Northgate Mall Food Court

12/18/12 DeAtramentis Black-Brown ink, Zig markers, Hand Book sketchbook

A week before Christmas, I expected Northgate Mall to be a madhouse, but the parking lot was no worse than a typical Saturday, so I braved it. I have a long list of places I’d rather sketch than a food court, but for the amount of time I had (less than half an hour) and the weather (37 degrees and threatening snow), it would have to do.

 

3/9/12 Copic Multiliner pen

 

Like the one at Green Lake, it’s not the most exciting sketch, but one thing about it makes me happy: I attempted it. Recalling how I had felt trying to sketch the same food court last March, I dug out a pocket-sized sketchbook from that period and found this small sketch of a couple of diners. On the facing page my journal notes express how overwhelmed I was by the open space. “Too spread out, too many big TVs,” I wrote (I’m not sure how the size of the TVs affected my ability to sketch that day, but maybe I was simply overcome by the scale of everything).

 

This is not to say that sketching in large interior spaces like food courts is no longer challenging; it is. The big difference is that, in March, I scribbled a couple of heads, fretted about the space and then went home. Today, I simply sat down and sketched the space.