A Birthday and Other Small Celebrations

11/15/24 Macrina Bakery, Maple Leaf neighborhood

I had a birthday last week – not a “big” one, but an ordinary, run-of-the-mill one. Still, I enjoy milking birthday celebrations for as long as I can. The first was a little sketching party with a few friends at Macrina Bakery (above).

The next was a personal tradition I’ve had for decades: Going to the Green Lake Starbucks early on my birthday for my free drink (one of few perks that haven’t been eliminated). When I worked full time, another personal tradition was to take a vacation day on my birthday (because working on my birthday was against my principles), and even then I enjoyed getting up early for that free drink. Before I became a sketcher, I just brought it home, but now I usually drink it there and sketch.

11/16/24 Green Lake Starbucks

The third sketch journal page below is a small celebration of my ongoing downsizing project. I’ve been losing momentum lately because the tasks are more onerous now: Tedium combined with sadness is not a good recipe for enthusiast productivity. I kind of dread it, and at the same time, I’m getting close to the end, so I want to finish – but it’s slow. The small load I took to Goodwill on this day is probably the last for a while – all the rest is either trash (not much), recycling (lots) or shredding (hopefully not too much).

11/21/24 Victrola Coffee Roasters, Ballard neighborhood

Bomb Cyclone

 

11/20/24 Seattle Public Utilities restoring power in Maple Leaf

Weather Bunny braves the elements to report on the season's first bomb cyclone!

Our first “bomb cyclone” of the season hit on Tuesday night with winds up to 75 mph in some areas. Although it was a bit nerve-wracking to hear the windows rattling like they might shatter, I was fortunate not to lose power as more than a half-million Puget Sound area residents did. Two people were killed by falling trees. It certainly wasn’t a hurricane, but still quite severe for these parts.

In the morning, I looked around the house for damage, and the only thing I found was parts of the gutter downspout tossed around the yard like the Tin Man’s limbs!

Although my walking route revealed no downed trees or wires, the streets and pavement were covered with tree debris. Seattle Public Utilities was working hard to restore power. All the broken branches gave off the lovely scent of Christmas trees!

Performers and Residents

4/30/24

4/30/24

I usually visit the spouse guy at Aegis Living three or four times a week. It’s a comfortable routine for both of us. I vary the time of day and day of week, mostly depending on when he’s the most energetic and engaged, partly depending on my own schedule, and sometimes depending on what’s going on there. During the good weather months, our agenda was easy because we both enjoy taking walks together. Now that the weather is less conducive to walking, we spend more time participating in the many indoor activities Aegis staff provides to residents.

7/4/24 Musician Bob Rothstein was so thrilled by my sketch that he asked
for a digital image to use in promotional materials.

Every week a “happy hour” offers non-alcoholic refreshments and usually some kind of live entertainment – musicians, dancers or even animals (though I keep missing the latter). Games involving trivia, words or Jeopardy-like quizzes keep the residents mentally challenged. Sometimes the games are more physical, like balloon volleyball, yard bowling and mini golf.

When I’m with Greg, I want to stay engaged with him so I avoid sketching, but often we’re both participating as observers. That gives me an opportunity to sketch.

After I made the post about Theodore, one of the activity coordinators, I remembered that I’d been saving up other small portraits of performers and residents over the past several months because I didn’t have any “stories” about them to write individual posts about. I decided to put a bunch of them together in this post.

8/1/24

10/24/24

11/9/24

11/19/24

Colman Ferry Terminal is a Winter Keeper

 

11/17/24 Colman Dock ferry terminal

Some days, it doesn’t matter which sketchbook I bring. At the ferry terminal, though, I sure was happy I had a landscape-format book along!

Completely rebuilt in 2023, the Colman Dock passenger ferry terminal has been on USk Seattle’s radar as a winter-weather outing location ever since it reopened. Last Sunday was plenty wintry enough – bitterly windy and sometimes rainy. Although most of us stayed inside the terminal building, a few hardy souls sketched from the outer passageway where the view was even wider.

Not interested in freezing, I stayed indoors, where the skyline view was fantastic enough.

Choosing the “Ban Roll-on building” (formally known as the Second & Seneca Building) as my right-most starting point, I kept drawing across the top of the landscape-format Uglybook toward the left with a single line, ending with the Great Wheel. Then I spent the rest of the outing filling in the lower part of the spread with small scenes inside and outside the terminal.

To finish up the time before the throwdown, I picked a “victim” from the assortment of passengers waiting for their ferries (man on the right). Looking at the spread I started on my light rail ride, I noticed that everyone I sketched had “interesting” hair.

Light rail riders (left) and a ferry passenger

Officially, according to signage, only ticketed passengers are allowed inside the terminal building. But given the welcome we received from terminal security officers and other staff, some of whom joined us at the throwdown, I’d say we can all safely wink at the official policy. USk Seattle has a new winter mainstay!

By the way, when I say “victim,” I’m not kidding. Based on the photo below, that poor, clueless guy in the ferry terminal should be very afraid. 😆

Photo by Kim Roberts

Diary Comics from My Head

 

11/12/24

My imagination-based diary comics continue, inspired by the prompts and template I learned from Drewscape. I’ve been making these at the end of the day when I’m tired, have the lowest level of creative energy (and apparently the messiest penmanship!), and the hardest time being motivated to sketch. Given all of those potential barriers, I really need a structured format to draw from my head.

11/13/24

The Nov. 13 page (above) does not follow Drewscape’s format; it’s more of a traditional comics story arc with a linear sequence. It happened to fall into place because of the events of the day, but on an ordinary day when not much happens, coming up with this type of arc is usually much more challenging. I’ll take them when they come, and use Drew’s prompts when they don’t. In any case, I’m enjoying this process.

11/15/24

Last of the Color

 

11/15/24 Japanese maples, Maple Leaf neighborhood

11/11/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

With all the heavy rain and wind we’ve had lately, I always set out on my walks wondering if all the color will be gone this time – and then I’m delighted when I see that it is not. I spotted one house with multiple Japanese maples still near their prime, brilliant in the welcome sunlight.

On some streets, there’s more color on the ground than in the trees. Thank you, trees, for the pavement rainbow.

Planar Head in Positive and Negative

 

11/13/24 Gekkoso 8B graphite in Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook

Ching gave me a 3D-printed planar head. With all the facial and skull planes structurally delineated in plastic, it seems like it should be relatively easy to draw. On a recent wet morning, I found it to be surprisingly difficult to draw with graphite. As usual, proportions are the trickiest part.

Instead of measuring as I would with a human model, I decided to correct or adjust as needed on the fly. I resisted erasing restated lines so that I could see my mistakes and learn from them, but in some areas, it got so messy that I could barely distinguish the good lines from the bad, so I erased a bit for clarity.

11/14/24 Prismacolor in Uglybook

On the next wet morning, I tried again, this time with a white colored pencil on black paper. I thought this would be even trickier, since drawing in negative is usually a brain twister, but in fact, I found it easier. Maybe it was just that it was my second time, so my proportions were more accurate before corrections. Drawing white on black also made it easier to abstract the whole thing, which somehow helped.

Anyway, I found the exercise great practice, and I’ll likely draw Mr. Planar again with different lighting and different media. (You can see that I’m gearing up for the long, wet winter ahead.)