About Our Cover Artist, Cathy Raingarden

If you have picked up Edible East Bay any time in the past year and a half, you have had a chance to enjoy the artwork of Cathy Raingarden in our Guide to Good Eats. Raingarden regards herself as an urban sketcher, which means she is part of a worldwide movement of artists who draw on location. The group’s motto is, “We show the world one drawing at a time.”

“I first started sketching beautiful and delicious food a couple years ago in Porto, Portugal, while at an international symposium for urban sketchers,” she says. “I immediately realized that I had to sketch quickly, before the food went cold or disappeared into hungry mouths.

“I love to draw directly in ink with a Fude De Mannen fountain pen, which captures the forms in slubby lines. I add splashes of watercolor from my compact palette,” she says.

At the Chez Panisse Sunday market, Raingarden wanted to capture the visual details: “what they sold here, the people who came to buy food interacting with the staff, and the snippets of conversation that wove through the marketplace.

“One of the many delights of urban sketching is never knowing exactly what you will see and be able to catch in a sketchbook. During the pandemic, my constant sketching companion was my dog, Meer, and I was delighted to sketch one of the many dogs that came to visit the Chez Panisse market.”

Learn more at cathyraingarden.com. Follow @cathyraingarden on Instagram.

Sketch above from the Chez Panisse Sunday market. Read the story here.