Stephanie Puts Everything Into Perspective

4/7/18 Stephanie demo'ing for her workshop students.

I poked my head into Stephanie Bower’s 10x10 USk workshop yesterday at King Street Station. Called “Good Bones” for its emphasis on building a strong support for a sketch with confident perspective, it’s a workshop I fondly recall taking myself a few years ago and which was immensely useful and instructive. Her students watched with rapt attention as she demonstrated her principles.

After that, I wandered around King Street Station’s upper level. A window view I hadn’t noticed before caught my eye – a small slice of skyline dominated by Columbia Tower (left) and the Seattle Municipal Tower. For this sketch, I recalled – and used the principles from – another terrific 10x10 workshop I took a year ago: Sue Heston’s “Simple Shapes, Stronger Sketches.” Whenever I’m potentially intimidated by a skyline of buildings, I remember Sue’s “sky shapes” – simply drawing the line that separates the sky from the “not-sky.” It seems like it should be the same as drawing the building contours, but somehow the sky-shape concept makes it easier.

4/7/18 A bit of skyline as seen from King Street Station.