Tacoma’s Old Town Dock

7/5/14 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey inks, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL
140 lb. paper

The sky was a mixed bag: thick, gray and forboding in one area, light and white in another, and bright blue in yet another. “Hmmm,” I had said to Kate as I was about to make the 40-mile trip home from Tacoma to Seattle, “it makes it hard to decide whether to take the top down.” Since it was warm and dry when I left, I took the top down – and the last five miles turned out to be very wet! Despite that shower and another earlier this morning that interrupted one sketch, it was a fun day with the Tacoma Urban Sketchers at the newly restored Old Town Dock.

While the sun was still shining brightly, I sketched a small ferry boat that was now someone’s residence just off the property that used to be Dickman Mill. Now a small park, Dickman Mill was “the last in a long tradition of lumber mills on Tacoma’s ‘Old Town’ waterfront to close down” decades ago. The burned-out, weathered remains of the mill, now mossy and growing weeds, cast interesting shadows.

I had started to sketch a boat flying a Jolly Roger when a sudden shower (the thin white clouds above us looked so innocuous! Where did that rain come from?) forced me to run for cover. By the time I finished up a quick sketch of a couple of merchant vessels, the rain had stopped, and the sky was mostly blue again. With only 15 minutes remaining before the meet-up, I went back to sketch the pirate ship.

7/5/14 Platinum Carbon, Diamine Grey, Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuyu-kusa and mixed inks, Museum water-soluble colored pencils

7/5/14 Platinum Carbon, Diamine Grey, Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuyu-kusa inks, Museum water-soluble colored pencils