Solo Art Play Date

 

1/7/26 Through windows at Seattle Asian Art Museum

I found a rare free afternoon on my calendar with no one to play with, so I took myself out for an art play date last week. My first stop was the Seattle Asian Art Museum, where I had fun sketching white on black a couple of months ago. This time, while I did look at some art I had missed last time, my sketching target was a tree I had spotted previously. The newish wing of SAAM is entirely glass on the side that faces Volunteer Park. Although most museum visitors wouldn’t consider this tree an “exhibit,” its wild and crazy branches reaching out toward the museum captured my attention. I appreciated being able to spend leisurely time sketching it while inside the comfy museum.

Lots of similar values

It was also an ideal opportunity to explore something I’ve been thinking about with my values-based palette. One big problem I have with any scene in flat, consistent lighting, like on an overcast day or indoors with lighting coming from all directions, is that most of the values look the same. This tree scene was typical (at right): Almost everything was the same midtone except the visible wing of the museum, which was light, and the foreground tree was slightly darker. To differentiate the foreground tree from the background trees, which are all about the same hue, too, I tried to use roughly the same values (exaggerating the focal tree a bit) but with different colors. (I pushed this idea a little further in the café sketch that I’ll talk about later.)

By the way, coloring the building with the pale blue I had picked out as one of my light values showed me that the choice was a fail. It was just too pale, so I mixed it with the midtone green just to make it show up on the paper. (When I got home, I immediately replaced the blue with a vibrant but light-valued green.) I also had to outline the building, which I have been trying to avoid with the more painterly approach I’m taking with crayons.

Black Sun, Isamu Noguchi (I have lately been using a very pale blue or pale yellow
Derwent Drawing pencil to write on black-paper sketches. I don't want the text to be
as bright-white as the sketch.)

On my way out of the museum, I stopped to make a quick sketch of Isamu Noguchi’s Black Sun by the parking area. One of my favorite sculptures in Seattle, it has appeared in my sketchbook many times, but this is the first time I sketched it white on black. (Even as I’m newly enchanted by wacky colors, I’m still obsessed with drawing with white!)

For the second part of my play date, I walked to Caffe Ladro. This was a fun scene to attempt with my wacky ideas because it was full of “nothing,” which made it easier to focus on values, it had striking contrasts between the lightest and darkest values, and it also had a lot of midtones that were hard to distinguish. Although everything outside was kind of the same value and in muted hues, I tried to use color (but not local color) to make distinctions. Another example is the man, who was mostly in silhouette against the windows. If I were using something like a single black marker, I’d have difficulty showing the difference between his face and his hat, which were the same dark value. But with the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons, I tried varying the hues without changing the value (below).

1/7/26 Caffe Ladro, Capitol Hill

I suppose all this stuff I’m practicing is second nature to painters – but thinking like a painter is always a challenge for me! (And thinking like a painter has nothing to do with applying paint! I’m way more interested in the former than the latter!)

Neocolors at the cafe

Somewhere in a YouTube or maybe on his blog, James Gurney says that most artists are either line makers or shape makers and are rarely both. I don’t want to be locked into either line or shape; I want to be able to use whichever approach is better for the subject matter or whatever it is I want to convey.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been having a lot of fun with on-location comics, which I enjoy so much as a way to tell the stories of a place. The approach’s format – multiple tiny images on a page – makes simple linework essential, and it’s almost impossible to compose with shapes in such small spaces. Using larger tools like crayons (and, by necessity, a larger format) is really helping me to make this shift to a new approach to color. I haven’t stopped making on-location comics, but I’m ready to give this approach some dedicated focus.

Although I love having art play dates with friends, I realize it’s important to occasionally spend creative time alone to focus on ideas and try new things without socializing. It was a productive afternoon.

Bonus: Sketching the tree at the museum was my first trial of using my new tiny Sendak roll while standing – and it works! I opened the Sendak, folded it backwards and, as I did last summer with the Rickshaw Sinclair, propped it up inside my bag. It’s still a bit awkward, but the big benefit over the Sinclair is that the crayons are easily accessible.

This image might be a bit disorienting without much context: I was carrying my open bag on my shoulder, and this was the view looking down at its contents. The tiny Sendak, folded backward, is propped up inside. The slots keep the Neocolor crayons upright.

ICE Protest

 

1/10/26 Protest rally near Green Lake

After Renee Nicole Good was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis last week, protesters took to the streets across the country. I joined a gathering on Saturday in the Tangletown micro-neighborhood of Green Lake. I thought we were going to stay there for the duration, so I started sketching some participants and their signs (above).

Suddenly leaders blew their whistles, and it was time to march! I had to scramble to keep up while also sketching as I walked (below) – something I’ve done at every protest rally I’ve participated in – but it’s still tricky.

Marching to Green Lake

On the cold but dry afternoon, it felt good to walk with like-minded neighbors the mile or so to Green Lake, drivers honking support as they passed us in their cars. I fell into line behind a couple with their dog, who was wearing two signs: “THIS IS NO TIME TO SIT” on one side, and on the other, “I GIVE A 💩” It was my favorite of the day.

Technical note: After sketching the first page, I didn’t like the look of the lines I was making with the narrow tip of a Faber-Castell Pitt Dual Marker. While that tip works well with my tiny, on-location comics style, when used at a larger scale, the linework gets lost. More than that, the thin lines didn’t look as angry and outraged as I was feeling (and as everyone was expressing with their signs). For the second page, I used the thick brush tip of the marker, and it expressed what I was feeling more accurately (as did the hot pink paper, which I did select specifically for the content). Sometimes the medium is the message, even when sketching.

Cozy and Cushy at Madison Centre

 

1/9/26 Smith Tower from Madison Centre

A new venue for USk Seattle, Madison Centre turned out to be one of our most comfy! Plenty of plush seating, floor-to-ceiling natural light, security people in sight but none concerned about what we were doing – it was an ideal winter location. And what’s to sketch there? Fantastic window views of some of downtown Seattle’s nicer buildings, a plant-covered wall, a double-sided fireplace, and an intriguing spiral staircase – just to name a few.

Library window washers

I started with a sketch of my beloved Smith Tower through a window frame and part of that staircase in the foreground. (Note the pink tower! A bold choice that I’m sure I would otherwise never have chosen were it not in my latest wacky palette!)

Mid-sketch, I turned around to get a sip of water from my bag, when I spotted window washers dangling from the very top of the Central Library across the street! Yikes, watching people work up high gives me the jitters, so this one was quick (at left).

When I had first checked out this location months ago for USk potential, the spiraling central staircase had caught my eye immediately. Toward the end of the outing, I finally screwed up my courage to take on a part of that spiral. It was a fun challenge to capture the matte sheen on the black steps in contrast with the shiny, metallic handrails (below).

Madison Centre's stairway

It was great to see a solid weekday turnout for Madison Centre, which will stay on our winter venue list!

Sorting Neocolor II Crayons by Values

 

My Neocolor II crayons sorted by value

My Caran d’Ache Neocolor II wacky palette needed a shake-up. For my previous experiments, my selection had been mostly random and arbitrary. Now that I have a better idea of the concept of coloring by values, I decided to be a bit more systematic (but still in keeping with the wacky principles that I think Germanier was using when I was inspired).

After first eliminating colors I knew I wouldn’t enjoy using in a wacky way (black, browns and grays – especially in the dead of winter!), I sorted the remaining crayons by my perception of dark, medium and light values based purely on the crayon tips (above). As we know from water-soluble pencils, the dry hue can be a far cry from the water-activated color, but it was a rough cut.

From there, I picked out a cool and a warm from each of the three value ranges (below). (Whoa, this is getting way too systematic for an exercise I’m calling “wacky”! But dang if I’m not a color geek, through and through!) Considering my previous palette, I avoided repeating the same hues within the same value. I made test swatches to confirm that their water-activated forms still fit in the value range I saw in the crayon tips.

The palette I selected: A warm and a cool within each value. Pink (081) could fit in the medium range as well as the light, but I'll see how it works as a light.

I have no yellow this time! In my previous palette, yellow had served me well as a light value because it automatically signaled natural light. I felt a little nervous about that, but as I said, I needed a shake-up.

What an unusual way to pick a palette! Does it work? I guess we’ll both find out!

Temporary storage solution after sorting

My Teeny-Tiny Sendak

 

The Sendak Nutshell -- just right for crayons!

I have a big one. I have a small one. And now I have a teeny-tiny one! Peg & Awl, one of my favorite sketch kit accessory makers, has come out with a scaled-down version of their ever-popular Sendak artist roll. Adorably called the Nutshell, it was exactly what I was looking for to solve my problem of carrying Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons on location.

Shorter than pencils, crayons are difficult to dig out of the Rickshaw Waldo case I’ve long used for pencils. I briefly tried putting a few crayons into one of my larger Sendaks, but that failed immediately. The slots are made for pens and pencils, and if a crayon got pushed in too deep within a slot, it was really difficult to get it out.

Last summer I used the bulkier Rickshaw Sinclair to carry crayons, which wasn’t ideal, either. While its padding did protect the somewhat fragile crayons, and the crayons could stand upright and accessible, I couldn’t really see the colors easily without pulling all of them out.

I kept thinking that eventually the right kind of case would appear – and then it did! The Sendak Nutshell’s slots are about 5 inches deep – too short for full-length pencils but just right for 4-inch crayons. And six slots are ideal for my wacky palette or any limited palette.

Of course, it doesn’t fit into my daily-carry, mini-size Rickshaw Zero Messenger Bag, so I still need an auxiliary tote bag, but I’m resigned to needing one for any sketch outing (other than fitness walks) anyway. It works best at cafés where I have a table to open it up, and it’s small enough that it doesn’t take up much space on the tabletop.

Small enough to easily spread open on a cafe table. Yeah, I broke the red one :-( ... not in the case but from my heavy-handed drawing!

I’m not sure how it’s going to work when I’m standing while sketching, but I’ll try propping it up inside my bag the same way I did with the Sinclair last summer. I’m looking forward to a day of drier, warmer weather when I can test that out. For now, I’m happy to continue sketching indoors with crayons, now that I have the teeny-tiny Sendak.

An adorable acorn on the strap!

My Sendak family: Papa, mama and their new offspring.

More Wacky Colors

 

12/31/25 Third Place Commons

Here are a couple more experiments using my wacky color palette. I’m diggin’ it!

I made the one above at Third Place Commons, where a few friends helped Natalie celebrate her birthday. The people I sketched were not part of our group; they happened to be sitting on the other end of the community table, and they were all sketching, too! In the background is the Honey Bear Bakery's mascot.

The one below is of Top Pot Doughnuts in Wedgwood. Most of the café space is filled with shelves containing old books, which form an interesting background pattern.

1/2/26 Top Pot Doughnuts, Wedgwood neighborhood

These values-based colors are fun to use in interior spaces. I haven’t tried using them outdoors, though – that will be next-level testing. Given all the rain and cold still ahead, though, it could be a while before I can get to that. In the meantime, I have more excuses to hang out in cafés.

Foggy First

 

1/1/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

The new year awakened with a thick blanket of fog. It’s a common occurrence this time of year, as my Facebook “memories” have been showing me my foggy sketches from years past. The first one I make of the season always feels rusty – like I forgot how to use a graphite pencil (which, I admit, I hadn’t used in a while, since I used only colored pencils during Pencilvember).

For the animals I’ve been drawing with colored pencils lately, my general approach is to slam on the color as hard and fast as possible. Drawing fog with graphite, however, requires the opposite approach: Shading as lightly as possible while still being visible.