Cold Breakfast

 

I had just poached an egg and poured my coffee. As I carried both to the breakfast table, I sensed light in my peripheral vision. We’d had such a succession of cloudy or rainy mornings that I’d forgotten to look for it: Sunrise!

I dashed upstairs. There’s nothing like breakfast cooling to make me sketch fast! But the sun waits for no sketcher, even at breakfast.

Pencilvember: Small Breakthrough (and Luminance Illumination)

 

In every challenge in which I have given myself a specific drawing goal (not just the use of a specific medium all month), I usually hit a creative breakthrough point. In a month-long challenge, it often happens around the third week. I think it just takes a couple of weeks to warm up and push past any resistance before a breakthrough can happen. Last week I finally hit that point in Pencilvember: I pushed past being descriptive and moved more in the direction of caricature or imaginative drawing.

The lioness returns from hunting with hungry, squabbling cubs in tow while
the deadbeat king of the forest has been sleeping all day.

In truth, however, I should probably count all of InkTober before that as part of the warm-up. I had hoped to be more expressive and less descriptive when using a brush pen, too, but I never felt like I got there last month. It took a couple more weeks using colored pencils to finally loosen up my always-challenged imagination.

Awakened from her beauty sleep.

Although the first two dogs probably look fairly realistic without much caricature, I exaggerated some of their features. Those tries gave me permission to push harder with the lioness and the two kitties that followed – and what fun they were! I’m pleased to be hitting my goal while staying within my self-made time limit of 20 minutes.

Full of her own beauty.

The last dog’s (below) reference photo was a bit frowny, so I used a second reference photo to help me with the grin and tongue. I’m starting to learn that I can (and should, if necessary) use multiple reference photos when making imaginary drawings. I know pros do this all the time, but as a “realistic” sketcher all these years, I sometimes forget that I can use reference images in whatever way I want to help me do what I’m trying to do. The challenge with multiple references is that the lighting will not be consistent, so I must rely on my own knowledge of light logic if I want the lighting to make sense. (More on this next week in my Pencilvember finale.)

Material notes: These sketches were all done with Caran d’Ache Luminance. Following nearly a week of using Derwent Lightfast, I immediately noticed significant differences between them. While both are extremely soft, Luminance feels strangely “dry” compared to Lightfast. Although I’ve never thought of Lightfast as being “creamy” or “buttery” the way Derwent Drawing colored pencils are, Lightfast are, indeed, creamy compared to Luminance. Huh! Given how much I usually love Caran d’Ache’s premium products (and how mixed my feelings are about many Derwent products), I daresay I prefer Lightfast!

“Geometry of Light” at SAAM

 

11/21/25 "This is Not a Refuge!" by Anila Quayyum Agha, Seattle Asian Art Museum

When I first saw images of a new exhibit at Seattle Asian Art Museum, I knew it would be fun and challenging to approach the work using white on black. Anila Quayyum Agha’s Geometry of Light is a dazzling installation of laser-cut, resin-coated aluminum. “Suspended from the ceiling, Agha’s steel cubes are laser-cut with intricate designs that project geometric shadows onto the visitor. She draws on both the light and dark of her own life, using South Asian art practices to convey the gender discrimination she faced growing up as a young girl in Pakistan.”

One of several laser-cut paper pieces

In addition to two installations, the exhibit includes several wall-mounted paper art pieces with a similar intricacy and delicacy. Including embroidery thread and beads, the pieces are inspired by traditional Islamic art. The patterns are sometimes called “’feminine’ or ‘decorative,’” the placard said, “but she challenges the idea that this kind of art is less important. Instead, she turns it into something powerful and meaningful, filled with emotion and history.”

Those pieces and her artistic intentions moved me as a former fiber artist. At the time, fellow fiber artists and I often discussed the patronizing attitude our culture has toward the use of fiber, beads and other materials traditionally associated with “women’s crafts.”

I chose the piece called “This is Not a Refuge!” to sketch. To enhance the illumination effects, the exhibit rooms are darkened, so it wasn’t easy to see, yet it was actually easier than drawing dark on white paper (which I’ve also tried to do in other dark exhibits). A white colored pencil on black paper was an ideal way to capture the light.

A second installation piece of laser-cut aluminum

Thinking Aloud About a Perpetual Sketch Journal

 

8/12/25 Caffe Ladro, Roosevelt neighborhood

Ever since I parenthetically mumbled the idea in my post about my five-year diary, the question keeps popping up in my head: How could a sketchbook be designed to serve the same longitudinal function as a written perpetual diary? (Please allow me to think aloud here for a bit.)

Of course, any large sketchbook could serve this function well: Just date each page or spread, and make a sketch on that page each year on that date. (I believe that’s how nature perpetual journals work.) The challenging part for me is that if the habit is to be sustainable, the book must be portable. If it’s something I use only when I’m home, the habit will last only for a short while, and then I’ll stop. I’ve already failed at that kind of sketch journal often enough to accept this.

9/10/25 Herkimer Coffee, Greenwood neighborhood

With this acceptance as a starting point, I looked at my current daily-carry Uglybooks, which I’ve been using successfully and consistently as a chronological sketch journal for two years. What if I started using my daily-carry Uglybook as a perpetual sketch diary?

Let’s say I decided to make a spread for each date. I’m not sure I could fit five years’ worth of sketches on a spread, but surely I could fit three years. Shown here are a few sketch journal spreads that contain at least three sketches. The freeform format I already use would accommodate sketches of various sizes.

When I fill one book (23 days per book), I’d move on to the next book. About 16 books would cover the entire year. When the last spread of the last book is filled on Dec. 31 (or whatever the last day of my perpetual year is), I’d go back to the first book and make the second sketch on the Jan. 1 spread (each sketch would be labeled with the year and, as is my current habit, the time and weather, if I’m sketching outdoors).

9/30/25 Turtle Coffee, Greenwood neighborhood

That seems very practical and doable, doesn’t it? What appeals to me most is that it is not too far off from what I’ve been doing the past couple years, so it won’t feel like a whole new thing. The only snag I haven’t figured out is that on some days, I currently use my daily-carry Uglybook as a catch-all for other random sketches – like overflow parking as needed. I don’t want to discourage myself from making such sketches just because they don’t fit the format, but I also don’t want to carry a second book. 

Maybe I could assign several pages toward the end of each book for such overflow – which would be messily out of sequence. Or avoid predating the spreads, so I could sometimes stretch out beyond the typical single spread? That could be a slippery slope toward exactly what I’m already doing.

Hmmm. . . the idea still needs work, but it has a lot going for it. Comments or suggestions? Have you ever kept or seen anything like a perpetual sketch diary, especially in a portable size?

11/16/25 Due Cucina, Roosevelt neighborhood

No Difference

3/5/25 Neighbors Barbershop, Wedgwood

8/25/25 Green Lake

Whenever I make sketches that were made while waiting but have no other stories to tell about them, I file the scans in a folder labeled “sketchwaiting.” They are waiting for me to think of something new to say about sketchwaiting so that I can blog about them. I looked in the folder the other day and realized I had a sketch in there from March! I obviously hadn’t thought of anything new to say.

10/16/25 Whole Foods, Roosevelt neighborhood

10/19/25 Volunteer Park

Then it occurred to me that for a lifestyle sketcher like me, there’s not much difference between sketchwaiting and any other type of sketching. Sketches happen spontaneously, whether I’m walking, shopping, or waiting for a friend. No wonder I have nothing new to say.

11/11/25 Green Lake

Sketchwaiting is the embodiment of what Nishant Jain provocatively asks: What if every time we felt like pulling out our phone, we pulled out a sketchbook instead? What if, indeed.

11/15/25 Rosellini's Bakery, Ballard neighborhood

A Wondrous Earth at St. Mark’s

 

11/18/25 Terra installation at St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle

A wondrous temporary installation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral challenged USk Seattle in just about every way. Terra, a 24-foot replica of planet Earth suspended in the center of the cathedral nave, slowly revolves on its tilted axis. The jaw-dropping scale of the globe in the context of the cathedral is difficult enough to convey, but there’s also its three-dimensionality: How to keep the sphere from looking like a flat disc?

I’m not sure I was successful at capturing any of that, but at least I can thank Kay for being seated in a pew and lending some sense of scale!

The globe at St. Mark’s is one of hundreds that Orbis Globes has installed in various locations since 1985. During the throwdown, an Orbis installer chatted with us about the challenges of suspending an inflated, revolving 24-foot Earth. I’m sure that’s challenging – but not as challenging as drawing it!

Pencilvember: Derwent Lightfast

 

Reference photo by Frank Koyama

As much as I enjoyed using Derwent Lightfast, I decided to cut the week short because I have at least two more pencil brands I want to use during Pencilvember. I’m having fun using the same brand for several days running, then switching to another brand. The uninterrupted succession teaches me nuances of each brand while they are fresh in my memory.

When I have a self-imposed time limit of 20 minutes, one thing I really appreciate about using super-soft pencils like Lightfast is that I can use the side of the pencil tip to cover a lot of area quickly. The pencils are almost like charcoal (without the dreaded mess, of course). You can especially see this in Charli and Kuzya (below). In each case, I spent half the time on the eyes to nail the expression. That done, I could get the rest down efficiently by scribbling with the core’s broad side.

Insight: I’m starting to see that my degree of accuracy (or lack thereof) isn’t determined much by the length of time I take. I can get proportions right or wrong, regardless, which means most of my time is used in applying many layers of color. This is an unexpected outcome of my Pencilvember practice, but it’s not a bad thing to discover. It means that once I establish the proportions (right or wrong), I can give a drawing as much or as little time as I want, and the outcome will just be more finished looking, the longer I work on it. I don’t have to decide at the beginning whether a piece will be more “finished” or not.

The part I’m not happy about is this: Despite the short time I’m taking with these, they still look nearly as tight as the drawings I used to take hours to make. For the rest of Pencilvember, I’m going to challenge myself to loosen up in terms of expression as well as color application. This is always a tough one for me, but I want to push in the direction of caricature. I tried it a few years ago when I was heavily into human portraiture, and it felt way more challenging than it should have been. Maybe animals will be easier.