The Buoys Near the Boats

Seattle Urban Sketchers brought the sun out again at the Waterfront Activities Center at the University of Washington. In contrast to thunderstorms on Friday and cooler temperatures on Saturday, we found ourselves shedding our layers and searching for shade during our monthly meetup this morning.

I wanted to compare the old shell house with the new one, each located on the shore at opposite ends of the boat launching area. I started with the Conibear Shell House on the north side of the shore. Rather than sketch the buildings, I turned my back to the shell house and chose a view across the lake towards Bellevue. Like a giant bee, a yellow helicopter buzzed through the scene. The floating bridge was closed today and I could see at least three cranes along the stretch visible in the middle distance. As I worked, a man launched a paddle board and set out on his knees for the arboretum, navigating his way between the two orange buoys. Now and then a canoe would emerge from the right, through the lily pads and marsh grass.

Looking east toward Bellevue and the floating bridge under construction.

After finishing my first sketch, I was ready to walk along the shady waterfront path, back towards the Canoe House. It was interesting to see fellow sketchers stationed all along the way, focused on their own particular subjects. Zoom to see larger.

Now on the south end of the water sports area, I walked around the back of the old shell house. Many of the sketchers are in the process of reading "The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown, and they wanted to be at the old shell house where the US. Olympic Champions did their training. I finally chose to draw the huge white bouys, specked with rust and tied to a tree.

A very nice couple stopped to ask if they could see what I was drawing. In an amazing coincidence, she turned out to be Helen, one of my former watercolor students out for the day with her photographer husband, David Barnes. They settled nearby to eat their lunch and I continued to draw.

I only had time to get the line work and a few tones in before I noticed it was time to share our sketches. As it turns out, David Barnes kindly agreed to take our group photo.

Color added to the "Buoys near the Boats." Watercolor Field Book by ProArt, Micron pen, watercolor and map collage.

I collaged a map section, showing the two docks; Conibear Shell House (in the red circle at the top of the map) and the Canoe House (in the lower right corner of the map, indicated by my arrow).

La Conner and the new Boardwalk with Anacortes Sketchers

There was a special ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 23rd at the Washington Street-end to celebrate the completion of the La Conner Boardwalk. Today, the Anacortes Sketchers went there to sketch and explore. 

LaConner has always been an inspiring place to paint: quaint shops, the "rainbow bridge", fishing vessels and the boardwalk. I have been going there for decades to shop, sketch and browse. Previously, the boardwalk consisted of the extended decks from some of the shops and a small wooden landing or two with public access. But now, a major facelift has taken place all along a substantial part of the waterfront.

  

I have to go back! Because, instead of sketching the boardwalk itself, I blithely used it to provide greater access to views across the channel!

Fish processing shed across the channel. Sketch by Michele Cooper

Giant Coffee Cups to Jackalopes - in Fremont, of course

The Fremont sketchcrawl:
Gail gave an overview of the area as sketchers arrived at the back patio of the Way Station Coffee House. There was a plethora of eclectic subject matter for Seattle Urban Sketchers to choose in the Fremont district on this warm, breezy Sunday morning, June 14, 2015.

The Burke-Gilman Trail runs right along the middle of today's four block area. There were plenty of cyclists, walkers, etc. out this morning.

As I sketched my backyard view of the Way Station, I realized the scale of my coffee cup went from a Giga-Grande to an espresso, relatively speaking. There are enough other sketches out there on the USk Seattle blog with proper scale, if you need it.

Next, I took a walk northwards up the street and was stunned by the exterior of  Drunky's Two Shoe BBQ! Horseshoes in the pavement, a "Road Window", big Western Style false fronts on the building and a shiny Airstream in the back. This part of Fremont isn't as polished as the area down by the Fremont bridge, but it is every bit as eclectic. I think it has a kind of  60's vibe.

The top of the Air Stream sported a TV antenna and an olive green matte finish.

Mike, the Pit Master of Drunky's BBQ, says that the Air Stream in which he now lives was once the first place where Drunky's sold their BBQ. A few of us went back to the restaurant for lunch after sharing our sketches.

I played peek-a-boo with a couple of chickens fenced between the patio and the sidewalk.

A racoon modeling a box of Cracker Jack, gas mask, emergency water and possibly Howdy Doody.

There were too many things I wanted to sketch as I gazed upwards during lunch. I managed to sketch the crocodile head and the jackalope, then wrote a short list of things to sketch next time:

• Chainsaw Chandelier, see Tina's and Gail's sketches from lunch, Kate did the fern with a horse jumping out of it
• Wall mounted taxidermy: bass, mountain sheep, deer, pheasants
• O'Keefe style cattle skull
• Chicken (live)
• American Flag with 13 stars
• Velvet Elvis
• Velvet Elvis with Jesus
• A Dodge grill, possibly from a pickup truck
• A canoe on the roof, but over the doorway
• Bronze rooster and pink flying pig
• Bear Trap
• Pig on a tire swing hanging from a ceiling fan
• Oh, and the bar has tractor seats.

Sunday with USk Seattle

This morning I am sketching with the Seattle urban sketchers at the Pioneer Square transit station. It's just behind the Smith Tower with an entrance on Yesler Way.

Brrrrrr! Since I have to leave relatively early to get there from here, the temperature hasn't had time to warm up yet. As I leave our garage at home, my weather app says that it's 18°!

Once I meet with the sketchers, I find it hard to believe that it's supposed to be in the low 40's. They must mean the sunny side of the street and not in the tunnel! The breeze down the stairs to the mezzanine creates a chill factor, I'm sure. But, we're all dressed for it, so off we go to make our sketches for the day.

My sketch journal page for the day.

A fellow sketcher, Tina, and I ducked into Shawn O'Donnell's American Grill Pub for a respite from the cold, hot coffee, and a rest break. We had another 25 minutes to find something to sketch, so we sat inside at the sunny window. I found two quick subjects to add to my NaNoDrawMo 2014 collection. Still need to post most of the ones I've done for the month, though. Goal: 50 drawings in the month of November.

Two more for my NaNoDrawMo 2014

Hey, Sunday Painters! How about trying the NaNoDrawMo challenge!?
Inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable "when I have time" practice for one month and see what happens.

Loosely defined goals are for each participant to produce 50 individual works/drawings between Nov 1 and Nov 30. You can always do more than 50 if you've got it in you! That's just the minimum everyone should be shooting for.

You do not have to be good. There is no quality requirement. The idea is to force yourself to practice by setting a high quantity goal. Also, it’s not a competition (except with yourself). Any medium is OK, as long as you can get it onto Flickr somehow.

Please tag your uploads “nanodrawmo”.
Flag your upload as "Art / Illustration" or Flickr won't let you add it to the group. (quoted from Flikr description)

Oh and don't forget to have some fun while you're at it.
Check out the Flikr photostream of current national uploads for inspiration.

Seattle USk at Lake Union Houseboats

My two pages of sketches for the day

Photo Credit: MKBuike, Red Harp Photography

Here I am (blue jacket, white hat) on the dock outside Mary Lou and Sam's houseboat with Seattle Urban sketchers Peggy, Frank and Jess. See the Seattle USk blog for more photos of the day's outing. BTW, that's my new pared down urban sketch kit on my lap. It worked great this first time around!

An extra treat: Sam took some of us out afterwards on a cruise around the lake in his Lear boat, the "Plug N Play".

A view from Sam's boat

We saw another whole aspect of the houseboat community from the marine viewpoint.
Thank you, Mary Lou and Sam for your generous hospitality.

Checking out our own sketchbooks

Jennifer, Tina, Michele and Judy

We made it! Judy Gowdy and I got to the Sketchbook project around 1pm today. I drove from Marysville and Judy from Bellevue. We met Tina Koyama, of USk Seattle, who walked up from Pioneer Square after sketching with the ad hoc group this morning. Tina is lightning fast, and posted her account way ahead of me. :) (see link with her name)

We also met someone new, Jennifer Smith, an artist with a studio at Inscape Arts, the former INS building. She walked over to see what the Sketchbook Project was all about and struck up a conversation with us.
Here we are with our own sketchbooks that we all checked out, plus a random one apiece. We found a nice bench in the shade and traded them around. That way we got to see 8 sketchbooks! Jennifer's were chosen by the librarian, since she doesn't have a book in the project yet.

We would have gotten more books, but the check-out system is a bit challenging. So if you get over there before it ends tomorrow, give yourself a generous amount of time.

One book, that Judy got, was from a New York artist who illustrated the history of the handbag. The sketchbook was beautifully hand bound, with 3-D attachments and patterns for the construction of classic handbags on some of  the pages. At the end, there were tiny drawings of over a dozen classic bags, all in gold ink! Artists are phenomenal, aren't they?

PS I didn't see the food truck today, but I did see a school bus.

Fun with "new" materials

Using my new Stillman & Birn Beta Sketchbook

I got a lovely new sketchbook (180# paper! no less) as a gift of the workshop.

Going through my studio hoard, I dug up my Van Gogh pocket palette. Never been used! They worked out quite well for our day at Pt. Townsend.

Sunday Painters - Art History

Mark Tobey sketches. One-man shows at both the Cornish School and the newly-built Seattle Art Museum helped introduce local residents to the "modernism" that was rapidly gaining Tobey national acclaim.
Photo Credit: Seattle Times.

(See previous post for info on current exhibit and recent USk sketching workshop at the market.)

Follow the tradition of one of your heroes in art, or visit your local museum to choose an artist for this experiment. Study their work, then visit the locations where they were inspired, and see if you can emulate the way they saw the world.

Gail Wong, one of our instructors, gave us brown paper, charcoal, white chalk and conte' sticks. She challenged us to find market textures and multiple images as Mark Tobey did. Here's my take on it. 

USk Workshop at SAM and Pike Place Market

My friend, Judy, and I attended a fantastic workshop today: The Urban Sketchers Workshop in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum. The event is tied to the exhibit Modernism in the Pacific Northwest featuring the work of the late Seattle artist Mark Tobey and other leading figures of the modern art movement that took place in the Northwest in the late 1930s and 1940s.

The workshop began with a tour of the exhibit, then lunch followed by a hands-on field sketching session at Pike Place Market led by Urban Sketchers instructors Gabriel Campanario, Frank Ching and Gail Wong. During the workshop, participants gained valuable sketching tips to draw on location —from perspective and composition to figure drawing basics— and channelled Tobey's spirit of sketching at the market.

Sketchbook sponsors: Stillman & Birn.
Pencils and 66 Watercolor "Try it Color sheets": Daniel Smith

Gail Wong, Frank Chin, and Gabriel Campanario were our Instructors.

We were divided into three groups and then rotated among the locations where each instructor gave their part of the program.

This was the plan.