Anniversary Bouquet (Plus Gabi’s Sketch)

1017/16 water-soluble colored pencils

If you’ve seen some of the fruit and vegetable still lifes I’ve been doing in colored pencils lately, you know that my approach has been to be fairly tight and detailed. I enjoy that approach when using colored pencils with some subjects, but this bouquet seemed to demand a looser, more painterly approach. It’s harder to be loose with colored pencils compared to watercolor, but I like that I can have some control over the looseness (Contradictory? Probably).

The bouquet was from Greg for our 27^th anniversary last Friday. :-) And here’s something else that relates our anniversary to sketching:

Our wedding took place at the top of the Smith Tower, which has always been one of our favorite buildings in Seattle. Years ago the Seattle Sketcher sketched the tower (it appears on the cover of his book), and I once asked Gabi Campanario if I could buy that original sketch. Of course, the sketch belonged to the Seattle Times, so he couldn’t sell it to me, even though the original was just sitting in a flat file in his office. Undeterred, I went directly to the Times and asked if I could buy it; I was referred to the reproductions department, where I could buy a print. A print might have been OK, but by then I had my heart set on owning the original.

Fast-forward to a few months ago when I had noticed that Gabi was starting to sell both originals and prints of his personal work on his website. I decided I didn’t have to have the one that he had made several years ago – I would simply commission him to make me a new one! So I did, and just in time to surprise Greg with it on our anniversary, I received the beautiful sketch from Gabi. 

Sketch of the Smith Tower by Gabi Campanario