Eagle in Blue

9/11/25 Olympic Sculpture Park

When I visited the Olympic Sculpture Park briefly last month, I realized I hadn’t sketched there in quite a while. Mary Jean and I picked a morning that turned out to be  chilly and foggy, but I dressed in enough layers to be comfortable. In fact, it was fun to capture the Space Needle disappearing into the thick fog.

Although the park exhibits numerous sculptures, I somehow always end up sketching the same three or four icons. Alexander Calder’s “Eagle” and Richard Serra’s “Wake” are two of them. It had been a long time, though, since I last sketched Jaume Plensa’s “Echo,” the haunting, serene, 46-foot head near the waterfront.

Brush markers and colored pencil -- a useful pairing.

Material notes: Since I’d sketched all of them before, the challenge this time was limiting my palette in an unusual (for me) way: blue and sepia (both Faber-Castell Pitt Brush Pens, 146 and 175, respectively). I enjoyed using these colors in a tonal way in Bothell, so I was eager to try them again, this time with a slightly lighter blue as a better midtone. The Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle Middle Cobalt Blue (660) that’s part of my everyday-carry colored pencil palette is very close in hue to the blue marker. As I was contemplating the Space Needle, I was trying to figure out how to do the subtle gradation required to depict fog – markers are either “off” or “on” with nothing in between. Then I suddenly remembered the colored pencil! Nothing like pencil to make subtle gradations easy.

Later when I sketched the Eagle, I wanted one step darker than blue, but not quite as dark as sepia, to show the shaded underside. Adding a layer of pencil over the marker did the trick. Pencil is also much better for suggesting foliage (behind “Wake”) than a marker is (at the base of “Echo” and behind “Eagle”). I’m digging the pairing of markers with colored pencil – each doing what it does best.

What a brain-blowout to sketch the bright red Eagle in blue!