Matthews Beach is Overrun

 

6/3/25 Matthews Beach

Even though it’s less than 15 minutes away, I’m pretty sure I’d never been to Matthews Beach before last week. It’s not too surprising, though – it’s a tiny beach on the north end of Lake Washington that’s mainly used by swimmers and people who immerse themselves in cold water for therapeutic purposes. Seeing a reference to it in the Seattle Stairway Walks book piqued my curiosity, so I picked a sunny afternoon to visit.

With a very short beach and not even many trees, there’s not much to sketch there, but I did manage a square compositional study. The most prominent “feature” of the beach is that it has been overrun by Canada geese. I thought Green Lake and Lake Union were bad; Matthews Beach is far worse – so many geese! Noisy, bossy and very poopy! (To hear how annoying they are, check out the short video I posted on Instagram.)

Poop machines :-(

Process note: If you’re wondering about my “9/30” notation in the sketch above and in others I’ve shown recently, it’s to indicate that I’m on another challenge! Alluding to it a few weeks ago, I quietly and arbitrarily began 30 days of square compositional studies on May 28 when it was time to switch to a new Uglybook.

In fact, it’s not even a fresh Uglybook. Beginning this tan book for the last Pencilvember, I abandoned it when I became frustrated that graphite wasn’t giving me a sufficiently strong contrast against the paper color. Looking among my unfinished Uglybooks to use for the composition studies, I saw how badly graphite had smudged on the pages I had used. That’s what gave me the idea to look for a colored pencil that could give me the tactile satisfaction of pencil for these studies without the mess of graphite. Although I didn’t like tan with graphite, I like it much better now with dark colored pencils. Unlike graphite’s reflective shine, the matte finish of colored pencils helps to increase the contrast against the paper (and I love how white pops so brightly on tan).

I’ll be talking more about both my compositional studies and my search for a graphite wannabe, but since most of my “studies” are also ordinary urban sketches that are already appearing on my blog, I thought I’d explain.