Lynnwood Heritage Park

8/20/22 Historic water tower at Lynnwood
Heritage Park

 I received an invitation a few days ago that I couldn’t refuse: Gabi Campanario offered the local subset of his mailing list a new type of event. Part history, part sketching demo and part sketch outing, the inaugural session of Gabi’s Greater Seattle Sketching Tours took place at Lynnwood Heritage Park. Only 15 minutes away, the park was entirely new to me.

Gabi began by giving us a brief history of the small park and its historic buildings. He chose the old water tower for his demo. Although he typically makes his personal sketches in a pocket-size book, for the demo, he used a large sheet of watercolor paper. (It was closer to the format of the work he used to do for the Seattle Sketcher column he wrote for many years.) As he demo’d, he offered tips on choosing a composition, scaling a subject to fit appropriately in a selected space, perspective, drawing accurate angles and establishing values.

At the beginning of the demo, he had said that at any time, if we preferred to do our own sketching, we were free to wander and do that. I stayed for about half his demo and was especially delighted by his intriguing invention (see photo below). Eventually, I started doing my own sketches. Unlike Gabi, however, I stayed with my comfy sketchbook instead of going large. In fact, I’ve lately become so comfy with thumbnail-size sketches that I decided to make a series of vignettes instead of one large sketch. I couldn’t resist including a fantastic old tree in a couple of sketches as a framing device.

The view of the water tower that Gabi sketched for his demo.

A huge old tree framing the water tower and fellow participants.

Gabi says he plans to offer more of these events throughout the Puget Sound region, and I’m looking forward to them! To find out about them, join his mailing list.

Gabi began by giving us a tour and history of the park.

The device attached to his glasses shows the importance of maintaining a consistent picture plane.

Gabi's completed demo sketch and the subject behind him.

Inaugural participants of the Greater Seattle Sketching Tours!