Echo

6/18/14 Diamine Grey, Diamine Chocolate Brown, Platinum Carbon and Pilot Iroshizuku
Tsuyu-Kusa inks, Zig marker, watercolor, Pitt Artist Pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

We had a non-stop stay-cation day taking our visitor to various popular Seattle spots, including the Olympic Sculpture Park. I’ll share more sketches when I have more time to blog, but for now, I wanted to post this one of Echo, the sculpture park’s newest acquisition. The 46-foot piece by Jaume Plensa was installed last month only a week or two after the Friday sketchers visited the park, hoping to see it. Modeled on a nine-year-old girl and inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the elongated head faces west, “over Puget Sound in the direction of Mount Olympus,” according to the SAM website. I had seen installation photos in the Seattle Times (and an installation sketch by the Seattle Sketcher) as well as photos of the completed sculpture, but I was still stunned by its elegant, sublime beauty.

The features on the all-white face are so subtle that I was uncertain about what medium to use – I didn’t want the shading to be too harsh. I sketched a faint outline with a light gray Zig marker, and then I made a weak dilution of Diamine Grey ink squeezed out of a waterbrush to shade the features.