Familiar Yet Fresh

8/17/17 I-5 overpass, Green Lake neighborhood

Like many other urban sketchers visiting Chicago last month, I found myself compelled to sketch the El’s supports and infrastructure. Certainly they were visually interesting, but seeing things with fresh eyes makes everything more interesting. The typical Chicagoan seeing us sketching on Wabash Street probably wondered what could possibly be so captivating about that scene so familiar to them. 

The I-5 overpass across Weedin Place Northeast near Green Lake is a scene I see nearly every day. Yesterday as I was driving home from an errand, I was suddenly captivated by the broad stripes of dark and light formed by the freeway and its shadow. For just a moment I took off my native Seattleite’s eyes – now blind to most things I pass every day – and put on a fresh pair belonging to a visitor. 

Two Sketchbooks Bound

My Chicago sketchbook

My sketchbook from my week in Chicago is thin – only two signatures of 16 pages each – but it’s thick with memories. As I did last year with my UK and Manchester symposium sketchbook, I bound the symposium program right into the sketchbook between the two signatures. On the covers are two of my favorite street scenes – the El tracks at Wabash and Congress, and Michican Street looking out toward the pointy blue Two Prudential Tower.

The symposium program is bound right into the book between the two signatures.

While I had my bookbinding supplies out, I also stitched together my signatures from May through the beginning of August, including our short trip to the Twin Cities. On the covers are the walrus on the Arctic Building sketched at the beginning of summer and the construction going on outside our Minneapolis hotel. Looking back through the sketches as I bound the book, I have to say it’s been a great season! 

If you detect a bit of wistfulness, it’s because I’ve been seeing traces of yellow and orange in some trees just lately. At the first signs of fall, some years I either panic or go into denial; other times I’m ready to let summer go. This year I feel mostly the latter: We had one of the best summers on record, weather-wise, and I sketched the heck out of it. (And now we could certainly use the rain.) Still, the outdoor-sketching season is always shorter than I want it to be, so the waning days of summer are also bittersweet.

My sketchbook from May through early August

Keeping Up

8/5/17 Maple Leaf neighborhood

The couches are appearing so often in my neighborhood that I can hardly keep up. The top one is probably the most ornate one I’ve sketched so far. Rather charming next to the yellow picket fence, don’t you think? 

The one below – let’s just say it lacked charm, though it was appropriately placed next to the trash bins on trash day. On the driveway behind the easy chair were more overflowing trash and recycle bins. The “free” signs were written on torn-off notebook paper and scrawled in pencil.

8/7/17 Wedgwood neighborhood

Hazy

8/10/17 Skyline from Harvard Avenue East on Capitol Hill

While we were in Chicago, smoke from wildfires in western Canada began blanketing the Pacific Northwest. By the time we returned home on Aug. 4, some of the smoke had dissipated, but not all. When looking at the sky it was sometimes hard to distinguish smoke from a white overcast, but the light coming through windows had a distinctly yellowish cast to it. Sometimes eerie, sometimes beautiful (at sunset), the smoky air was nonetheless disconcerting.

All last week I was trying to figure out how to sketch that disturbing haze. On Thursday morning I was on my way to Capitol Hill when I saw a particularly gloomy skyline, despite the otherwise sunny day. I remembered that Harvard Avenue East, which parallels Interstate 5, has a panoramic view of that skyline, so I pulled off the freeway and drove over to the lookout I had in mind. Two years ago Greg and I had explored this particular spot as a potential site for fireworks viewing, and I recalled sketching the Olympics behind the Aurora Bridge and Lake Union. This sketch looks a bit further south than my previous sketch, and all I could see were the gray silhouettes of skyscrapers and the Needle – no mountains anywhere. 

Fortunately, the next day the last of the smoke finally started to dissipate, and we had clear skies for our extravaganza sketching weekend (well, except for the normal overcast on Sunday).

Mega Pity Party Weekend!

8/11/17 Calder's Eagle at the Olympic Sculpture Park

When we heard that the 5th Annual West Coast Sketch Crawl in Vancouver, B.C., had been cancelled, many of us in Seattle were very disappointed. I had a great time in Tacoma last year and in San Diego the year before, and I had been looking forward to another terrific long weekend of sketching in that lovely Canadian city to the north.

The USk Seattle admin team decided that we weren’t going to cry over lost sketching. For the same weekend that would have been the Sketch Crawl, we scheduled an extravaganza of outings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Not intended to be a formal replacement for the cancelled event, it was just a way to give everyone as many sketch outing options as possible as we move toward the waning days of summer.

8/11/17 Space Needle

On Friday we met at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which has become something of a summertime staple. Although I sketch Calder’s Eagle just about every time I visit (last year, twice in 2014 and in 2013), I was magnetically drawn to it yet again. This time, however, I chose a partial view, and as I sketched, I remembered fondly Calder’s similar but much larger Flamingo in Chicago.

I wandered around the park a long time, simply enjoying the not-too-hot sunshine and not feeling particularly compelled – until I saw the Space Needle peeking over some buildings. Then with only a few minutes before the throwdown, I made a quick sketch above the amphitheater with Richard Serra’s Wake in the background. The empty space on the page was a good spot to hold the badge that Kate had playfully given to participants.

8/11/17 Amphitheater and Richard Serra's Wake

8/12/17 Sketcher on the ferry

For Saturday, Day 2 of our extravaganza, we chose Bainbridge Island for an entire day of sketching. Meeting up on the ferry, most of us started sketching right away, and I spotted a woman I didn’t know who looked like she was sketching, too. When we talked to her later, it turned out Martha was aware of Urban Sketchers but didn’t know we would be on the ferry that day. A life drawing student, she simply enjoys sketching people on the ferry. Imagine meeting a sketcher in the wild who isn’t part of Urban Sketchers while we’re on our way to a sketch outing!

After the initial meetup in Winslow, I headed for the Bainbridge Farmers Market, where I was lured by music and the smells of good foods cooking. I had to leave the house so early to catch the ferry that I had skipped breakfast, so I ate a big piece of carrot cake while sketching Good Karma Blues, a lively band with a terrific vocalist.

 

8/12/17 Good Karma Blues at Bainbridge Farmers Market

8/12/17 Eagle Harbor

That was a lot of fun, and I could have stayed all day sketching nothing but the market, but I was on an island, after all, so I found myself gravitating toward the water. At Eagle Harbor, the sun started to break through the overcast sky as a few lazy boats knocked against a pier. 

After the sketchbook throwdown, the group split up – some going to Rolling Bay to take part in the art studio tour and some staying in Winslow for lunch and whatever. I opted for the latter, and after a leisurely lunch of symposium gossip, half the afternoon zipped by on island time. A few of us went to the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, where local artist Bill Hemp has an exhibit of pen and ink drawings of island locations. Interestingly, the pieces are reproductions of his sketchbook pages that look like they are torn right out of a spiral-bound book.

While I often have opportunities to sketch ferries, I see them only when they are either stopped briefly at a dock or a long distance away where it’s hard to see details. I took advantage of a moored ferry near the Winslow terminal to squeeze in one last sketch before hopping on the ferry back to Seattle. I think being able to take my time to observe and draw all the details on this one will help me fake it a little more realistically next time I need to sketch a ferry on the fly.

8/12/17 Washington State Ferry at Winslow terminal

For our third and final day, we chose the West Seattle Farmers Market, one of Seattle’s few neighborhood markets that are open all year round. As I was driving across the West Seattle Bridge, the drizzle on my windshield started looking like it could be “measurable” rain, which made me wonder if we had finally ended our record-breaking spell of consecutive dry days. I also started wondering if our sketch outing would end in a soggy mess. As it turned out, we did end our dry streak with 56 consecutive rainless days, but I needn’t have worried about sogginess – the measurable drizzle stopped as quickly as it had begun, and it was my favorite sketching weather – a comfortable temperature, not windy, the sun darting in and out of clouds just often enough to provide shadows or light, whichever you need at the moment.

 

8/13/17 Bluegrass band at West Seattle Farmers Market

I mentioned a few days ago that I had hardly sketched any people in Chicago, so today I made up for it. A lively bluegrass band, a young cellist, and a guitarist standing in front of a huge mural all provided the tunes for a fun morning at the farmers market.

8/13/17 guitarist and mural

8/13/17 cellist at the market

8/13/17 Junction Plaza Pocket Park near the West Seattle Farmers Market 

Despite the iffy weather, we had a small but stalwart turnout for our pity party finale. And Sue and I get the prize (each other’s respect!) for participating on all three days!

Stalwart sketchers at the Day 3 finale

Sue and I made it to all three days!

Sketchnoting at Hill House

8/4/17 sketches and notes made with a brush pen

On our second day in the Twin Cities when it rained, we toured the James J. Hill House, an enormous historic mansion in St. Paul. As a preface, I have to say that I generally don’t do well on tours involving a guide who walks a large group through some facility, pointing out various artifacts while rattling off a stream of amusing anecdotes and historic dates. Even before I was sketching, these types of tours made me glaze over. Now it’s even worse because if I don’t glaze over, I’m seeing something I’d like to sketch, but the guide is already rushing us onward.

Hill house exterior

Wanting to avoid that frustrating experience on the Hill House tour, I tried something new. Initially I thought I would simply make small sketches as quickly as I could. I started doing that, but as the guide spoke, I found myself writing some of what she said next to my sketches, whether they related or not. Eventually I was taking notes and sketching simultaneously, so that the writing related to the sketches. I’ve heard the term sketchnoting, and I’m not exactly sure what that is, but whatever I was doing that day felt like sketchnoting – using sketches and notes to supplement each other. I filled six pages of my sketchbook (two pages shown above).

As our guide talked continuously, there were times when I might have glazed over ordinarily, but sketching keeps me focused so I could listen and retain more information than I otherwise would have. Later when I looked through my sketches and notes, I realized I had remembered more. If I were a student, I think I would learn more using some form of sketchnoting instead of just writing.

I wish I’d taken more photos inside of this impressive, formidable house built in 1891, but I guess I haven’t learned to sketchnotephotograph. Here are a few.

Pipe organ

Stained-glass windows

Sun and Rain in the Twin Cities

8/2/17 Centennial Lakes Park

8/2/17 Parking lot of the Bloomington Country Inn & Suites

From Chicago we took a short flight to Minneapolis to visit with family for a couple of days. While we had consistently beautiful sunshine in Chicago, Minneapolis was a mix. Knowing rain would come the second day, we spent our first day outdoors as much as possible. I got an early start while Greg was still in the shower by sketching the heavy equipment in our hotel’s parking lot, where major remodeling was taking place.

Centennial Lakes is one of our favorite Minneapolis parks (top of page). I knew I had sketched there on a previous trip, so I searched through my blog and found the post – it was in 2013. Interestingly, I had sketched both of the same subjects then as I sketched this year – the arched bridge across the lake and a white heron (possibly the same heron?).

8/2/17 Heron at Centennial Lakes Park

The same day we had a late lunch at W.S. Frost (below), an excellent and popular restaurant with a lovely terrace. With a long wait for a table, I had plenty of time to sketch the diners under umbrellas.

8/2/17 Waiting for our table at W.S. Frost

In the afternoon we went to St. Paul, where we discovered a pocket park called Summit Overlook. A large sculpture of an eagle and its young – apparently a relic of the New York Life Insurance Company – was the park’s centerpiece.

8/2/17 Sculpture at Summit Overlook

8/3/17 Country Inn & Suites lobby

The next day was cold and rainy, so I had to resort to the hotel lobby for my early-morning sketch. Later we shopped at Ax-Man Surplus, a store that has been around since Greg’s youth. Filled with oddities (mostly for display only, not for sale, like a weird museum) and quirky merchandise, Ax-Man is hard to describe or categorize. I can’t begin to name all the strange things we saw, but the unfortunate plastic fellow hanging from the ceiling was the least of them. It would be a fantastic place for a surreptitious sketch outing (I was discreet and quick, so no one saw me).

8/3/17 Strange sighting at Ax-Man

We also sheltered from the weather by touring a grand old mansion. I had an unusual sketch-related experience there that I’ll relate in a future post.