Gingerbread Village (and Strike Two on Santa)

12/13/13 Platinum Carbon Black ink, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

To celebrate the first anniversary of the Seattle Urban Sketchers ad hoc Friday sketchers group, we met at the same place we sketched a year ago: Gingerbread Village at the Sheraton. (We had a much larger turnout than the original five who showed up last year – yay for Friday sketchers!) At this festive, popular event, local architects get together with the Sheraton’s bakers to create elaborately detailed, often-animated gingerbread houses (although “house” is clearly an understatement).

12/13/13 Platinum Carbon, watercolor

Last year I deliberately chose the less-extravagant back side of Alice in Wonderland’s Castle so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by details. This year I took a different approach to dodge the same issue: I stood behind the endless line of people passing between the sweet sculptures and myself, focusing more on the viewers. My first sketch was of a fabulous ship with the theme “I Saw a Ship a-Sailing.” Then I moved to the other side of the exhibit to sketch “Hickory-Dickory Dock.”

After Kate, Nilda and I had lunch at Pacific Place, my plan was to sketch Santa. As luck would have it, he went on his break and wasn’t due back for another hour, so I decided to call it a day. That’s the second time in as many weeks that Santa has evaded my sketchbook. This is not boding well for my personal goal of sketching more than two Santas this year. . . but I still have 12 days until Christmas.