Daffies and Cherries on Dibble

 

4/4/25 Crown Hill neighborhood

Although the cherry trees on Dibble Avenue Northwest are on my regular petal-peeping route, it’s not a destination that I would consider for an Urban Sketchers outing. A narrow street full of parked cars, trash cans, basketball hoops, utility poles and other street stuff that I enjoy sketching, it’s probably not the kind of view most sketchers like. I did, however, encourage everyone who attended the Sunset Hill outing to at least peep the petals, if not sketch them, since Dibble in Crown Hill is only a mile or so east of Sunset Hill.

Dibble Ave. NW

With the top down, I cruised slowly down the block, looking straight up at the blossoms arching over the street from both sides. Then I turned around and came back to sketch from a spot I had sketched a few years ago that has become one of my favorite cherry blossom sketches: The pink blossoms as a backdrop to the daffodil-fringed traffic circle.

With bittersweetness, I must concede that our all-too-brief petal-peeping and -sketching season is coming to a close. But if this is its finale, I’m good with that. As a resident of the Sunset Hill street and I had just concurred, if we could have cherry blossoms all year round, they would no longer be precious and special.

Technical note: After all the trees I’d been sketching, my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen ran dry when I started this sketch, so I had to bring in a gray Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen for an assist. I like the way the gray ink made the cars and utility pole fade out more than compared to drawing and shading with the same Pentel ink. I’m going to try to remember that in the future.