Sunny and Shady Chinese Garden

 

6/6/25 Seattle Chinese Garden (Even though this isn't comics, I'm now in the habit of editorializing as I draw and can't stop myself from commenting!)

Seattle Chinese Garden in West Seattle is a USk Seattle mainstay, especially in late spring when the peonies are in bloom. Meeting there on May 1 last year, I remember it was cold – 56 degrees, according to the notation on my sketch. Last Friday we were treated to full-on summer – sunny with temps in the low 70s! It was a gorgeous morning to pull out my colors for a change.

Technical notes: Before I brought out my water-soluble Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons, though, I began by making value/composition studies. These studies (see below) really as are as useful as instructors are always telling us they are (though I rarely heed their advice). In the second one of the bamboo grove (which I sketched last year in watercolor), a sketcher was sitting in the grove’s shade, and I wanted to keep him in, but I didn’t like the focal point of the sunlit bamboo stalks to be dead-center in the composition. So he had to go. If I weren’t studying square compositions, I might have decided to stretch the composition horizontally to make room for the sketcher. But I think the tight square is stronger.  

Composition/value studies