Exploring Eastlake

 

8/28/25 Eastlake

For our play date last week, Mary Jean led Roy and me around the Eastlake area of Lake Union, which neither of us were familiar with. It’s the grittier side of the lake, where I discovered the old Lake Union Drydock Co. (established in 1919) and sketched St. Mark’s Cathedral way above us on Capitol Hill. Every time I drive south on Interstate 5, I see the smokestacks of the former Lake Union Steam Plant, now occupied by the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, but I had never been in a spot where I could sketch them. It was also fun to sketch working boats and a Seattle Seaplane.

We walked and explored quite a ways on the foot/bike path along the lake. It’s my favorite kind of urban sketching: Covering a large area, discovering new views or familiar ones that are otherwise hard to sketch, and stopping whenever something caught our eyes.

Lunchtime Companions

 

8/25/25

Although I haven’t been sketching them as much as I did in previous years, I am still enjoying visits from Steller’s jays when I have lunch out on the back deck. When I open the kitchen door and start prepping my lunch, often a jay will stand on the deck railing in anticipation of what they know I’ll bring out: Peanuts.

After they’ve had their fill, they sometimes return to the railing to preen. As one jay took a particularly leisurely time, I kicked myself for not having any sketch materials with me (me – the one who is always lecturing to newbie sketchers about the importance of having sketch materials at all times because one never knows when a sketch opportunity will arise!). I knew that if I went into the house to get something, the moment would be lost, so I just enjoyed the moment.

The next day, a jay had barely grabbed a few peanuts when an opportunistic raccoon showed up. I had no intention of feeding trash pandas, but this one was so used to humans that it would not scare away!

I did what any equally opportunistic sketcher would do: I dashed into the house to grab my bag. A short time later, four adorable kits showed up to dine with mama (all sketches in this post are from life except the last one).

8/20/25

By this time, I had learned my lesson. The next time a jay came to preen, I had a pencil ready. A day later, the same jay (I think) came back for lunch and another leisurely preen fest.

8/25/25

8/26/25

8/26/25

8/26/25

Finally, I wanted to try a jay with a brush pen. I used a reference photo for this.

8/26/25 photo reference

I sometimes put the nut bin out on the railing while I'm prepping my lunch. A jay will tap on the bin to let me know it's lunchtime!

Opportunistic trash panda mom . . . 

. . . and three of her four kits!

Symposium FOMO

 

7/13/13 Arc de Triomf, Barcelona

Last week when my social media feeds were filled with sketches and photos of the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznań, I admit I was feeling some FOMO. Oh, not a lot of FOMO; after all, I’ve been very fortunate to attend more than my share of symposiums, and I’m happy for everyone who got to enjoy the same fun this year. But I couldn’t help feeling a tiny twinge.

Instead of having a pity party, I decided to go through my image files and pick out one from each symposium I’ve attended and post them here. As I went through the sketches, I was flooded with delightful memories of people I met, amazing cities I experienced, and all that I learned.

8/30/14 Santa Teresa, Paraty

I had intended to assemble and publish this post last weekend while the symposium was going on, but I was so busy attending and blogging about two USk Seattle sketch outings that week that this post got pushed back. That made me recall the many people I met at symposiums who had expressed envy when I told them I was from Seattle and was part of its huge USk community. Some told me that they had never sketched with others until they came to the symposium because they had no local group to meet with. Even with symposium FOMO, I can’t help but be grateful for my own USk group that keeps me busy and happy year-round. Indeed, how fortunate I am.

7/27/16 Castlefield, Manchester

Alas, no new tin.

Speaking of FOMO, you may recall my disappointment last year when I discovered that no symposium-logo Cretacolor pencil tin had been made for the Buenos Aires symposium. Hoping that may have been a fluke, I optimistically entreated a friend who was planning to go to Poznań to look for the Cretacolor tin and save it for me. Zooming in on goodie bag dump images on Instagram, I repeatedly saw no Cretacolor tins, and my friend confirmed my suspicion. Alas, Auckland may have been the last to add to my symposium tin collection. At least I can’t have FOMO over something that doesn’t exist!

Custom Moleskine sketchbook from the very first
USk Symposium in 2010, Portland

In other news, if there’s such a thing as the opposite of FOMO, it’s this: Receiving something that I didn’t know I was coveting until I had it! A friend who was visiting from another state to attend Sketcher Fest presented me with a surprising gift: The custom-made Moleskine sketchbook that came in the goodie bag of the very first USk symposium in Portland, Oregon, in 2010! I had seen photos of it, of course, but thinking that one could ever be mine was beyond my imagination. It had never even occurred to me to try to get one – and suddenly, one was mine, from a generous and thoughtful friend who had a feeling I might want it.

Indeed, how fortunate I am.

7/29/17 Grant's Park, Chicago

7/18/18 Porto

7/25/19 Amsterdam

Once More With More Color

 

8/19/25 sunset, Maple Leaf neighborhood

I happened to catch sunset last week. In fact, I sketched it a second time as the colors deepened.

When I opened the white Uglybook I use for skyscapitos, I saw that the last one I had made was in January! Where have I been?! I do tend to slack off in the summer months when sunrise is way too early. On the other end of the day, the sun goes down so late that I’m already hunkered down in my reading chair by sunset. But now that the day is already noticeably shorter, I’ll soon have no excuse in the morning, and I hope to catch more sunsets, too.

That River in Africa

8/20/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

 It’s the beginning of that season I know well, named after the river in Africa: Denial.

It started a couple of weeks ago when some of the neighborhood’s Japanese maples showed a blush of orange against their mostly green foliage. I averted my gaze. Plenty of summer left.

Last week during a walk, I passed one of my favorite maples. No, no, say it ain’t so!

Tight Squeeze at Wedgwood Car Show

 

8/24/25 '56 Thunderbird convertible at the Wedgwood Car Show

New on my summer events radar this year was the Wedgwood Car Show, which has apparently been going on for 18 years, but I hadn’t heard about it until a couple of months ago. Just one neighborhood east of Maple Leaf, Wedgwood is practically “my” ‘hood – I was stoked that it was so close!

Packed in tight!

Tiny compared to the massive Greenwood Car Show, which I catch every year, the Wedgwood show is crammed into one strip mall parking lot. Sponsored by the Wedgwood Broiler, a neighborhood institution since 1965, the show had some beautiful classic cars, but they were difficult to sketch if you wanted to get the whole car. Unlike Greenwood, where all the cars are neatly angle-parked so that visitors can walk through the center of the street and see cars on both sides, the Wedgwood cars were parked every which way to cram in as many as possible.

Another challenge was that the temperature was already in the mid-70s and climbing by 10 a.m. when the show opened, so my main goal was to look for views I could sketch from the shade, which was mostly behind the cars.

I stood behind a lovely ’56 Thunderbird convertible (one of my long-time fantasy cars; sketch above and photo below) and had hoped to include the owner, who was dressed in a turquoise outfit and wide-brimmed hat to match the trim on her car, but she kept wandering around chatting with friends.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to see any one car without being blocked by another, I had fun with my composition by layering and skipping the parts I couldn’t see.

Frustrating as it was to sketch there, I probably won’t attend again, but I enjoyed the show for what it was. I always enjoy observing the friendly community and camaraderie of small, neighborhood events.

Technical note: Hoping to make some color car portraits, I had brought along an A5 Hahnemühle sketchbook instead of a large Uglybook. Realizing quickly that it wasn’t the kind of show where I could make car portraits easily, I switched to marker line drawings of the type that I make in Uglybooks. How strange and foreign to use white paper!

Look at this gorgeous T-Bird convertible!

Yes, I tend to favor red cars, but purple's not bad, either!

Bruun Idun at Lincoln Park

 

8/23/25 Thomas Dambo's troll Bruun Idun at Lincoln Park, West Seattle

Lincoln Park in West Seattle is one I rarely get to: It’s an inconvenient drive, especially with this summer’s highway construction projects, and parking there is an ongoing challenge. But I knew that one of the Thomas Dambo trolls is in residence at beachfront Lincoln Park, and I’d been wanting to sketch Bruun Idun for a long time, so I was happy when co-admin Kim initiated leading a USk outing there.

According to the legend:

"In the night, there was a storm, there at the beach where she was born
And Idun felt a feeling wrong, and so she walked there in the dawn
And in a flute, the magic horn, a tune so passionate and strong
She played for them an orca song to ask them where they all had gone"

Naturally, most of the sketchers that day were attracted to Bruun, and for more than the obvious reason: Although temps on Saturday morning were already in the mid-80s and trending upward, the dense shade around the troll made the beach nearly chilly. We all had a comfortable time even as the rest of the city sweltered.

After finishing my main color sketch, I had to waste some time moving my car from one time-restricted spot to another. That left time for only a smaller sketch of the troll with a sketcher and the serene and shady “fairy ring” of trees near the parking area where we did our throwdown.

After the outing ended, I needed to use the facilities down at the beach, so I used the opportunity for a couple more quick sketches: Cars boarding the Vashon ferry and one of many beach fishermen we saw bringing in an abundance of salmon.

Mandatory selfie with troll