Sketching at Da Shop with USK Oahu and family

My son’s family came with me to the USK Oahu sketch outing in Kaimuki at Da Shop, a relatively new bookstore that is part of a publishing warehouse. They specialize in books and authors from Hawaii and Oceania. Along with the books displayed in the store and online, they have children talk stories, food events, author and artist exhibitions, film screenings and lectures.

My sketch of my granddaughter, Ocean, sketching in the children’s corner.

I thought the children’s reading corner was so inviting. When I was a child I would have loved having a place like that to tuck into with a good book!

9 year old Leila sketching at Da Shop, Honolulu.

Leila’s sketches, minus one.

Our son, Matt, reading to his daughter, Ocean.

See more about the outing here oahu.urbansketchers.org/2018/12/07/next-event-44/

A Nod to Wyeth

A nod to Wyeth.

Sometimes as a way of doing preliminary studies I will make several versions of a painting as greeting card sketches. Often, that's all they will ever be, just explorations.

This 5x7 gives me an opportunity to play around with a bit of Wyeth metaphor in the imagery. Here's a list in case you haven't caught the implications on your own:

1. A colonial wrought iron candle stick holder. Something that would have been common at Chad's Ford during the Revolutionary War.
2. The candle is colonial style, too. 
3. Eggs, as in egg tempera, the medium for which Wyeth became known.
4. The jagged edges of the broken egg shells remind me of the jagged edges on a log of fire wood outside one of Wyeth's window compositions.
5. There is the window, of course, with the windows of the building outside peering in as Andrew might have done.
6. The autumn season was one of Wyeth's favorites as was the same limited palette I'm using here.
7. Andrew used a bit of underlying drama to create a certain amount of unease in his compositions. I have alternated symmetry and asymmetry to leave the viewer slightly off balance. The candle flame, almost but not quite touching the window handle causes a bit of visual tension.
8. And then there are the shadows reminiscent of the shadows on the ceiling at Kuerner's. This time they're on the tablecloth. 

Countdown to #USkGlobal24hrSketchwalk Four Days Left!

On Saturday, November 11, 2017, Urban Sketchers around the world will be participating in a 24 hour Sketch Walk to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Urban Sketchers. I'm going to start counting down today!

In addition, I am going to try something for the first time. I will abandon these 4 hand painted art prints, one a day, culminating with abandoning the last one on Saturday, Nov 11 at King Street station in Seattle!  Which one is your favorite?

See Art Abandonment Project here for more info. The image is fresh, printed from my original urban sketch drawn just a few hours ago and hand painted with watercolor! Please email me if you find one! Maybe with a photo of you finding it?

This morning I heard the street sweeper as he drove slowly around our neighborhood. Very rare on our street! I dropped my pen and lost a shoe in the rush to get the sketch before he was gone!

My original bona fide urban sketch, fresh off the sidewalk this morning!

See my Instagram feed for more photos of the excitement of urban sketching, posted in action!

Screech!

Inktober 2017, Day 9-- Daily prompt "Screech"

 

"Screech!!!" Went the soles of my shoes as I stepped out onto the front porch and saw this awe inspiring lantern of a fall tree, lit up by the autumn sun.

 "Screech!!!" Went the brakes on the truck as it went around the sharp corner.

"Screech!!!" Went my paintbrush as I came to the decision that I had already said all I wanted about the beauty of the autumn color and light. I feel that if I add anything else at all, it would take away from the concept that I have so far.

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.

Urban Sketching Workshop Announcement

I will be teaching two new Intro to Urban Sketching workshops through Skagit Valley College this summer. Locations for sketching will be different on each day of each workshop. All levels of ability and experience are welcome.

Call 360-416-7638     More info online here. Click Summer.

Blog readers' bonus! In addition to four fun days of learning to develop your urban sketching skills, here's a Special gift for those who sign up for both workshops! See details below!

Imagine how amazing your sketching pens, pencils and brushes will look in this faux leather pouch! Sign up for both summer workshops and it's yours!

Plein Air at Waimanalo

Are all beaches the same? Although a few things were different, like the 77 degree weather, the surfers, the ironwood trees and the soft, deep, caramel colored sand; the beach in Waimanalo reminded me a bit of home in the Pacific NW. People walked along the shore, passing the impromptu structures hand built on beaches the world over. I sketched a similar one of these structures at home recently for my Inktober series. Most familiar, however, was the wonderful experience of spending the morning painting with some local friends.

"Captain Howie" performs a beach wedding. Website

I interrupted my initial sketch to follow a wedding couple down the beach and to sketch them at a distance as they conferred with a local officiant known as Capt. Howie. See my last photo below to view his home, known locally as "the Hobbit House". Another couple were having their wedding photos taken on the other end of the beach. See photo collage below.

After a morning of painting and sketching, watercolorists and oil painters shared a delicious lunch in perfect compatibility. Great conversation, hospitality and a serenade on the ukulele rounded out the day. Many thanks for everything, Adrienne and Lawrence. It was lovely. 

Happy painters after a morning on the beach and delicious lunch with our hosts, Adrienne and Lawrence. Photo: (left to right) Me, Adrienne, Mark Brown, John Dixon and (in front) Spencer Chang.

See a brief news clip about the "Hobbit House". http://youtu.be/sUQqLPPEmgs

We walked past it on our way to go painting at the beach.

Having fun with Inktober

This being the first week of Inktober, I thought I would offer a few more bits of encouragement to my students and sketching friends. It's not too late to join in! Catch up and keep going!

If you feel too much stress committing to a daily sketch for 31 days (it's still only one day at a time!) how about committing to once a week? or every Saturday and Sunday (that would be 10 for the month)?

Jake Parker, the founder of the Inktober Initiative, has some good suggestions and all sorts of helpful pages on pens, ink, how to draw. He says:

"Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week. What ever you decide, just be consistent with it. INKtober is about growing and improving and forming positive habits, so the more you’re consistent the better."--Jake Parker

Here's my sketchbook with Days 4, 5, & 6 for 2015. I upload each day on my Instagram

One way that I'm pretty sure will get you started is to buy a new pen/ink/sketchbook. You know you want to play with it! Ready? Set? GO!

Bradner Gardens 3-The Zombie Rabbit

Sketches in progress at Bradner P-Patch

As I stood there sketching my last two of the day, I couldn't help but remember a familiar refrain from Irving Berlin:

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Blue birds singin' a song
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

I never saw the sun shinin' so bright, never saw things goin' so right.......

"Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin

And yet.......
I felt like nicknaming this patch the "Garden of the Undead". Most of the seasonal produce had been harvested and perennials remained. (Get it? Perennials LOOK like they've died off, but they keep coming back!) Then, their ghoulish smiles and faded coloring lent these two scarecrows a distinctly "Frankenstein-ish" quality. Well, the Executive Scarecrow did anyway. In this photo you're looking at the back. I sketched him from the front. Ahem. FYI. XYZ.

The "scare rabbit" just looked like a zombie. He was the right color, for sure, and he had these "x" shaped stitches in his ears and on his pouch/pocket.

Power source at the ready, all we need now is a kite and some lightning.

 
Winding paths connect the seven ornamental theme gardens of Bradner Gardens Park: butterfly & hummingbird, fragrance, sensory, shade, xeriscape, winter interest and northwest native. Watch the bees buzz the 61 p-patch plots. Learn the alphabet under the watchful eye of the baby scarecrow in the children’s A to Z garden. Learn how to grow food crops in the Seattle Tilth and Urban Food demonstration gardens. Watch birds take shelter in the native plant habitat. See more than 50 varieties of ornamental street trees recommended for small spaces and under utility lines. Paraphrased and quoted with map from Seattle parks website.

Tap or click map to zoom.

I started in the Children's Garden, sketched the bride scarecrow in the northern P-Patch, toured the rest of the sculptures and ended with these two from the large P-Patch in the southeast corner of the garden.The rest of the ad hoc group of USk Seattle were sketching their own subjects around the garden.

At the end of the meet up we met in the center at the Pavilion to share our sketches. -August 21, 2015.

Bradner Gardens 2-"The Bride" and her Accessories

I've now added watercolor to my second page of sketches from the urban sketcher's Bradner P-Patch outing last Friday. This page is about the scarecrow bride and her accessories. More photos and original ink drawings were all posted that same day here.

As with any bride, the setting is as important as the dress. At Bradner Gardens, they have positioned her in a clearing of her own, backed by a screen of trees and flanked by a bed of pink cosmos.

Micron black pen, watercolor and watercolor pencils, logo collage.

Already a regally tall bride, her height is accentuated by her twiggy up-do and dangling high heeled boots. She's hung her wasp trap handbag on a nearby branch while posing gracefully with outstretched rebar arms. Clusters of ripening blackberries might have made a lovely bead necklace, but she has the non-perishable kind. Along with her "pearl" bead necklace, she has a tiara cleverly crafted out of plumbers' tape. Red reflector earrings, the built in wringer from a sponge mop used as a comb in her hair, I could go on and on.

"You look good from the back, too, girl."

A pair of green "nylon" ropes tie her boots on. I'm not certain whether the blush pink cloth draped around her shoulders is meant to be an old fashioned fichu or if it's her veil, blown about by the wind and tangled in her hair.

Needless to say, those skinny rebar arms could use a little protection from the elements. They're already a bit rusty.

It was a lot of fun guessing at the wardrobe allegories and metaphors.

Stayed tuned: one more page in this series to finish up and post.

.

Bradner Gardens One

On Friday, the Ad Hoc group of Seattle Urban Sketchers met at Bradner Gardens P-Patch. Our grandchildren came with me and toured the garden on their own as I went around the garden sketching. There were so many things I wanted to capture that I decided to forgo color in favor of getting as many line drawings as I could in the time we would be there. I posted those sketchbook pages the very same day here.

I added watercolor later. To help our little great granddaughter remember the day, I wrote notes in the sketches. Tap or click to zoom if you want to read them.

Although the story is true, my reportage took the form of a fairy tale.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

And for dessert we have........

And for dessert......

We have pie, of course! With all the talk of Pi Day being today, and the last date of its kind in a century, etc., etc., I unaccountably developed a sudden craving for pie. Evidently I have no resistance to subliminal suggestion.  

It was a close call. I seriously considered getting out my perfect pie crust recipe, the ingredients and my rolling pin. But then you saw how that went last Sunday with the pancakes.

So we got a Bakery pie instead. Labeled "Berry Envy Pie", it has raspberries, marionberries, aronia berries and blueberries. Berry good!

AND I just managed to sketch the French Lavender ice cream before it slid down the pie! You can see the ice cream pre-avalanche in the sketch and post-avalanche in the trophy photo.

This is the back page of my 2015 Sketchbook Project. I have one more sketch to do and then I can send it off!

USk Seattle at Pike and Melrose

What a group USk Seattle had yesterday at the new Starbucks Roastery on Pike and Melrose! At the end of the session, we filled the sidewalk along the south side of the building with sketchers and their sketches. The number of unique viewpoints, individual style, as well as the obvious high level of accomplishment was astounding. I wish I could have looked over every sketchbook at least one more time.

I arrived about 25 minutes early and couldn't find street parking no matter how many times I circled the block. No wonder! We had approximately 40 people there in our group, not to mention the "regulars" and other Seattle denizens out for a nice Sunday morning cup of coffee and/or breakfast.

Sketches by Michele Cooper-Feb 22, 2015

As I sketched the classic-looking pale green Vespa parked outside the Melrose Apartments, a woman leaned out of her top story window and called out to me: "Are you sketching the Vespa?" "Yes," I answered, "Is it yours?" "No", she replied, "but I was just on the phone with my mother, who's an artist, and I told her-Guess what? Somebody's out on the street sketching the Vespa!" For a time there, I experienced a "New York" kind of moment.

Cabin on the shore

Last Monday I sketched at Kalena's house with friends. At one point we all took a walk along the shore. This old cabin was probably built in the 1950's as a vacation place where families would come on weekends to fish, swim, canoe and water ski. We were there on the day after the Super Bowl and I noticed the "12th Man" flag sadly hanging at half staff. The overcast sky added to the mood and atmosphere. It made me smile to see the yellow door.

I scanned the ink line drawing before adding watercolor.

My DYI Sketchcrawl Along the King Kam Hwy-Part 1

With two little granddaughters to enjoy and lots of shopping trips the past week or two, my correspondence with painting friends at home near Seattle and here on Oahu has been sadly neglected. Aloha, guys, I know the holidays are a busy time for you as well. Hope we get a chance to sketch together in Hawaii before I return to the freezing weather back home.

Meanwhile, my son who does not claim to be an artist, took me on our own independent South Pacific Sketchcrawl yesterday. ( Is it a crawl if you drive from spot to spot?) I'll post more pages tomorrow, but for now:

I sketched in my Stillman and Birn Beta while Matt used a stylus and an app on his smart phone. 

The wind farms and shrimp farm aquaculture exist along the same stretch of the King Kamehameha Highway along the North Shore of Oahu. The wind farms are on hilltops and the shrimp stands sell their garlicky, buttery wares on the right hand roadside on your way to the famous North Shore surfing beaches. 

We caught our first sketch at Kahuku Wind Farm. A wide turnout with an unused approach to another facility provided us with plenty of parking room to get the right angle and sketch from the cool air conditioned leather seats in the car. Luxury! Zoom to read more notes on my journal page. 

We have always pulled over at Giovanni's, unable to resist the promise of the intense flavor of fresh hot shrimp swimming in garlic and butter, piled on top of "two scoop rice". This time we parked on the shoulder about 500 yards ahead of the parking lot at Fumi's. Their shrimp are cooked whole, heads and all and don't seem to have as much garlic as other stands. Each stand has a covered area with picnic tables where customers can enjoy their hot, fresh shrimp. We were there for the sketching this time, however. The scene was a colorist's dream, with a powder blue shack next to a bright yellow van, overlapping an orange tour bus. Then cosmic forces somehow took over and the two vehicles drove off before I could sketch them. Whyyyyyyy! It never fails.....look at something long enough and it will move! Just for that I recorded the flat tire on the pickup/road sign.

Part Two coming up tomorrow!

Winter in Kailua

These two pages describe winter in Kailua this past week.

A glass float with light coming in through a window while it rained outside, a sunset walk on the beach and a marshmallow snowman who sat in a big cup of hot chocolate. 

Glass Fishing Float

Tropical downpour is keeping us indoors today. As I look around the house, I see something that reminds me of the beautiful ocean not too far from here.

Blown glass fishing float

Sketching, Snacking and Chasing Birds in the Park

Three days of activities with Leila. 

There are lots of things to do at the South Pacific Studio with two sweet little girls to keep up with. This two page spread is about Leila, our five year old granddaughter.  Trust me when I say that we are both sketching nearly every day. There is barely enough time to post our adventures before we are off on another one. These sketches are from Dec 14, 17 and 19. 

We don't have a scanner here so pardon the perspective and focus of handheld iPhone photos. 

Tea and sketching

Having flower tea and sketching with my 5 year old and 1 year old granddaughters.  Obviously, my sketch is nowhere near as comprehensive of the experience as Leila's. 

Leila's sketch with self portrait.