Taking a summer break, Now and Then

I'm combining two day's worth of #WorldWatercolorMonth sketches in one post. Life has been busy!

Day 7 & 8 for World Watercolor Month 

Day 7 - Friday night memories bring me back to the time when my husband and I were dating. We used to go out for pizza and beer on Fridays and maybe even a movie. At the time, this was a relatively economical date to go on! We lived in a smallish town and after a while they knew what our order would be as soon as they saw us walk into the restaurant.

That was then. Now you could feed a family of four on what some people spend at Starbucks every week. We have our own espresso machine at home, which has paid for itself many times over!

Day 8 - I'm not a total Scrooge, however. When Starbucks came out with this yummy looking drink, the Iced Coconut Milk Mocha Macchiato, I absolutely had to try it! It looks so delicious and perfect for cooling off on a hot day. Yes, it was good, but I've had one now and I'm satisfied.

On the Boardwalk, LaConner

Calico Cupboard and south end of the boardwalk. 

From a sleepy little fishing village in winter to a vacation destination, LaConner certainly wakes up in summer. Calico Cupboard has always been a local favorite but, with the new "boardwalk" and its corner location, the line of bakery/restaurant customers sometimes goes halfway down the block.

The boardwalk is not actually made of boards anymore, but a wide aluminum grating. The new waterfront access now encourages people to amble along the back side of shops, boutiques and restaurants on the Main Street. There are always a couple of pickup trucks parked outside. After lunch, or on cloudy days, activity around the boardwalk sometimes slows down long enough for a bakery treat from Calico Cupboard after a quick sketch or two.

For Day 5, Summer Skies, please see my post here.

Cherry Pie in One Minute

I had a lot of fun doing a time lapse video demo with the last of the cherry pie...then I ate it!

It's quick and loose. Just the thing to do at teatime! Watch both the drawing and the watercolor process on my Instagram feed. Enjoy!

https://www.instagram.com/michelecooperart

Spending Our One Sunny Day in Fremont with USkSeattle

'After all the recent rainfall, it was a beautifully sunny day at Hale’s Ales Brewery for the Urban Sketchers Seattle meet-up at 11 a.m. Since 1983, Hale’s claims to be the longest running, continually owned brewery, of any size, in the Pacific Northwest, and indeed one of the oldest in the entire U.S.

There were fascinating things (like a red London phone booth) to sketch inside, but the forecast is for another week of rain and I didn't want to waste our one sunny day! I found a great spot out back of the brewery at the corner of 8th Ave NW and NW 43rd. 

Who wouldn't want to bask in the warm sun while sketching a grain elevator with a worn out Moss Bay sign, a container with the word "clepto" spray painted in red on the side, a small spare tire secured with rope to the blue tarp on a storage bin and a nice big green dumpster? After a while, despite the sunshine, my hands did get cold so I went inside to see what the menu had to offer.

Along with lunch, a few of us ordered a flight of ales with interesting names like El Jefe Weisen, Red Menace, and NightTroll (a play on words referring to a nearby landmark, the Fremont Troll.)

I counted 23 sketchers today. I'm not surprised. When we get a sun break here in the Pacific NW we don't waste it! After sharing our sketches and getting a group photo in the Pub, I headed for one more spot on the way home.

I've been waiting for a sunny day and some good cast shadows so that I could sketch the old Everett Courthouse. These shadows weren't quite what I had in mind, but we have only one day of pure sunshine before it rains again!

The front steps are no longer used and some of the landscaping is getting a bit overgrown. It's an unusual type of architecture for our area, but Everett does have a few random Spanish style buildings, including the old courthouse. The shadows I wanted would have been better in about an hour but I felt uncomfortable alone in the deserted neighborhood.  So I quickly sketched an abbreviated version of the scene and went home to add color.

Update: I was notified that my sketch of the Old Everett Courthouse I added to the Flickr group Urban Sketchers Seattle has been selected to be its cover photo. See how it looks here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/seattlesketchers/

Day 4 and 7 short of Goal

I'm sketching at Haagen's grocery tonight after a really busy day. Got this shot of the last group to leave. I'll be 7 short of my goal of sketching 20 people for the day so tomorrow it is going to be catch up time. 

For me, the quickest way to sketch a group is directly painting with a brush, no pencil or preliminary drawing. I'm starting to get a better feel for the hot press surface in my new Stillman and Birn Zeta sketchbook.  I'm using a Pentel Waterbrush and my Atoids watercolor mini tin with 6 colors. If time allows, I can use my Sharpie Stylo fine tip pen for a few details. The woman in her '30s (upper right group)  had an entire collection of what looked like toddlers' car seat toys strung up and hanging from her backpack zipper pull.

So this brings my total to 74 people sketches so far. Tomorrow is Friday, the last day of the challenge. I have a class to teach until 1:00. I'm glad it will be a day when there's typically a lot of people out there!

20 Drawings for Tuesday

On a cold, rainy day, I headed for the grocery store. Much to my surprise, the middle of my journey was occupied by road construction, causing us to line up single file and drive by in alternate queues. I started to draw while waiting, but the line started moving almost immediately, so I had to resort to a few quick snapshots with my smart phone and finish these first 6 people from photos.



I parked at Safeway and added color to the road workers, then went into the store to "buy bread for dinner" while stalking customers for my next 9 sketches. It seems my ninja sketching skills are waning and the most interesting profiles or face on people caught on to what I was doing. The one that gave me the most trouble was the lady in the lower right of the page who barely was able to hold onto her armload of groceries. I actually  tracked her all the way to the shopping carts, where she deposited her haul and promptly disappeared.

I realize that standing with your sketchbook in the grocery store might look like you have a very copious check list, but I really only had a package of dinner rolls in my cart. That florist was even faster than me and my grocery cart. She flitted like a bee all over the store and I felt I would look a bit suspicious hustling after her. Who knows what the security tapes already looked like during my 45 minutes in the store!

Lastly, I had 5 more people to draw for the day, so I went to the gas station, but there wasn't a good vantage point. Got gas. Then I thought there might be some people in the nearby Michael's hobby store on such a dreary day. Well, the customers were outnumbered by the clerks and here they all are. Well, 4 of them are customers and the lady with the strangely asymmetrical hair style was one of the clerks.

Tomorrow will be the last day that I can freely search for sketch models. I have to leave after dinner for my night watercolor class at Skagit Valley College. Then classes each day through Friday. If you come to class, I will sketch you!

21 Drawings for Monday

It's the first day of the One Week 100 People global drawing challenge. I decided to use a new black Pocket Brush Pen by Pentel on my second sketch below. The pen has cartridges that can be replaced and I figured it might be a good idea to have some backup this week. I imagine I will be using a lot more ink than usual!

It got pretty cold this afternoon when I was finally able to scout out one of our local Starbucks stores. I spent 30 minutes on 6 out of 7 sketches in my Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook. I haven't used the smooth paper from the Zeta series before. My usual Sharpie Stylo pen just glides over the surface!  I had to wait about 14 minutes to sketch the girl at the drive thru window because I only got glimpses between customers. By the time I left, it felt distinctly like snow was in the air! (It is snowing outside as I post this!)

These 7 sketches were done from life on location.

This morning, I caught a glimpse of a photo from Rome, which had a few urban sketchers in it. I liked the group shot, so used it to try out my new materials.

This one's from a photo, so doesn't really qualify as an urban sketch. It was not drawn on location- a weird dichotomy since I referred to a photo of 10 urban sketchers.

4 kids in a snow flurry

The last sketch brings the total up to 21, since I'm counting partial people. These kids arrived at the North Cascades Institute for Spring Mountain School amidst a thick flurry of snow. Three out of four were delighted and I wanted to see if I could capture the various reactions on their faces as they got off the bus.

I used a reference photo from the NCascades IG feed for reference.