Hummus in Raanana

Few sketches from Ahuza Street in Ra'anana -  nice place for hummus and felafel.

fnv

Before the Passover

I had a free hour between running errands before the Passover evening, to sketch at the main street of Ra'anana.
The street was full of all kinds of people, running, stopping, eating, chatting, yelling on their children... I had a plenty of stories to sketch, feeling a bit like in the movie ;)

"what's your lucky number?" - written on the lottery kiosk

family eating falafel

the line to the kosher for Passover falafel

couple eating falafel

Red blooming tree

Spring is here in all its beauty and there are a lot of blooming everywhere. 

I love especially this red blooming tree in my neighborhood - its huge beautiful flowers grow before its leaves, which emphasizes even stronger the bright splashes of red on the bare tree branches.

Here are three quick sketches of the same tree I did during the month. The last one done a few days ago, when only few red flowers left on my tree :(

Luckily, I have my sketches. And I can wait until the next spring ;)

Quiet and boring Ra'anana - is that so?

Usually I have much more motivation to pull out my sketchbook  in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, where I always feel like a tourist. But actually, sketchbook helps me to feel like a tourist in the city I live for the last 20 years, know so well all its corners, and looks like there is nothing special about it.

Here are sketches I drew in Ra'anana during the August, all of them done between running errands and I didn't choose the spots. 

I've always liked this small city, but drawing it is definitely the way to fall in love with it!

Looking for stories in... Ra'anana

I live in a small quiet city, calls Ra'anana, nothing is special about it. There is no special architecture or historical building or interesting views. When I'm thinking about interesting places for sketching, I would go to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa. It's difficult to look to the spots that you used to see everyday as a tourist. But when I take my sketchbook and pencil and start to sketch, suddenly, my city looks different, more appealing and full of little stories. We just need to look harder :)

Purim - sketching the carniaval

Every year when Purim comes, my fingers start itching - I'm thinking about all these wonderful opportunities to sketch during various carnivals that we have at this holiday. It's very fun, but very challenging and sometimes frustrating. There are so many wonderful stories on the street - proud parents, that were waiting for an opportunity to dress their kids with costumes, even if them only a few mouth old; teenager girls dressed very sexy - finally it's allowed officially; teenager boys that cut and dyed their hair in extremely weird ways; old people trying to be cool and wearing very strange stuff... and so on. I wish my fingers could move as fast as my eyes, but they don't. So majority of funny stories will be left in my memory, here are some I succeed to capture. Here's the first sketch that I drew before the carnival began, you can see the security guys guarding the closed street and people waiting:

I continued sketching in a small sketchbook, trying to catch first the essence of the character.





































Here I put the least of them all together in a one long spreed - thought it fit the atmosphere of a carnival:

I was very concentrated sketcher ;-)

How's about your experience of sketching people in action?

34th World Wide SketchCrawl in Park Ra'anana

It was very spontaneous sketchcrawl - my youngest daughter and me sketching in Park Ra'anana. Really, there is no need to go far from home for a nice sketching atmosphere!

Falafel!

One of the first things my youngest daughter and me did when we came back from the vacation was visiting local falafel shop. After all that delicious french dishes nothing bring you back better than these crispy balls with hummus and pickles. Yummy!