later, this painting emerged.
Thanksgiving is a time for family, food, and more of those mustard-y, yellow, orange, and red hues. I had a butternut squash in my kitchen. Nearby was a purplish red onion. They called to me. I buy plenty of garlic from a farmer at the Highland Park Farmers Market, so I added it to the still life. It was nice to take time to paint, as the next week I only had time to cook!
Autumn in Jerusalem is more subtle. Snow is rare; cold rain is what one can expect, in a good year that has no drought. My friend Ahuva Bokow photographed a beautiful scene of a bench by a wall with colorful ivy. I decided it would be the perfect end to this post on autumn colors.
I painted the bouquet of flowers (note the purple irises and the mask) that I bought from Roberts Florals in Highland Park, New Jersey on Purim. My guests enjoyed the bouquet along with the meal. I am relatively pleased with the result of the painting.
My current ultimate goal is to get better at painting portraits. I am confident in my flower painting abilities. I could improve in details, but I do not strive to be a realistic floral artist. One reason I chose to paint the bouquet is it was a good warm up to painting after Shabbat and after a week of little painting in general.
Why I failed miserably at 100 people week
Early in March there was a competition to draw or paint 100 people in a week. My start was delayed by Purim; I had lots of preparations to do for the holiday, and guests showed up to entertain us at our seudah (festive meal). Finally, I went out one day with my sketchpad and doodled quite a few people. I did not care much for the result, so it is not getting posted here. Then I ran out of time to go outside and look for people. So I went up to my attic late one night, and I took down several photos of people that I found inspirational.
How 100 people week Inspired Portraiture Adventures
One of the photos that I found was one of my sons showing a dandelion to a chicken. I did one quick sketch; the proportions of the head were off. I started another. I continued painting into the night, and I am please with the result: gouache media, lots of strokes and movement. I like how the light falls on the figures and the variety of hues established.
Here is another portrait that I did, from an old black and white photo of a relative eating soup. This portrait is also done with gouache. Maybe I will do another version in the future with more attention to the background.
More Flowers to Show
Whenever I go shopping with a certain friend, I am done long before she is. No problem! Each store seems to have a section of flowers. So I put my paid groceries in the car, and I return to draw with a Uniball pen whatever strikes me in the store. Often, the flowers stand out. Here are a few of my favorites:
This one was painted after another one that had the brand name of a large chain store got rejected from an online shop that sells artists’ goods. Lesson learned: buy local flowers. Advertise local stores. No need to ruffle the feathers of any large chain stores.
I often like painting a palette of colors near my watercolors. This palette compliments the flowers nicely, organic flowers shapes near geometric squares.
More on Painting Flowers
I am reading Painting Flowers in Watercolor with Charles Reid, a classic in the watercolor book world. Two ideas that I look forward to incorporating in future watercolor floral sketches or paintings:
1) Pay attention to negative shapes that the flowers make almost as much as to the flowers themselves. Do not overwork the details. Paint the background along with painting the flowers. The background should not be an after thought.
2) When painting the background, don’t do one solid expanse of one color. Do a variety of color in a mix that compliments whatever flowers one is painting.
Charles Reid uses a lot of cadmiums in his palette (Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange). I will substitute colors in my palette, probably Hansa Yellow (light, medium, or dark) and New Gamboge. One exercise is to paint daffodils. Another is techniques for white flowers. Daffodils and magnolias are in bloom now. Hopefully, I will be able to experiment with his ideas.
It is now the Jewish month of Nissan. In Nissan we celebrate freedom on Passover. We are also commanded to say blessing on a fruit tree when it shows its first blossoms. I will be looking around my neighborhood for all kinds of blossoms for blessings and for sketches.
Do you think you need to visit New York City or Philadelphia to do urban sketching? Think again. I have found inspiration within a short walk of my home. One could define urban sketching as visual storytelling with a notebook and pens, pencils, paints, or any other artistic media.
Highland Park has an area called The Triangle. It is mostly residential, but it does host a large elementary school. I live by the tip, which holds a small statue of a Doughboy. The Doughboy, a slang term for a U.S. infantryman, is a symbol of veterans who fought in wars. The initial name came from World War I. It was erected in 1921. A new version of the Doughboy statue went up in Spring 2022, after a car or a truck supposedly ran it over. There were theories that it actually was hidden by the good guys when the bad guys were taking down historic statues.
I did this painting of the Doughboy almost two years ago. It is not easy to paint a statue. There are no local hues other than off-whites. And there is a lot going on at the bottom: legs, a rifle, a big rock. After a few early attempts, the main thing I learned was to slow down while doing the drawing. Get the proportions right, and leave ample white space.
The incentive for doing Rainbow Cleaners is that the store got a new owner. The store is right down the block, so it is an easy “commute” to work on this subject. I like all the signs on the building. There are oranges courtesy of the Bargain Shop and a bright green parking sign. Our family lawyer has his office upstairs.
I haven’t done much with Lukoil yet. It has that lovely shade of red in its logo. I often fill my car with gas here. One day one of the gas attendants told me I dropped my gloves after I finished sketching. His kindness gives me a warm feeling about a gas station!
This is a sketch that I did as part of a class called Sketching Now Sketchbook. It has a map of the tip of the Triangle and the positions of the Doughboy statue, Rainbow Cleaners, and the Lukoil gas station. Each one is down the block from my home, so good spots for me to visit when I feel like doing some local urban sketching.
Visit the leoraw store
If you made it this far in reading this blog post, please check out my new store. You can purchase a Highland Park High School sketch on a clock, dinner at the Bridge Turkish restaurant on a mug, a t-shirt of peaches at the Farmers Market, and more.
Still in the planning stages: a database of my paintings and sketches, so it will be easier for potential clients to look up works of mine that they like. For example, if you type in ‘doughboy’ you will get a listing with images and links of my paintings or drawings of the Highland Park Doughboy.
