Neptune Theatre

 

4/24/25 Neptune Theatre, U-District

You’ve heard me talk about how I am an opportunistic sketcher. I’m always looking for opportunities to sketch while I go about my usual daily business (that’s the definition of what I call a lifestyle sketcher). Whenever I go to my credit union, I get 30 minutes of free parking in the U-District (which is difficult to come by at any price). I always take advantage of it by sketching somewhere nearby, and last week it was the venerable Neptune Theatre.

I did a more detailed sketch and wrote more about the Neptune several years ago in this post. In the short time I had last week, I made this sketch about the final letter E in its name, which is shaped like a trident (erroneously labeled “pitchfork” in my sketch. Shame on me – I know the difference between the devil’s pitchfork and Neptune’s trident!) I’ve always loved that cool neon sign. In 2018 when the marquee was updated and digitized, the theatre retained its original look completely, thankfully.

Cold Chairs at U Village

 

4/27/25 University Village

University Village is one of USk Seattle’s tried-and-true for transitional seasons because the retail center has some sheltered areas to keep us dry. Sketchers can make themselves comfy at all the public umbrella’d tables without having to patronize venues. Except for stores and restaurants, however, U Village is all outdoors, so a cold morning is still a cold morning – made even colder because the chairs are made of metal. Yikes! Although I typically stand to sketch anyway, I sat just for a moment to keep my lettering straight, and yowza, was that chair chilly! Despite that common complaint, everyone’s enthusiasm was high last Sunday.

Trying to study color temperature again, I was in the mood for a primary triad to capture the bright colors of red umbrellas and new, green leaves on the Japanese maple trees (plus a U Village icon, Leo Sewell’s “junk” penguin sculpture).

Colder than ever from standing longer than I expected (color temperature studies always take me longer than I think they will), I took a brisk walk around the Village. Finding a spot in the direct sun (if the sun were to appear from behind clouds), I looked around and found bronze sculptures of a calf and a turtle. To add to the menagerie, I caught a living, breathing pup waiting for his human to finish snacking.

Technical note: In the first sketch, I was so focused on the challenge of color temperature combined with using a primary triad (a decision I made before realizing that the scene had so much green) that I really let the composition get away from me. The penguin was so much fun that I started drawing it first, but later I felt that it weakened the composition. Below is how I would have cropped it if I had been thinking more about composition and not about color. As usual, my pea brain can’t handle more than one concept at a time!

So European

 

4/17/25 Kwanzan cherry trees near Green Lake

As I’ve mentioned on other occasions, I always try to make my daily fitness walks as expeditious as possible by working them into errands or appointments. I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood where many amenities I use are within walking distance.

4/17/25 My first urban couch of the season!

Although I do a major grocery shopping trip by car every two or three weeks, I enjoy making more frequent trips on foot for small, lightweight things. One avocado, a couple of apples, a box of salad greens – it’s usually produce that I’ll finish in less than a week. The Green Lake PCC is ideal for this – a pleasant, 15-minute walk with mountain views in two directions. Of course, I sketch along the way when I can.

OK, so it’s not strolling home from an open market with a baguette sticking out of my straw basket, but these shopping trips on foot always make me feel so European.

4/21/25 A quick break at Cloud City Coffee

My Long Shadow

 

Plum Color Temperature Study

 

4/22/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Now that I’m past the excitement of pink petal peeping and sketching, I want to get back to studying color temperature. Specifically, I want to apply what I learned in Sarah Bixler’s class to sketching in the real world, on location. With all those cherry trees I sketched, I found that I was too enamored with the subject matter to focus on study, which requires a different kind of concentration. It’s actually easier to study color temperature with a “nothing” scene.

These are the same ornamental plum trees I became obsessed with several years ago as I tried to find the right color mixes to capture the reddish-purple, nearly black hue of their foliage. During that first pandemic summer, this dead-end street between Maple Leaf and Green Lake became my favorite safe and easy place to study this confounding color.

In this photo, the grassy areas look blown out and overly warm;
in reality, the fence looked warmer.

With a limited palette (yellow, red, purple, blue) and nothing tricky to draw, I could see the whole scene abstractly in the same way my classmates and I practiced color temperature concepts on portrait skin tones. The warmest spot was the fence toward the left. Other than the sky, which I decided not to color, the coolest area was the broad freeway barrier wall in the background (in reality, a dark gray; I mixed all four colors). Everything else was somewhere in between. I considered mixing a very warm green for the grass, but instead I just added a bit of yellow to the purple shadows only where the trees’ cast shadows hit the grass. I left the street shadows straight purple.



Now that it’s finally warming up a bit, I intend to do more of these studies on my walks.

Bags o’ Bags

4/21/25 One of six bag o' bags

I’m willing to bet that you have a bag of bags – maybe more than one. Probably in a closet or other storage area, the bag is full of plastic and paper bags that once contained purchases and that you intend to reuse. I’m also willing to bet that the ones that are hardest to simply toss are the ones made of heavy paper and with strong, sturdy bottoms and two rope handles. I call them handle bags. Surely they will be just right for gifting someday, right? So you save them.

I just wanted to establish that we all have these bags of bags – before I show you mine.

After I finished Phase 2 of my big downsizing project, I decided to start on several minor areas that still need work. These are areas that I know I can finish in a couple of hours or less – a closet, a cabinet or a drawer. First up was the front coat closet, which is in my studio/office. I had planned to procrastinate on this one for a while longer, but I was motivated to do it now for one reason only: After still more downsizing after moving downstairs, I had three bins of stationery and art materials that could not find a home in the studio/office proper, yet I was not ready to get rid of them. I needed a small, limited amount of overflow storage area. The closet was a convenient location.

Aside from my coats and jackets (which I had previously downsized), the closet was jam-packed with bags – lots and lots of freebie, logo’d tote bags (every organization’s favorite tchotchke), higher-quality, purchased bags, backpacks, bag-in-bag organizers, insulated lunch bags – bags, bags, bags. What I thought was a two-hour task turned into two days because I had to downsize all the many bags I no longer needed (two boxes filled for Goodwill!).

The truly impressive part, though, was the number of handle bags in the closet. About a decade ago, I spent some time sorting, organizing and reducing the humongous collection. Like everything else, though, they continued to multiply.

Needless to say, the floor of this small closet was overflowing with handle bags. I wish I had thought to take a photo before I started cleaning, but I did remember to take one after I had pulled everything that was on the floor out into the studio for sorting. My intention was to recycle shabby handle bags, but most were so reuseable! The bright colors and sturdy handles! How could I possibly toss them?

The contents of the closet . . . mostly from the floor. 

St. Vincent DePaul and the Salvation Army are delighted to take reusable handle bags for their shoppers to use, and I had donated many then, but the last of these stores that was convenient to me has closed. I recently learned, however, that food banks also need handle bags for their customers, so I just donated a bunch to the one in the U District (along with some food).

My handle bags, which multiply faster than bunnies and almost as fast as colored pencils.

Most important, though, is that my small overflow of art supplies now fits tidily in the closet. (I will not let the closet become a new general art supply storage area! No, no, no! I’m saying it aloud here so that if it happens, you can shame me!)

Nice and tidy now. The three bins on the floor contain unused notebooks, miscellaneous pencils and pads of drawing paper. A small collection of remaining handle bags tucked in back.

By the way, if you think the Space Needle on that tote bag looks like a sketch I would make, you’re right! It’s a digitally printed tote bag from Rickshaw Bags (a service they stopped shortly after I got mine, sadly).

4/23/25 My reward at Rossellini's 

Sunshine Flu at Gas Works Park

 

4/18/25 Gas Works Park

I suspect that half the city had called into work last Friday with a bad case of “the sunshine flu.” With the temperature hitting 70 and the sky a clear blue, everyone was celebrating a much-needed reprieve from winter.

I invited Natalie and Kim to join me at Gas Works Park, which is always the first place I think of when the weather turns unseasonably beautiful. All those sunshine flu sufferers? They were reveling, as were we.

L.A., Part 6: People in Transit (Plus Travel Prep)

 

4/10/25 light rail ride to SeaTac

As is always the case when I fly, I had plenty of time to sketch at airports on both ends of my trip. In addition, I had longish light rail rides to and from SeaTac airport to catch a few commuters, too. For this final post of my L.A. series, I’m including all my in-transit sketches. In addition, at the end, I’m including media notes and comments about my (nearly non-existent) travel prep.

I tend to favor Uglybooks in vibrant, midtone hues so that both black and white will pop as shadows and highlights. The lavender book I used for most of the trip was paler than I prefer because white doesn’t show up well. The paleness, however, forced me to make highlights with the paper color (like the highlights on the woman’s sunglasses on April 10, upper right), which is a fun challenge.

4/10/25 SeaTac airport

4/10/25 SeaTac airport

4/10/25 light rail and SeaTac food court area

4/15/25 LAX

4/15/25 light rail ride home

For many years, prepping my sketch materials for travel began weeks and even months before the trip. (If you read earlier posts with the “travel” tag and in the Travel Sketching section, you can witness the whole process.) I hemmed and hawed about what to take and what not to take; auditioned various permutations of bags and accessories; even had “dress rehearsals” by going out sketching locally with whatever travel setup I was considering. Admittedly, I enjoyed this process almost as much as the travel itself, so it wasn’t burdensome. But the longer I sketched and the more I traveled, the simpler my process became. At some point my travel sketch kit basically became the same as my everyday-carry.

As my everyday-carry sketch kit has become smaller and simpler the past five years (I have the pandemic to thank for that), so has my travel sketch kit; in fact, it was no different at all for LA. The only color consideration I made was to make sure I had two shades of green because I planned to sketch at Descanso Garden.

All the usual suspects: A variety of water-soluble colored pencils, acrylic markers, Pitt Artist Pens, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and waterbrush. The kit has been getting a little thick around the belly, so I might need to do some trimming soon.

Beyond that, my only “prep” consisted of filling a spare brush pen with ink in case the first ran dry (it didn’t) and bringing a second Uglybook because I could see that the remaining pages in the one I was using wouldn’t last the whole trip. In addition to those daily-carry items, I brought my current A6-size Hahnemühle sketchbook for using color and a panorama-format Uglybook if I wanted a larger page for my comics style.

Sketch kit, water spritzer and three sketchbooks. The spare brush pen came along but wasn't needed. In the background is my Rickshaw-made, limited-edition tote bag that the Erasable Podcast gave to its Patreon supporters last year.

As for a bag, I used my usual everyday-carry Rickshaw Mini Zero Messenger plus an auxiliary tote bag to hold the additional sketchbooks. When traveling, the latter is useful for all kinds of things, not just sketch materials that won’t fit in my mini: a water bottle; the layer that I inevitably shed by midday; the sun hat I don’t need during the daily morning “June gloom.”

Without the angst, drama and dithering of years ago, my travel prep takes all of minutes instead of months. I’m good with that.

L.A., Part 5: Breakfast and Walk Sketches

 

4/11/25

Even though my stay in LA was only five days, and I had specific plans each day, I quickly established an early-morning routine so that I wouldn’t break my fitness-walking habit. My sketch journal became a fun part of that routine – a process that developed organically during my trip to Portland last summer.

4/11/25

During breakfast, I would usually sketch my food and sometimes people around me. Then I used whatever space remained on the spread to make small sketches during my walk after breakfast. I sometimes also made notes that I expanded on later in my written journal. I really enjoy the way my everyday-carry sketch journal morphs into my travel journal anytime I’m not at home – no special format or independent book needed.

4/12/25

Although my hotel was on a very busy major arterial, if I walked just a block or two away from that main drag, the neighborhood suddenly became residential and amazingly quiet. It was so much fun to walk in a different direction each morning to discover new trees, new plants and new birds (or at least their songs). My walks were interrupted frequently by the need to use PlantNet or Merlin apps to ID new-to-me flora and fauna. Everything in southern California seems exotic to a Pacific Northwest native who has never lived anywhere else.

4/12/25

Especially enamored by palm trees, I tried to sketch as many different types as I could find.  

4/13/25

4/14/25

Perhaps most amazing (and potentially disturbing) was seeing how the city had addressed the common issue of roots of street trees damaging pavement. The roots were harshly trimmed to fit within the confines of the grassy strip so that they couldn’t reach the sidewalk pavement. I didn’t know how to sketch these roots and also show their context in my tiny sketchbook, so I didn’t try, but I’ve included photos below. The amazing part was how these humongous trees could thrive (at least they looked healthy) with their roots cut in this way. These trees, which I think I’ve identified as Chinese Banyan, are growing all over this neighborhood with their roots treated this way.

4/15/25

I'm always delighted by big, fat lemons growing on trees! 

Here are the roots of the Chinese banyan tree at left...
cut away to keep them from buckling the pavement.

L.A., Part 4: Descanso Garden, the Hollywood Sign and Waymo

 

4/14/25 Descanso Garden

A girl dressed like a mushroom at the Descanso cafe
(I colored and made the border while riding in the car afterwards, which explains the jiggly lines.)

LA’s Descanso Garden is well known to urban sketchers through the vibrant paintings and sketches of Virginia Hein. One of my long-time sketching dreams has been to sketch alongside Virginia in one of her favorite locations. Alas, that dream will be more difficult to achieve now because Virginia recently moved, ironically, from LA to the Pacific Northwest! Nonetheless, I channeled my inner Virginia on my first visit to the lovely garden.

Although springtime blooms made the garden especially colorful this time of year, I chose two of Virginia’s oft-sketched icons instead of flowers: the vermillion bridge in the Japanese garden and the rose garden’s gazebo. The ancient forest was a restful, shady stop in between.

Birds and bees were very happy in this spacious garden filled with mature trees and meadow-like areas. I kept stopping to use my Merlin app to ID birds unfamiliar to me.

4/14/25 The Hollywood sign from Lake Hollywood Park

To round out this day of touring, my brother and sister-in-law took me to see the famous Hollywood sign. Amazingly, even though Elaine has lived in LA her whole life and Frank has been there most of his adult life, neither had seen the Hollywood sign up close! They needed an out-of-town visitor like me to make the trip to Lake Hollywood Park, one of the easiest places to see and sketch the landmark.

Full-on tourist mode

My ride is here!

No tipping and no stinky aftershave!

Although I rarely write on this blog about things I didn’t sketch, I’m making a rare exception here because it was a key moment in my LA visit: I rode Waymo! Hearing my family members talk about Google’s autonomous car service made curiosity overtake doubt. I chose the 10-minute trip from my hotel to my brother’s house as an appropriately short, easy course to let the car do the driving. Once I got over the weirdness of the experience, I had little anxiety. Indeed, with a “driver” that makes full stops at every stop sign, never exceeds the speed limit, never fiddles with its phone, and actually slows to a stop when the light turns amber (instead of speeding through), I felt safer than I would with many human LA drivers. 

Pricing was competitive with Uber, Lyft and other app services. Bonus: Compared to some Uber and Lyft drivers I’ve had, this one wore no stinky aftershave -- and did not expect to be tipped. If I have a future opportunity to ride Waymo again, I would not hesitate.

Very rare for me, I did not feel compelled to sketch this unique and unusual experience; I wanted to keep my eye on the road! Additionally, I didn’t know what I would sketch to show the experience . . . an empty driver’s seat? In any case, since I have no sketch to show you, please see the video I posted on Instagram.

L.A., Part 3: Petersen Automotive Museum

 

4/13/25 Petersen Automotive Museum

As you know from my many posts about the Greenwood and Edmonds car shows, I enjoy sketching classic cars. Since my nephew has an interest in all cars, the Petersen Automotive Museum was an ideal choice for us to visit together. Although it’s within walking distance of his house, he had never taken the opportunity to visit before, so it was new to both of us.

DeLorean used in the film "Back to the Future"

Perhaps most popularly known as the home of many vehicles made famous by Hollywood movies and TV shows, the Petersen houses a collection of rare, unique cars as well as well-maintained examples of historical beauties. A special exhibit while we were there featured Waymo, Google’s self-driving car (more on this later!), which was especially interesting to learn about.

Instead of making portraits of individual cars, it was more fun (and expeditious) to make a series of small vignettes to capture the car museum feeling. We both really enjoyed the Petersen, and I suggested to Jason that he take his father and uncle sometime. (Yes, the Koyamas all seem to share a car affinity gene.)

My favorite T-bird convertible!

The Green Hornet's 1966 Chrysler LeBaron Imperial (with chauffeur Kato strangely in the backseat)