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| 3/15/26 Mountains, Alexander Calder, Seattle Art Museum |
On a chilly morning following our freaky snowfall, I was more
than happy to spend a few hours with USk inside the cozy Seattle Art Museum. Since
my white Derwent Drawing pencil with black paper have been serving me
well at art museums, both SAM and the Asian Museum, I gave them a
shot on Calder’s work, Mountains, which I hadn’t seen before. All black, the sheet-metal
sculpture stands with the dark elevators behind it on one side, so I walked
around it to find an angle with a lighter-colored background (above). That’s when I
discovered the round hole in the center – such a beautiful counterpoint to all
the sharp angles.
That took longer than I wanted; by the time I was done, I was ready for lunch. As Kate and I chatted over our lunches at the SAM café, I caught a sideview of the whimsical Little Cloud Sky, an installation hanging over the lobby (the front view I sketched several months ago shows the clouds’ smiling faces).
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| SAM cafe and lobby |
I had time for one more sketch before the throwdown. I went back upstairs where a horse had caught my eye earlier. By contemporary artist Deborah Butterfield, life-size Pascal is made of steel and iron. Instead of white on black, I pulled out a couple of dark Derwent Drawing pencils and a Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (my favorite paper pairing with these luscious pencils).
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| Pascal, Deborah Butterfield |
With graphite, I never really enjoyed sketching inside museum exhibits. But the restriction is “pencil,” not graphite, and Derwent Drawing pencils have liberated me!
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