Southcenter Mall

7/9/19 Southcenter Mall

If I had to name the least inspiring, most boring location for urban sketching, it would be a shopping mall. I admit, I have been known to sketch Santa at my neighborhood Northgate Mall, which is also a good place to find easy victims for the annual One Week 100 People challenge. In most cases, however, I find malls to be deadly dull.

A few days ago, I had about 10 minutes to kill while Greg ran an errand at Southcenter Mall. A typical tactic in that situation would be to sketch a few passers-by, but on a Tuesday morning, very few people seemed to have need to be there. My eyes were about to glaze over at the mundane uniformity before me when I realized that no matter how blah a scene may be, it always includes lights and darks: Southcenter Mall was a values study waiting to happen. I pulled out yellow and purple colored pencils and got to work.