Seattle Center Skating Rink and Armory

12/16/12 Platinum Carbon Black ink, Zig markers, Stillman & Birn Gamma

The Seattle Urban Sketchers enthusiastically turned out for a sketchcrawl at the Experience Music Project and other Seattle Center attractions. The EMP’s spacey interior would have been an interesting challenge, which I considered briefly. But I had heard that the Fisher Pavilion had been turned into an ice skating rink for the holidays, which seemed like a good (and also challenging) opportunity for some gestural sketches. I decided to head down there instead.

 

12/16/12 Diamine Twilight, Eclipse inks, Zig markers

It turned out that the skating rink wasn’t open for another 20 minutes, so despite the temperature being in the high 30s and the fact that I had forgotten my gloves, I decided to kill time by sketching a nearby ice sculpture. I don’t know how long the sculpture had been standing, but it was melting rapidly. At one time it probably depicted skaters or dancers, but now it was mostly abstract figures with Venus de Milo-like arms. I was still filling in the background when suddenly there was a loud crack, and the remains came crashing down.

 

Thoroughly chilled, I spent the next hour at the skating rink, which unfortunately wasn’t much warmer than the outdoors. But as I’d hoped, it was an excellent way to practice fast gestural sketches of figures in motion.

 

My fingers nearly numb, it was time to find some heated indoors. I grabbed a hot drink at Starbucks inside the Armory and then quickly sketched a little girl mesmerized by the model train circling a turn-of-the-century village.

12/16/12 Zig markers, Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook



12/16/12 Nero pencil