Today we drove up to Oakland for our daughter Junie’s 4th birthday.  My sister lives up here and Junie loves her little cousins so we thought we’d bring them together for her birthday festivities.  Once night fell I was allowed to head out to San Francisco to meet up with old friends.  Even though we had exchanged a few texts earlier in the day, I hadn’t heard back from them regarding where or when to meet.  So, in the meantime, on a serendipitous whim, I decided to Facebook a friend who lives out here in Oakland and whom I’ve never actually met face to face.

His name is Jared and at around the time that I took on my creative thing-a-day challenge back in 2010 he was also starting his own.  Through that common goal and a few other common interests we became good friends via the internet.  I would pretty regularly check out his progress on his blog and comment on his posts and he would do the same for my posts.  It ain’t an easy task doing one creative thing a day and to document it so I believe through that process we grew a pretty great friendship.  Even after the year was over we collaborated on other projects.  So anyways, since I hadn’t heard word from my friends in the City I made contact with Jared and we met up for coffee in Oakland.  It was great to finally sit down and have a conversation with him.  It’s funny how quickly and comfortably we began to talk about things.  It was all very natural.  Though we’d never actually met we were certainly no strangers.

So anyways, 11pm rolls around and Jared and I part ways.  I still hadn’t heard back from my friends in S.F.  So, I decided to cross the Bay Bridge and find a spot in the Embarcadero with a good view of the Bay Bridge.  I decided to begin drawing the view with Vine Charcoal.  I darkened the paper in a wash of charcoal.  Then I began drawing the bridge and Treasure island  and everything was looking pretty good.  I spent a lot of time outlining the contours and adding details.  By the time I started drawing in the details of the little tugboat in the lower left I lifted my hand to discover that I had inadvertently erased my whole drawing.  When you’re working with Charcoal it’s best to keep your hand from touching the paper.  Oh well.  I almost gave up at that point since it was freezing cold and I had to pee I decided to wrap up my things and drive back.

I finally received that text from my friend in the city and he had fallen asleep.  Nice one Dave!

Anyways, I finished this drawing in the warmth of my sisters kitchen.  I decided not to use the photo reference I had taken from the spot since I’d already started drawing the scene from eye and proportionally they didn’t match at all.  I wish I could have stayed out there on the spot but the elements were a bit too harsh for me at the time.  Next time.