The Craven Pumpkin Farm with Seattle Urban Sketchers

To really and truly understand the multitude of offerings at Craven Pumpkin Farm, you must visit their website and Facebook pages. Their Autumn Festival is in full swing: Birthday parties, 3D black-light presentations, food, gifts, animals, Minions, hayrides, pirate ships, duck races, and people pushing wheelbarrows full of newly purchased pumpkins!

Fall Festival at Craven Farm

The Seattle Urban Sketchers monthly meet up began at Craven's at 10 am. For the first 45 minutes, it wasn't really cold at all and the rain held off. I took advantage by sketching the front gate post for my Inktober Day 18 drawing . See earlier post today. By the time I finished my first sketch, the parking lot had nearly filled up.

I wanted to catch the steam rising off the two large kettles out toward the back of the Snack Shack where they were boiling corn on the cob.

I toured as much of the property as I could before the rain started, then stepped inside the gift shop, Mouseville, and the animal barn to keep my sketchbook dry. Every once in a while I would step out again to check on something I may have missed in the sketch I was working on.

The man with the "Hair Style of the Day", was

Dutch Bihary, the face painter working at a barber chair inside the animal barn. His calm and smiling demeanor and fast yet effortless skill attracted an unending stream of children, ready to have him paint butterflies, tigers and more on their upturned faces.

After we shared our sketches, I could see that the rain was letting up, so I decided to stay and wait it out. There was a wagon load of fresh fall flowers, some pink pumpkins and a bin of apples that I had my eye on. I only had to wait for less than half an hour before I could go out to finish my two page spread.

Families, sketchers and people of all ages were not deterred by rain or cold.

Inktober in Snohomish

I spent the morning with Seattle Urban Sketchers at Craven Farms in Snohomish. Right there at the main gate was a great spot to make my Inktober 18 drawing.

Each gate post along the exits and entrances to the farm has a distinctive finial made of metal.

Everyone was already in the main farmyard, but rain was expected at any time, so I wanted to be sure to capture this before any drops fell. My water soluble ink would smudge and smear if it got rained on, and not in a good way.

Inktober finished for the day. Now I'm off to join the others in the farmyard for more sketching.