Solo Art Play Date

 

1/7/26 Through windows at Seattle Asian Art Museum

I found a rare free afternoon on my calendar with no one to play with, so I took myself out for an art play date last week. My first stop was the Seattle Asian Art Museum, where I had fun sketching white on black a couple of months ago. This time, while I did look at some art I had missed last time, my sketching target was a tree I had spotted previously. The newish wing of SAAM is entirely glass on the side that faces Volunteer Park. Although most museum visitors wouldn’t consider this tree an “exhibit,” its wild and crazy branches reaching out toward the museum captured my attention. I appreciated being able to spend leisurely time sketching it while inside the comfy museum.

Lots of similar values

It was also an ideal opportunity to explore something I’ve been thinking about with my values-based palette. One big problem I have with any scene in flat, consistent lighting, like on an overcast day or indoors with lighting coming from all directions, is that most of the values look the same. This tree scene was typical (at right): Almost everything was the same midtone except the visible wing of the museum, which was light, and the foreground tree was slightly darker. To differentiate the foreground tree from the background trees, which are all about the same hue, too, I tried to use roughly the same values (exaggerating the focal tree a bit) but with different colors. (I pushed this idea a little further in the café sketch that I’ll talk about later.)

By the way, coloring the building with the pale blue I had picked out as one of my light values showed me that the choice was a fail. It was just too pale, so I mixed it with the midtone green just to make it show up on the paper. (When I got home, I immediately replaced the blue with a vibrant but light-valued green.) I also had to outline the building, which I have been trying to avoid with the more painterly approach I’m taking with crayons.

Black Sun, Isamu Noguchi (I have lately been using a very pale blue or pale yellow
Derwent Drawing pencil to write on black-paper sketches. I don't want the text to be
as bright-white as the sketch.)

On my way out of the museum, I stopped to make a quick sketch of Isamu Noguchi’s Black Sun by the parking area. One of my favorite sculptures in Seattle, it has appeared in my sketchbook many times, but this is the first time I sketched it white on black. (Even as I’m newly enchanted by wacky colors, I’m still obsessed with drawing with white!)

For the second part of my play date, I walked to Caffe Ladro. This was a fun scene to attempt with my wacky ideas because it was full of “nothing,” which made it easier to focus on values, it had striking contrasts between the lightest and darkest values, and it also had a lot of midtones that were hard to distinguish. Although everything outside was kind of the same value and in muted hues, I tried to use color (but not local color) to make distinctions. Another example is the man, who was mostly in silhouette against the windows. If I were using something like a single black marker, I’d have difficulty showing the difference between his face and his hat, which were the same dark value. But with the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons, I tried varying the hues without changing the value (below).

1/7/26 Caffe Ladro, Capitol Hill

I suppose all this stuff I’m practicing is second nature to painters – but thinking like a painter is always a challenge for me! (And thinking like a painter has nothing to do with applying paint! I’m way more interested in the former than the latter!)

Neocolors at the cafe

Somewhere in a YouTube or maybe on his blog, James Gurney says that most artists are either line makers or shape makers and are rarely both. I don’t want to be locked into either line or shape; I want to be able to use whichever approach is better for the subject matter or whatever it is I want to convey.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been having a lot of fun with on-location comics, which I enjoy so much as a way to tell the stories of a place. The approach’s format – multiple tiny images on a page – makes simple linework essential, and it’s almost impossible to compose with shapes in such small spaces. Using larger tools like crayons (and, by necessity, a larger format) is really helping me to make this shift to a new approach to color. I haven’t stopped making on-location comics, but I’m ready to give this approach some dedicated focus.

Although I love having art play dates with friends, I realize it’s important to occasionally spend creative time alone to focus on ideas and try new things without socializing. It was a productive afternoon.

Bonus: Sketching the tree at the museum was my first trial of using my new tiny Sendak roll while standing – and it works! I opened the Sendak, folded it backwards and, as I did last summer with the Rickshaw Sinclair, propped it up inside my bag. It’s still a bit awkward, but the big benefit over the Sinclair is that the crayons are easily accessible.

This image might be a bit disorienting without much context: I was carrying my open bag on my shoulder, and this was the view looking down at its contents. The tiny Sendak, folded backward, is propped up inside. The slots keep the Neocolor crayons upright.

“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

Back End of a Camel (and a Wandering Sketchbook)

1/25/19 Marble camel sculpture, Seattle Art Museum

1/25/19 Hammering Man at SAM

When I was growing up, the marble camel sculptures that are inside the Seattle Art Museum used to be outside the original museum (now the Seattle Asian Art Museum at Volunteer Park, where replicas took their place in 1991). I’ve sketched the replicas a few times, but I couldn’t remember ever sketching the original camels at the downtown SAM, so I made one of them my objective at Friday’s USk Seattle outing. (See this post for a photo of why the camels are special to me.)

Now protected from the elements, the camels guard a long, windowed stairway. Instead of choosing the more common front view, I went around to the back end of a camel and found a handy seat in the museum’s classroom. About an hour into the sketch, I was informed by museum staff that a class of middle schoolers would be showing up within minutes, so I reluctantly gave up my seat. Fortunately, I was mostly done. Eavesdropping on their lesson in perspective, I finished up standing a short distance away.

Next I braved the cold to complete another objective: Filling a page in a wandering sketchbook! USk Boston co-admin and avid sketcher Andre Behrens has released several “wandering sketchbooks” into the wild by giving them to members of other Urban Sketchers groups. He doesn’t want the sketchbooks back; he asks only that we fill their pages and use the hashtag #wanderingsketchbooks when we post images of the sketches on Instagram. I love the idea of sketchbooks wandering around the world, collecting sketches!

1/25/19 Pike Brewing Co.

I thought that the iconic Hammering Man kinetic sculpture outside SAM would be an appropriate symbol of Seattle to put into the book. I’ve passed the book along, and I hope it keeps going far and wide on its travels.

To end the fun morning, some of us went to Pike Brewing Company for lunch. Amusing, eclectic décor surrounds the diningroom, and the hanging beer bottles were among my favorite. I didn’t get too far with color on this sketch, though, because then my delish fish tacos arrived.

Yummm... and a teeny-tiny stout to go with the tacos.

White on Black at Asian Museum

 

10/19/25 Lokeshvara with raised arm, 11th century Cambodia, Seattle Asian Art Museum
(white colored pencil, chalk pastel on black Arteza paper) 

Followers of this blog know how much I love making nocturnes during the darkest part of the year, especially around the holidays. I’ve also occasionally enjoyed doing life drawing (when the model had sufficiently dramatic lighting) using white pencils on black paper. I had never thought to use white on black to draw museum sculptures, but it actually makes a lot of sense, since museums typically allow only pencil use inside the galleries. When I saw that Gage was offering a unique workshop on this subject, it blew my mind open.

Taught by Rebecca Strong, the three-hour workshop had a single, distinct focus: Draw a sculpture at the Seattle Asian Art Museum using white pencils on black paper. In her supply list, she mentioned a number of types of pencils – white colored pencils as well as pastel, chalk and so-called “white charcoal.” She offered to share her own pencils, and we could also bring whatever we already owned. (I had to laugh at that part: If I brought “whatever” I already owned, it would be quite a load! But I do love it when I take a workshop and don’t have to buy a single new thing!)

Avoiding drawing lines, we were instructed to squint to see tonal values more clearly and use white media to shade only the light. After a short demo, she let us loose in the exhibits that housed the most sculptures, and we were to choose one to draw.

A simple supply list: black paper and an assortment of white pencils.

In the same way that we use a range of grades from hard to soft when working with graphite, Rebecca suggested using a range of white pencils from hard to soft. I started with a Stabilo All (I’m not sure what that pencil is made of, but it is billed as a “marking” pencil that can write on glass and metal) and Faber-Castell Polychromos as my harder “grades.” I then moved progressively softer and more opaque with Prismacolor, Holbein and finally a Conte pastel pencil. The Conte worked especially well as a smudgy background on the right side of the drawing.

As it always does when I draw only the light, my brain had to do a rollover. Of course, my tonal work in colored Uglybooks the past several years certainly helped me make the rollover more quickly. Using nothing but pencils, the result is more interesting and dynamic than it often is (at least for me) using only graphite.

What a fun challenge! I see myself visiting more museums this winter with this new focus in mind and more white pencils in my bag.

Ground Will Soon Move at SAAM

10/30/18 Seattle Asian Art Museum

Driving through Capitol Hill the other day, I pulled into Volunteer Park to see what was going on at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. It’s been closed for a while now, so I figured renovations were under way. I wasn’t even sure if parking would still be available in front, but it was – and I had a great view of all the heavy equipment being brought onto the grounds. I didn’t see any digging the day I was there, but the machines were ready.

(By the way, the museum is collecting photos that have been taken by museum visitors at the camel sculptures over the years. Visit this page to see one of Greg and me. If you don’t see it at the top, it may have scrolled lower. Or just look here.)

1989, at the original SAM

Mixed-Media Experiments: Museum

6/18/14 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL
140 lb. paper

The whole week has been a fun and busy stay-cation of mostly lightning sketches while we toured our own city with a visitor. My bag of mixed media came in especially handy when time constraints and other circumstances made watercolor difficult or impossible.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum’s fabulous exhibit Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920 –1945 was both a necessary and fun opportunity to use water-soluble colored pencils. I don’t have much experience with sketching only with colored pencils, so I didn’t give the values as much contrast as I would have liked, but I have to say I’m in love with the Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils I’ve been using lately. They are so soft and rich that it was fast and easy to fill in the contours of these elegant bronze objects. (A docent stopped to look at my sketch of the mandarin duck and mentioned that this exhibit has inspired more sketchers than most exhibits do. In fact, she said this duck was an especially popular choice among people with sketchbooks.) I tried sketching the rabbit with my favorite Sailor fountain pen, but it was more difficult to capture the clean, economic lines of the Art Deco object with a pen. I seem to find it easier to use the Sailor with organic subject matter.

6/18/14 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils

6/18/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor fountain pen

Peacock in the Desert

11/16/18 Elephant model in wedding finery

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, is the Seattle Art Museum’s extraordinary exhibit spanning 500 years. In addition to paintings, the hundreds of pieces in the show include furnishings, jewelry and armor previously displayed in the Marwar-Jodhpur palace. Many of the paintings reminded me of a 2009 show at the Seattle Asian Art Museum called Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Both exhibits required walking around with a magnifying glass to view the tiny, exquisite details that looked like they were painted with eyelashes. The brilliant color palette of intense red, gold, purple, green and blue was dazzling!

I had only a short time to sketch right after the museum doors opened and before the crowds got too thick, but I couldn’t resist grabbing this quick capture of a life-size elephant model. Dressed up in wedding procession finery, the elephant had a painted face and was wearing gold earrings. A nearby video and photos showed how elephants would be used ceremonially to transport members of the wedding party.

Local friends: Don’t miss this exhibit! It’s at SAM through Jan. 21, 2019.

Sake Bottles, a Horse and Botched SAAM

11/21/13 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink, Zig markers, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

An errand on Capitol Hill gave me an opportunity for lunch at Aoki, a small, traditional Japanese restaurant that I don’t get to as often as I’d like. I know some sketchers have a penchant for sketching their food before they eat it (Matthew Midgeley and Liz Steel are among my favorites), so I actually had it in mind to try that – I really did. Japanese food is always so beautifully presented that I knew my meal would make a nice still life without having to do anything to it. But by the time my grilled mackerel, soup and rice came, I was so hungry that I cancelled my sketching plans and scarfed it all down. (Matthew and Liz obviously have more willpower than I do.) As penance, I sketched the colorful sake bottles lined up on the counter instead.

11/21/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Canson XL

Stuffed and happy, I finished my errand and then swung by the Seattle Asian Art Museum at Volunteer Park. It was another sunny but very chilly day, and I managed to score an ideal parking spot facing the museum. (If I were to turn the car around 180 degrees, I would see a view of theSpace Needle that I had sketched earlier this year.) Although I’ve sketched at Volunteer Park several times, I’ve never been brave enough to take on the museum’s lovely art deco building. With that parking spot, I had no excuse. I started with a drawing that wasn’t half bad, but then I took out my paints and overdid the growing shadows.

Frustrated with that sketch, I went inside to use the restroom, but to be polite, I sketched a Tang Dynasty horse sculpture on my way out. (I don’t want them to think I buy an annual museum membership only to use their toilet.)

11/21/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, water-soluble pencil, Canson XL

I was so annoyed with my sketch of the museum that I drove home vowing to return sometime soon to try again.

Mood Indigo at SAAM

5/20/16 colored pencils

“Mood Indigo: Textiles from Around the World” is one of the new exhibits at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Curated mainly from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibit showcases the many ways indigo dye has been used through the ages by many cultures. Most of us take indigo for granted, wearing jeans every day and thinking nothing of how the fabric obtained that blue hue (though most contemporary jeans are now made with synthetic indigo). But indigo is far more versatile than the blue for jeans – it’s used in clothing, on walls, on beds, and in sacred traditions. Some of my favorite pieces in the exhibit were the kimonos and quilts.

Most of the wall hangings and other textiles weren’t very conducive to sketching. But I found a fascinating costume (a Basinjom mask and gown) made of indigo-dyed cotton, wood, feathers and other materials and worn by Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson in 1973. It was definitely worth a sketch!

I'm a guest blogger on Pens! Paper! Pencils!

In other news, I was invited by Ian Hedley of the blog Pens! Paper! Pencils! to write a guest post about Urban Sketchers. Please check it out!

A kimono with busy rabbits on it.

The wave pattern on this kimono was one of
my favorites.

Post-museum refreshments: It's mini Frappuccino time!

Chilly Blue Sky at Volunteer Park

11/25/16 brush pen

Blue sky! After several continuous days of rain, it was good to see the sun yesterday morning at Volunteer Park. Several hardy Friday sketchers took advantage of it to sketch outdoors, but despite wearing two layers of Polartec, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I did, however, have a great view of William Henry Seward from my parking spot. Nostalgically I remembered the last time I had sketched the monument more than four years ago on a warm August day – warm enough that I had to seek shade instead of my car’s heater.

After that I ducked inside Seattle Asian Art Museum, which will be closing soon for major expansion and restoration. First I went to the rear of the museum where I knew the tall windows look out on some of Volunteer Park’s old trees – a good opportunity for a value study. Then I walked through the sculptures in the museum’s permanent collection and found one of a Buddhist monk “at the moment of enlightenment,” whose expression was nothing less than joyful. Or so I thought. The placard, however, said, “it is a moment of intense mental struggle and often associated with actual physical pain.” Well, he looked happy to me.

11/25/16 water-soluble colored pencils

By the time of the sketchbook throw-down, it was warm enough to stand outdoors for the few minutes it took me to capture one of the museum’s stone camels, who also looked happy to be in the sun.

11/25/16 graphite, water-soluble graphite

11/25/16 brush pen

Lots of Color and Strangeness from Mr.

12/17/14 Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi and Fuyu-syogun inks, Caran d'Ache
Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

A couple of weeks ago when I reviewed several shows at the Bellevue Arts Museum, I mentioned that many art exhibits are not sketchable for various reasons. The current exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, “LiveOn: Mr.’s Japanese Neo-Pop,” would fall into that category.

Not only was it not sketchable; I don’t really know how to talk about it. The most startling work is a room full (and I mean literally full; there’s barely room to walk around) of what I will charitably call “stuff” – a lot of everyday life detritus. Piles and piles of old books, outdated appliances and electronics, cartons, broken furniture – a small mountain of stuff. Ultimately you come to realize that it’s a statement about the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. In another piece, a wall is covered with a montage of heartbreaking photographic images of the devastation. In another section of the exhibit are Mr.’s huge, colorful paintings inspired by manga and anime.

I did find one thing to sketch. A 30-minute film called “Nobody Dies” produced by Mr. was being shown in a room that also displayed costumes and props that were used in the film. While Greg viewed it, I stood in back and sketched the costumes and props.

(We viewed this exhibit the same day that we visited the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, but I got so excited about that place that I forgot all about posting this sketch and the exhibit review!)

Pocket Vignettes at Volunteer Park

2/16/17 brush pen, colored pencil

On Thursday we went to see the exhibit Tabaimo at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Although I enjoyed the show, the sun’s unexpected appearance called to me. Before we got back into the car, I took a few minutes to put into practice the exercise we learned last week in Gabi’s Pocket Urban Sketching workshop. The concept is to use a pocket-size page spread to compose a montage of three small vignettes related in some way. To be visually pleasing and more cohesive, Gabi suggests varying the three elements in size.

While I was still viewing the exhibit, I sketched a dragonfly motif from one of the pieces. Then outside the museum, I started sketching Isamu Noguchi’s Black Sun sculpture when a tour bus of teenagers suddenly climbed all around and inside the sculpture’s hole for a photo opp. I quickly scribbled them into the sketch. Finally I looked out over Volunteer Park toward the Space Needle on the horizon and made a tiny skyline at the bottom of the page. As Gabi had suggested, I wrote a few notes about the visit in the white spaces around the vignettes.

The page spread, which is 5 ½-by-7 inches, took no more than 10 minutes to complete (by that point, I was too cold to stay out longer, since the sun had dipped behind clouds). Individually, each sketch doesn’t show much, but the three together tell a more complete story about my visit to the museum and the park. I don’t usually journal much as part of my sketch page, but the spaces between images asked to be filled in with brief notes. It’s really an ideal format for travel sketching on the go – very little time consumed, yet a lot of information and memories captured. 

Although I know many sketchers use this type of montage format, I’ve never put it into practice myself. Now I can easily see how to use it to my advantage in some situations. It’s an art journal technique (writing that supplements sketches) colliding with urban sketching in a way that fits some of my needs well. 

Cozy SAM (Where Derwent Pencils Win Again)

 

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).

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).

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!

Camel and Black Sun

7/6/14 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey ink, Zig markers, Caran d'Ache Museum
water-soluble colored pencils

Outside the doors of the Seattle Asian Art Museum are two camel statues. Kids and adults alike love to sit between the camels’ humps for photo opps. On this warm and sunny Sunday afternoon, Volunteer Park was full of people. I set up my stool a distance away, figuring that I would start the sketch, and as soon as someone sat on the camel, I’d be ready to sketch them in. But for the 30 minutes I took to sketch this, no one came by! (Maybe they saw me sketching and hesitated. . .? Hmmm, doubtful – usually bystanders are happy to get in my way!)

Next I sketched Black Sun, Isamu Noguchi’s elegant “donut” sculpture, which is another favorite Kodak moment. If a photographer stands in just the right place, the Space Needle can be framed perfectly inside the donut hole (Google “space needle noguchi black sun” and you’ll see hundreds of images). Visitors can’t resist trying to frame both the Needle and a loved one in the hole. This time I wasn’t disappointed. I just started sketching the sculpture, and eventually a man came by and put himself in the hole. Behind him, another tourist took photos of the Needle.

7/6/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencil, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Volunteer Park

6/14/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

A few months ago I sketched the view of the Space Needle from Volunteer Park. Today I met a few other Seattle Urban Sketchers at the park for an ad hoc gathering, and I decided to sketch again from the same vantage point. This time I included the Isamu Noguchi sculpture Black Sun, a popular frame for the Space Needle in many a tourist photograph. A boy hopped into the donut hole at just the right moment for me to include him, too.

 

6/14/13 Sailor pen, Diamine Eclipse ink

Chilled after the half-hour I spent on that sketch, I popped into the Seattle Asian Art Museum to warm up. The current exhibit, “Legends, Tales, Poetry: Visual Narrative in Japanese Art,” includes this sculpture of a Buddha, circa second or third century.

 

With only 15 minutes left before the appointed sketchbook sharing time, I looked around at the large grassy area near the Conservatory, and every elementary-age kid in the city seemed to be celebrating the last day of school. (It was probably actually only a few classes, but it was more kids than I’ve seen in one place in a long time.) I really enjoyed using my Sailor fountain pen (with the funky ski-jump nib) on the sketch of the Buddha, so I pulled it out again for this park scene. Although I’ve used it many times, it was the first sketch I’ve done with that pen that made me feel like I was finally taking advantage of its variable line widths. It was fun tilting the pen to scribble the trees.

6/14/13 Sailor pen, Diamine Eclipse ink, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

 

Sunny Trees at Volunteer Park

 

2/5/26 Volunteer Park

The USk Seattle outing was for a choice of either the conservatory or the Seattle Asian Art Museum, both at Volunteer Park and both of which are free on First Thursdays. But when the day dawned with a clear sky and a forecast of temps in the 50s, I knew I wouldn’t be going indoors at all; I bundled up for outdoor sketching!

Seeking a spot where I could get a dose of vitamin D, I first sketched the memorial of William Henry Seward outside the conservatory (above). I’ve sketched this statue a few times before, including one during my first year of sketching. I remembered that experience and how the statue had gotten lost in front of a background of trees painted in the same value. I’m happy that I’ve learned at least a few things since then.

Across the street from Volunteer Park Cafe, 17th & Galer

After a bite to eat at nearby Volunteer Park Café, I walked across the street to sketch a lovely bare tree that I had spotted on my way to lunch. Although the Capitol Hill neighborhood is full of Seattle’s oldest, most impressive trees, this one had beautiful light on its trunk, and I could stand in the sun myself to sketch it. It’s always about location, location, location.

Technical notes: In the top sketch, I tried something a little different from my usual method: I used a gold-colored Derwent Inktense Block to indicate light on one of the mostly shaded conifers. I’m not sure it “reads” well as sunlight compared to the paper-white light on the statue.

Although I don’t care for the bright blue I chose for the statue, I’m happy that I’m making new color choices beyond my usual tried-and-true (that is, "reality").

The second sketch is an example of exactly what I was talking about in yesterday’s post. After drawing the tree and shrubbery with Derwent Drawing pencils, I wanted to imply the café building in the background by drawing the windows with a neutral color (so that the tree would stand out in front of it). All I had was a Blackwing graphite pencil. Although it has an extra-soft core, the Blackwing is not nearly as thick as the Derwent. Immediately I realized I would have to be more careful and deliberate (and therefore slower), or the pencil strokes would be more visible. The Derwent, on the other hand, is so thick that the pencil strokes blend into each other instantly. That’s what I was trying to articulate yesterday but couldn’t quite explain; that’s what makes the Derwent Drawing so expeditious.

Now I’ve answered my own question: Yes, I can use these pencils even outdoors!