Sequoia or Seuss?

4/12/16 colored pencils, inks, watercolor

Here’s a tree I spotted in my own ‘hood only a few blocks from home. Asymmetrical as any tree mangled by the utilities, this one’s odd shape can’t be blamed on power lines – it seems to grow this way. It looks like it’s straight out of Dr. Seuss. After much Googling for images, I’m guessing that it must be a weeping sequoia (anyone know for sure?). A couple of years ago I sketched a much larger one at the Point Defiance Rose Garden that looked even stranger.

Loyal Heights

4/11/16 ink, watercolor

That’s the problem with gorgeous weather: You get a few days of it, and you start to feel entitled. And then you feel resentful when you’re back to sketching from your car again. Oh, well. The weather will improve again eventually.

My friends on Facebook let me know whenever they see trees trimmed by the utility companies. Laura had mentioned a street in the Loyal Heights neighborhood a few miles west of me that she said was full of such trees. Three tall firs standing together caught my attention this afternoon, but I have several more on the same street to capture another time.

On the opposite side of the street directly in front of me were a couple more tall firs that I could have put into the same composition, but I felt like putting them into my red Field Notes instead.

4/11/16 brush pen, white Gelly Roll pen

Framed

4/9/16 inks, colored pencils

On my walk around Maple Leaf Park, a few pieces of heavy equipment were sitting around, waiting for something to do. Passing this excavator, I glanced under the boom (yes, I had to Google the anatomy of an excavator to learn that part’s name), and the iconic Maple Leaf water tower was framed nicely inside it. Who could resist? Especially on a day like today (67 and sunny this afternoon!).

Sunshine and Shades on Capitol Hill

4/8/16 brush pen, inks, watercolor, colored pencils 

4/8/16 inks

Urban Sketchers Seattle’s Friday group had planned to meet at Elliott Bay Books this morning, just in case the weather turned out bad. As much as I like the book shop, it couldn’t compete with our lucky weather – 73 and sunny with a breeze as gentle as June. As most of us did, I opted to sketch outdoors.

On a day like today, I could be sketching dog poo (as at least one of us did!) and be happy. You can imagine my near-ecstasy to finally sketch a Seattle streetcar, which I’d been wanting to do for quite a while now. Having ridden one just last week, I knew the trolley stopped for less than a minute at each stop, so I had to have a strategy. I took my time drawing the shelter and power lines and even painted the sky. When the next streetcar pulled up, I grabbed a fat brush pen to roughly capture its shape and a few details, then splashed on some paint after it was long gone.

4/8/16 brush pen

Next I walked over to Cal Anderson Park, where the conical fountain caught several sketchers’ eyes (though we all wondered why we’ve never seen it with water). Since I was nearly looking into the sun, I decided to keep this sketch monochrome, but I couldn’t resist another opportunity to point out that blue, blue sky.

With just those two sketches, I would have gone home happy, but my favorite sketch of the day? This guy I caught on the light rail wearing awesome flip-up shades!

Cloud City Redux

4/7/16 inks, colored pencils, Zig marker

Cloud City Coffee, a great coffee shop (and occasional sketching spot) in Maple Leaf, repainted its sign and changed its logo a while back. I’ve been wanting to sketch its new look ever since (I sketched its old sign a couple times, once in 2012 and again in 2014), but I wanted the weather to improve.

Improve it did (by some weird fluke, it’s 74 degrees this afternoon!), so this morning I stood across the street to capture Cloud City’s new colors that coordinate so well with that blue, blue sky.

Apple Blossoms (and Bonus Couch)

4/6/16 brush pen, watercolor, colored pencil

When Nilda told me about a block in Ballard filled with “pink clouds” of apple blossoms, I was a little confused; I’d always thought apple blossoms were white. Yet I’d also seen many trees all over Seattle that had recently exploded with bright pink blossoms (a much brighter pink than cherry blossoms, which peaked in mid-March). I didn’t know what those pink trees were, but then I started to wonder – are those apples, too? *

On an afternoon like today – 66 and sunny! – I didn’t need much incentive to take a top-down drive to Ballard to see the trees for myself. From a block away, I could already spot the pink on both sides of the street. I could have picked any of them to sketch, but I chose the one that had recently had a low branch completely torn off. (I guess I have a thing for mangled or dismembered trees.)

4/6/16 ink, colored pencil

At the same intersection of 14^th Northwest and Northwest 63^rd Street, a white (faux, I think) leather couch had been abandoned on the grassy divide between the two sides of 14^th, so I bagged another one for my “urban couches” series.

* A quick Google image search confirmed that some apple blossom varieties are bright pink while others are white. I’ve sometimes observed grafted trees displaying mostly pink branches with one or two white, or vice versa. I had assumed that a cherry or plum had been interracially mixed with an apple to come up with those trees. Now I’m thinking it’s more logical for them to be a mix of two varieties of apple.

4/6/16 inks, colored pencils

February - March Sketchbook

My February - March sketchbook

On the covers of my latest bound sketchbook are the cherry tree I sketched in the Sunset Hill neighborhood and Greg on our hotel room balcony in Cannon Beach. As usual, they aren’t necessarily my best or favorite sketches – just ones emblematic of the period covered by the book.

I tried something different this time with the covers. Usually I collage the surface of the chipboard covers with reused, handwritten papers, apply a coat of diluted gesso to partially obscure the reused papers, then apply a couple of coats of acrylic paint over that before gluing on the sketch images (and the final step is two coats of acrylic varnish). This time I skipped the painting step, so the randomly collaged materials are more visible. I don’t mind the visibility of the materials, but I kind of miss the bright paint colors. It saves me a day in this multi-step, multi-day bookbinding process, though, so I might keep doing that for a few more books.

As mentioned last month, after giving 98-pound Canson XL Mix Media paper a fair shake, I’ve gone back to my tried-and-true 140-pound Canson XL. I regret that I’m giving up the major benefit of being able to bind more pages per book, but I got spoiled by the 140-pound’s heftiness, both in terms of holding up to washes and in being a stable sketching surface even when unsupported by a cover.

Intrepid bookbinder that I am, I haven’t given up on streamlining my process. I also still have the goal of taking up less shelf space. To that end, I’m again trying something I tried a couple of years ago: binding four sheets instead of three per signature. A four-sheet signature has the benefit of giving me one additional full-page spread, which I use frequently, and is significantly stiffer and therefore stronger. When I carry and use a signature without my leather Stefano cover, it’s as stable as any commercial softcover sketchbook.

The drawback of having thicker and heavier signatures, I learned last time, is that the stitched binding becomes less sturdy. In theory, hand bookbinding enables you to use any type of paper you want and create any type of book; in practice, the chosen binding technique has structural limitations. But after binding for nearly three years (this is my 25th volume), my Coptic stitching technique has improved. Perhaps the binding will be strong enough to support six signatures of four sheets, yielding a 96-page book. That would be a quite a bit more bang-for-the-binding-buck than my usual 72 pages (though less than the 120 pages I was striving for with 98-pound paper). Stay tuned in a couple of months.

(I’m still hoping that Stillman & Birn’s replacement books for the faulty softcover edition released last fall will become my grail sketchbook – lightweight, relatively slim yet containing excellent mixed media paper that I’ve already come to know and love. But so far, the replacement books are nowhere to be seen.)