Overlook Landscaping

 

6/7/26 Waterfront Overlook Walk

A cruise ship was in, and soccer fans were already in town for the impending World Cup, which meant only one thing: Pike Place Market was more mobbed than usual on Sunday. Fortunately for USk Seattle, our outing focused on spacious Waterfront Overlook Walk, which feels unoppressive even when lots of people are enjoying this city gem.

After sketching there several times since it opened less than two years ago, what caught my attention this time was how lush all the landscaping has become. Lupine and many small floral bushes were blooming everywhere (which the bees seemed to appreciate). I decided to make the landscaping the “story” of my first Overlook visit of the summer (I anticipate more . . . some of my best-used tax dollars are here).

Blick Urban Sketch Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/4/26 Blick's Urban Sketch palette (photo reference)

Yesterday I emulated the “Blick Exclusive” edition of Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels with the Botanical and Earth Tones theme. In today’s post, I recreate the Urban Sketch set (of course). As I mentioned yesterday, my Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210) have gone missing, and both appear in this palette too, so they are absent in my recreation. I didn’t think Cobalt Blue was necessary since Ultramarine is included, but a green seemed essential, so I subbed in Phthalocyanine Green (710).

While the color range is wide enough for most urban scenes, it’s a bit heavy on browns and other earth tones for my needs, and including both Sepia and Black seems nearly redundant. I use Light Gray (intended for pavement, I suppose?)  so infrequently that I didn’t know what to do with it in my sketch. I ended up using it mostly to block in shapes that I colored over later with other colors. It’s curious that the palette includes Lemon Yellow, Golden Yellow and Orange while the Botanical and Earth Tones set includes only one yellow. (A-ha – the tin illustration shows a classic yellow taxicab.)

Phthalocyanine Green stands in for Emerald in my recreated palette.

With blue and green in the palette, I knew what I needed in my reference photo: Trash cans! Maybe I was influenced by the theme’s name, but I found this palette comfortable and easy to use. I only needed to take artistic license with the car’s color (yellow cabs are extremely rare in these parts). Not seeing an obvious way to use Vermilion and Carmine with this reference photo, I had to start a dumpster fire (ha-ha).

While Phthalocyanine Green is ideal for trash cans, I find it too unnatural for foliage. Using this palette taught me, however, that when warmed with Lemon Yellow, it’s not bad.

As I did with yesterday’s palette, I balked at too many colors being used for no reason – and then I reminded myself that no one said I had to use them all. In any case, I enjoyed using these palettes as a fun exercise in stretching my color vocabulary. It was relaxing, too, because I didn’t have to think about which colors to choose. I’ll add this to my doomscrolling prevention toolkit.

The two themes I emulated are each wide-ranging enough that they could be used as standalone sets. The Blick Exclusive series has two more sets – Fantasy Dreamscape and Floral Expressions. Fantasy Dreamscape is overly heavy on cool hues, and the floral set wouldn’t be adequate for urban scenes, making both less versatile. If I come across reference photos that might be appropriate for those palettes, I might try them someday.

In the meantime, I have a more pressing matter at hand: Where could my Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue be . . .?

Blick Botanical and Earth Tones Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/3/26 A hot mess of 13 colors (photo reference)

Cruising casually on the Blick site one day (as one does), I came across a series of new products: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II sets with a “Blick Exclusive” label! At first my heart skipped a beat: What?? New Neo II colors that only Blick can sell?? It didn’t take long for my heart rate to return to normal; the colors aren’t new at all. Caran d’Ache has curated four themed palettes for Blick to sell exclusively. The 15 colors in each set are all from Cd’A’s standard Neocolor II line, the sets come in Cd’A’s standard red tins, and Blick’s name is on the sleeves.

It’s an interesting co-marketing play. I know that Blick is widespread in the US, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the art supply store is ubiquitous enough for Cd’A to put the store’s name on one of its bestselling products.

In any case, the most interesting part to me was looking at the colors that had been selected for each theme. I’ve found it to be an intriguing creative exercise to try on a palette that someone else has designed. The first time I tried it was several years ago with the Beya Rebaï Neocolor II sets. More recently, fashion designer Kévin Germanier’s surprising palette of colored pencils inspired me in unexpected ways (which led to my own palette-making discoveries that I’m still applying).

Since I own almost all the Neocolor II colors, I thought it would be fun to recreate a couple of the “Blick exclusive” palettes and try them. Today’s post is my version of the Botanical and Earth Tones palette. A couple of colors are missing here: Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210). (I’m sure I own both, as my swatch page includes them, yet both have mysteriously disappeared from my studio. Annoying.) I thought the 13 I had were plenty, though, to make a sketch.

Two colors missing from the palette: Cobalt Blue and Emerald Green

While I do understand that no one is expected to use all the colors in the set in a single work, I gave myself that challenge just for fun. My natural tendency is to minimize my palettes to the extreme, but my recent bingeing of Colin Woodward’s YouTubes and taking his mini-workshop have pushed me to try being more maximalized.

Since the theme is flowers and plants, I dug through my reference photos to find one with lots of both, especially in the colors of the palette. The hot mess shown here is the result. The greens were all familiar to me, as I use them often (one is in my current daily-carry). I found it odd, though, that the set includes two olive-y greens that are so similar. I suppose the light blue was intended for the sky in landscapes, but the photo I chose had none visible, so I tossed it around at will. I didn’t learn much from this palette except that 13 colors were too many for this sketch, and I winced at the lack of palette cohesion. Making the scribbly mess was fun, though.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post when I recreate another “Blick exclusive” palette.

Thornton Creek in the Morning

 

6/2/26 Thornton Creek

Temps climbed to the mid-80s on Tuesday – unusual for this early in June (though I suppose it’s becoming the new normal). Getting out early for my walk to beat the heat, I went north to Thornton Creek. A couple of weeks ago when Kim and I had such a good time there, It was late afternoon. In the early morning, different parts of the creek’s plantings were illuminated, so it was like having a whole new landscape to choose from.

I inadvertently mixed this green at Gas Works Park -- a happy accident.

More green notes: A couple of days ago, I noted that my current greens were working well together, but I was still using them mostly conventionally. Then the next day at Gas Works Park, intending to use Inktense Iron Green, I inadvertently grabbed the overly cool Caran d’Ache Dark English Green (729) and mixed it with Spring Green (470) for the hillside foliage. Although the result was surprising, it made an interesting complement to the rusty, reddish gas works. That combo reminded me of the CYMK primary triads I had played with extensively several summers ago.

At Thornton Creek, I decided to use the same pairing for the maple tree’s foliage. The result is a little more edgy than my usual, “safe” mixes – and I like it! Maybe there’s hope for me yet, even if it takes a happy accident (as Bob Ross would say).

Gas Works Revisited

 

6/1/26 Gas Works Park

The grass is still littered with goose poop -- some things never
change. The fuzzy goslings sure are cute, though!

The deconstruction and removal work at Gas Works Park was supposed to be complete by now, so I went to see what the result looked like. Other than part of a long, horizontal pipe that had been removed, I was surprised to find that not much else had changed. The intention of the work was to eliminate structures that could be climbed, reducing the risk of falls. I had been expecting more of the pipes, ladders, catwalks and other connecting structures to be gone. Looking around, I could still see plenty of structures that a determined individual could figure out ways to climb, but if that’s the extent of the work, I’m relieved.

When I was at the park with Urban Sketchers last month, I sketched the eastern half of the primary gas works. This time I sketched the western half. Next time I visit, I’ll remember to bring my panorama landscape sketchbook so I can get the whole structure at once. Shown below are photos I took before and after the removal.

5/2/26 The long, horizontal pipework is still in place.

6/1/26 The middle section of the long pipe has been removed. 

Two Trees (Geeky Light and Color Talk)

 

5/31/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood, 1:22 p.m.

Most plein air painters will tell you that the worst light of the day are the hours around high noon; they favor early morning and late afternoon for both the color and the angle of light.

The sketch at top of post was made at around 1:30 p.m. PDT. Call me contrary, but I think it’s interesting and more challenging to take on that disdained high-noon light. Instead of a convenient crescent of shadow from a lower sun that shows a tree’s form, each cluster of foliage on each branch has both a highlight and a shadow.

About two hours later on the second leg of my walk, I sketched another tree, this time with the less challenging, classic crescent of shadow (below). This close to the summer solstice, the “late-afternoon” sun is hardly low in the sky, but it’s still interesting to see how much difference it makes.

5/31/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood, 3:33 p.m.

Green notes: I’m still experimenting with the same set of greens I refreshed my palette with a few weeks ago. For the most part, it’s working out, though it feels a bit conventional. I haven’t figured out how to shake up that part yet. I am pleased, however, with the two main greens that I’ve been using for trees: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Spring Green (470) for the sunlit side and Derwent Inktense Iron Green (1310) for the shaded side. Initially I had chosen Iron Green, which is very cool and dark, for conifers (it’s the green I used most in the sketch I showed yesterday). When warmed up with Spring Green, though, it works well for the shaded parts of all kinds of trees.

Blue notes: Whenever I’m using a limited palette of three to five colors (which is nearly always), I think very carefully about what to do about a clear sky. I want to make it blue, but if I haven’t used that blue anywhere else in the sketch, it feels tacked onto the palette. It’s a dilemma that I didn’t know how to resolve until I heard Eleanor Doughty articulate the solution in her Domestika course (which I took a few years ago):

If she brings in a color from outside the limited range she has established for a sketch, she tries to use it in at least one more spot so the color won’t be random. It’s a sound principle for a cohesive palette, and now I follow it whenever I can.

For years, my favorite Seattle blue-sky color was Caran d’Ache Middle Cobalt Blue (660). However, that bright, warm blue has little use except as sky. With that in mind, I recently went through all my water-soluble blues to see if I could find one that would make a good sunny sky when watered down but is also dark enough to play double-duty as a shadow hue. Currently I’m trying Caran d’Ache Blue (what – no fancy name?) (260). For the street shadows in the late-afternoon sketch above, I mixed that blue with the Derwent Iron Green used in the trees, and I think they hold the palette together nicely.

That orange shining through on the late-afternoon tree trunk? Although not very apparent, I also used it very subtly in the trees to the left of the cars. Catching that bit of light was my proudest moment in that sketch!

Zeta Experiment at Javasti

5/29/26 View from Cafe Javasti, Maple Leaf neighborhood

After our one day of summer when temps were in the high 70s and even low 80s in some parts, we were back to winter the following day. After a walk, I felt warm enough to get a table outside Café Javasti, where these conifers gave me an ideal opportunity for an experiment.

From experiences long ago, I had dismissed Stillman & Birn's Zeta sketchbook from use with wet media. While its smooth surface is beautiful with ink, markers and especially Derwent Drawing pencils, it’s just not sized appropriately for washes or generous spritzing. I’ve used water-soluble pencils with Zeta before, but it had been a while, and I wanted to refresh my memory on that combo. Trees like these are an ideal subject because I want to retain the detail of their distinctive, feathery limbs, which is more difficult to do with a toothy paper like Hahnemühle.

I like this result: A little water deepened the colors without obscuring the details, and it was dry enough for the Zeta surface to take it.

Jimi Hendrix Park by Rail

 

5/27/26 Jimi Hendrix Park

I don’t get around to Jimi Hendrix Park often (the last time was two years ago); the sometimes grueling drive through the worst of traffic has only gotten worse. Since the latest stations in our light rail system opened in March, though, the park is now an easy train ride away!

Roy hadn’t yet ridden the Eastside line across Lake Washington, so Mary Jean and I decided he should experience it. After riding one stop to Mercer Island, we turned right back around and rode to Judkins Park Station, which is across the street from both adjacent parks.

On this brilliant, nearly cloudless morning, temps in the mid-60s, I was able to stand in full sunlight to sketch the prominent red sculpture in the middle of the park. Before writing this post, I had checked my blog from my first visit to Hendrix Park in 2017, and I had to laugh – a composition I had chosen then was almost identical to this one! I had even chosen the same quotation from the purple trail of song lyrics circling the park. My approach hadn’t changed much in nine years, either, but at least I could tell that some trees had grown.

Part of a sculpture honoring Jimi Hendrix's life

Filling a few minutes before meeting up again with MJ and Roy, I sketched the cutout silhouette of Jimi in the sculpture honoring his life (at right).

After lunch at Seattle Fish Guys, we made a nearby stop that had been on our radar: Temple Pastries. With delicious treats and good coffee, the café has one more appealing feature: Outdoor seating with a view of the Central District neighborhood.

That’s where I made my first page-spread sketch journal entry in my handmade UglyPads sketchbook. Although I like the striking appearance of two high-contrast colors as adjacent pages, the spread looks less cohesive – the two pages don’t “read” like they are part of the same entry. I think I’d like to draw more across the gutter to bring the pages together better. I do appreciate the slightly larger page spread, though, compared to commercially bound Uglybooks.

Temple Pastries, Central District neighborhood

Maybe in the next book I make, I’ll stack a few sheets of the same color so I’ll have some same-color page spreads. Hmmm . . . so many options when you bind your own!

Animal Heads and a Surprise at Sculpture Park

 

5/30/26 Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, Olympic Sculpture Park

After a long delay and much anticipation, Ai Weiwei’s monumental installation, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, officially opened at a community event May 30 at Olympic Sculpture Park. According to the Seattle Art Museum, “The works reconceive the 12 zodiac heads that decorated an 18th-century Qing imperial fountain before they were looted during the Second Opium War (1856–60). Seven are based on the original heads that have survived, and Ai researched and reimagined the five animals still missing to complete the zodiac.”

Lunch sketches

Despite the cool, cloudy morning, USk Seattle came out in full force to sketch the bronze animal heads, each standing 10 feet tall and weighing 1,500 pounds. I sketched different parts of it twice from different angles. Then later while eating lunch outside, I still had a good view of the sculptures, so I sketched a few more heads, this time with Jane in the composition.

Sponsored by SAM, the community event included live music and dragon dance performances by Wei Dai. The page below is a composite of Dai’s performance (lower right) and park visitors playing with long, colorful dragon streamers similar to the one Dai used.

Dragon dancer Wei Dai (lower right) and park visitors 

After lunch, I still had an hour before the throwdown, so I took a walk down to the waterfront. To my surprise, while I’d seen the fountain before, I discovered a figure in the fountain that I had never noticed. Not finding a placard, I had to do some online digging to learn about it, and it turned out to be an intriguing story:

Father and Son, a fountain with sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, was the result of a bequest to the city by a Seattle man, Stu Smailes. The avid art supporter stipulated in his will that the $1 million gift be used to build a fountain in Seattle. “The fountain(s) shall include one or more unclothed, life-size male figure(s) designed in the classical style, i.e.: realistic,” were the requirements, according to the Seattle Times.

Father and Son by Louise Bourgeois 

Eventually, the bequest was assigned to Seattle Art Museum, and Father and Son was installed at the western park entrance in 2005. According to Wikipedia, “The 15-foot fountain and sculpture depict a na    ked man and a naked boy reaching out to each other. At timed intervals, two separate sides of the fountain will either rise or fall to reveal or obscure one figure or the other.” Interestingly, I never saw the “son” appear the whole time I was sketching, and the water level didn’t seem to change.

The Wikipedia article goes on to say that “Father and Son is the first public sculpture in Seattle featuring nude figures. While the SAM’s statement on the artwork focuses on the emotional distance and vulnerability of the two figures, others in the local community saw the sculptures as overtly sexual and pedophilic.” I don’t recall any of this controversy from 2005 – and it took me more than 20 years to discover the figure!

One of many benefits of being an urban sketcher is all that I keep learning about my native city, one sketch at a time.

Colored Pencils with Woodward

 

5/26/26 Derwent Drawing pencils in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (Colin Woodward's colored pencil workshop)

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been enjoying bingeing on Colin Woodward’s relaxing YouTubes that are part travelogue (with drone videography), part camper van life, and part sketching demos. Although he mostly uses watercolors and water-soluble pencils and crayons, I viewed one demo in which he used non-soluble colored pencils. When he offered a 90-minute mini-workshop on this medium, I knew it would be a good opportunity to ask questions and learn from him live on Zoom.

Almost all his demos, from both reference photos and plein air, are of northern Irish landscapes that are completely foreign to me. Trees, especially, seem like airy, formless hazes of foliage – so different from the strong, sculptural shapes of Pacific Northwest conifers. Regardless of medium, I knew the subject matter would be challenging.

Since Woodward didn’t specify a pencil brand, I decided to use only Derwent Drawing pencils. I know from his videos that he likes to use lots and lots of colors – a far wider range than I would typically use in the limited-palette fashion I tend to favor. He has a sharp eye for seeing tiny bits of color in his subjects that I don’t notice until he calls them out with a fistful of materials, often including some unexpected hues. I even wondered if the muted, nature-based Drawing palette would be too limited for his methods and whatever landscape he chose, so I wanted to put that to the test.

Look at all the colors in this sketch -- way more than I would typically use! But I did need some of them just to mix hues that I found lacking in the Derwent Drawing line.

Indeed, that was my first challenge: None of the greens in the Drawing line were warm enough for the greens I saw in the reference image (a field of bluebells in Killynether woods). It was a good challenge to use the Drawing palette’s inadequate yellows (two are quite similar, and both are warm) to warm up the greens.

This formless mass of "stuff" is the kind of scene I usually run from!
(Reference photo by Colin Woodward) 

In addition, this type of composition, which he tends to favor, is also foreign to me: With no central focal point other than the varying angles of distant trunks, the picture is more about capturing a mass of “stuff” than identifiable forms – the kind of view I usually run away from because it’s so . . . so formless!

The colored pencil Woodward uses most in his demos is Derwent Inktense, which, as we all know, explodes with vibrant, saturated hues with just a drop of water. It’s not difficult to get high contrasts and deep, dark values with those pencils quickly. That made me especially interested in seeing how he would use non-soluble pencils when he couldn’t rely on water to bring out their vibrancy. (I wasn’t the only one with this interest; nearly all my classmates brought it up, too.)

The answer is what I suspected: It just took a lot longer to apply all the dry pencils without the help of water. He makes many tiny marks to create a nearly Impressionistic result that’s unexpected for colored pencils. Instead of solidly blending layers of color, his approach relies more on optical blending (my term, not his) that evokes pointillism.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable, even relaxing workshop working in a way that I’ve not tried before with very different subject matter than I am likely to encounter in these parts. And I actually like my result (not often true of class projects)!

Pencil notes: In my review of the expanded Derwent Drawing line, I wondered out loud whether the muted, natural color range could suffice as someone’s sole pencil set. With this completely natural landscape as the subject, I still found Drawing’s palette lacking. (One of these days, I’ll get to the post I’ve started making notes for: If I had to give up all colored pencils except a certain limited quantity, let’s say 75, which would I keep? It would be convenient to simply keep 72 Derwent Drawing pencils, but I know that wouldn’t do. Which colors would stay, and which other brands and colors would I add in?)

Paper Review: UglyPads

 

New UglyPads -- glue-bound sheets just right for making sketchbooks!

Way back when I first started using colorful Uglybooks, one of my first thoughts was that I wished they made an edition that included multi-colored pages in one book. I suggested as much to my contact there, and they liked the idea, but they wanted to see how well their then-new product line would go before developing new products. Fair enough.

Now, four years later, it hasn’t happened yet, but the next best thing has: UglyPads! In a 9-by-12-inch size, the glue-bound pads contain the same richly colored, 175 gsm paper as the Uglybooks sketchbooks I love so much. Each pad contains five sheets each of five colors, and four colorways are available.

Juicebox contains most of my favorite midtone colors.

Uglybooks offered to send me one pad of my choice, so I chose Juicebox, which includes most of my favorite Uglybooks colors (the ones that work well as midtones against black and white inks). With much excitement, on the day the pad arrived, I cut a few sheets in half, then folded and stapled them into a 4 ½-by-6-inch book. (Although I have a corner rounder, it’s tedious to use, so I didn’t bother with this first book; perhaps eventually). I’m thrilled to have the multi-colored book I have always wanted!

In addition, the finished size is a smidge larger in each dimension (closer to a true A6) than Uglybooks, which gives me a little more page real estate. Nice!

Finally, the multi-colored Uglybook I have always wanted!

My only complaint is that the glue binding is a bit coarse, so when sheets are removed, the edges end up rough. Although it’s not a deal-breaker, I had to trim off the edges before binding.

Cover sticker by Draplin Design Co.

Even more important than being able to make my dream Uglybook is that this solution resolves a larger issue I’d been worrying about for a while. Despite the large stash I had acquired, I am now running low on the original saddle-stitched (stapled) books I fell in love with. In 2024, much to my initial horror, Uglybooks switched to a perfect binding. To my relief, the binding does open flatter than most perfect-bound notebooks, but it doesn’t stay open (annoying during USk throwdowns). Although I can tolerate them, I have never fully embraced them as a replacement for simple, stapled books.

After my supply of saddle-stitched books runs out, would I be forced to settle for perfect-bound books or – heaven forfend – stop using colored paper!? No! Now that I can staple together my own books using the same beautiful papers, that dilemma has been eliminated. Whew! Another first-world sketcher problem evaded!

Just Like That at Green Lake

 

5/24/26 Green Lake

After walking around Green Lake with a couple of friends, I stayed behind after we parted to make a sketch. Standing just off the path near the water, my presence prompted two conversations. One was with a woman, a watercolor painter herself, who saw from a distance that I seemed to be using a brush, she said, yet she stopped for a closer look because she couldn’t believe I’d be painting standing up! I showed her that I was using water-soluble pencils and crayons, and she thanked me for inspiring her. She seemed eager to get her paints out.

The second conversation was with a couple who seemed astounded. “You just did that standing here? Just like that?” That question again.

I’m always amused. Yes, just like that.

Bob Blast’s Painterly Tips

 

5/21/26 photo reference

Bob Blast’s YouTube channel recently came to my attention. Scanning through his titles, I can see that he is a painter, not a sketcher, but as I always do with painting instruction videos, I try to apply his approach to any medium I might use. That’s how I use oil painter Ian Roberts’ extremely informative videos about composition. It’s usually a little more difficult to use pencils, crayons or markers in place of paint, but I enjoy the challenge of attempting it anyway. And almost always, the exercise reconfirms that basic art and design principles apply to any medium.

In the video I viewed recently, Blast (Bob’s real last name is Burridge, but I like that he uses “Blast”) shows how he designs paintings around figures by putting the highest contrast around the area of the focal point. He also uses negative space to clarify and design shapes. Finally, he stresses the importance of showing the direction of light. His style is more abstract than I would typically use for urban sketching, but its visual appeal made me want to try it.

Using a reference photo I had snapped on a walk, I picked out some primary colors in water-soluble markers and crayons. My color choices were based on values, not the photo, and I grabbed basic hues so that I wouldn’t get distracted by trying to “match” what I saw.

Although this approach is very different from the way I usually think, I like the result. I’m especially pleased with how the dark negative space defines the left figure’s lighted side. (I would have liked the way the high-contrast negative space defines the dog’s lighted side if I hadn’t inadvertently drawn the ground shadows through its body!)

5/23/26 Statue of Lenin, Fremont

Anyway, this exercise was a lot of challenging fun. It motivates me to take more high-contrast reference photos so that I can practice this exercise again. 

Could I ever do it on location? It’s often difficult to find a high-contrast scene with ideal lighting that would make this exercise easier, but now that I’m aware of what to look for, I see more potential. Last week in Fremont, I was thinking about Blast’s tips as I sketched the statue of Lenin. Several dense trees are behind Lenin’s head. I made the tree on the left (the lit side of the statue) darker to have higher contrast against the focal point. On that overcast afternoon, I also exaggerated the contrast between light and shadow on the whole statue and made the direction of light more obvious -- something I became more aware of because of Blast’s videos. 

Neppy

 

5/22/26 Neptune (reference photo by Linda Lee)

From the many stories I’ve been told about the pets I’ve drawn, I gather that rescue pups are a hardy lot. They’ve already survived untold hardships before finding their forever homes. Once they know they are safe and loved, they have reason to keep on barking.

A Papillon and Chihuahua mix, Neptune lived to the ripe old age of 14, despite numerous health issues. A friend commissioned this drawing to give to her aunt, Neppy’s mom.

RIP, Neppy.

Each Day

 

5/22/26 Mt. Rainier from Maple Leaf Park (I tried something a little different with this sketch: Instead of "drawing" the mountain first, I simply painted the sky around it, then smeared through the middle to capture the intriguing cloud formations.)

Mysterious mountain,

a song sparrow’s call,

a bunny munching grass for breakfast:

Each day a fresh opportunity

to miss you.

This Time, Lenin and the Bridge

 

5/23/26 Fremont Bridge and Lake Washington Ship Canal, Fremont neighborhood

Sketching in the Fremont neighborhood is always a game of “choose your icon.” The Troll, JP Patches & Gertrude, Lenin, Saturn, the Rocket (bonus points if you can get both Saturn and the Rocket in the same composition), the Fremont Bridge, the topiary dinosaurs – did I miss any? USk Seattle hit them all last Saturday on a cloudy afternoon.

Although I’ve sketched all of them multiple times, I picked an icon that I may not have sketched as often. It was breezy and chilly by the Lake Washington Ship Canal, but I wanted to start with a peek-a-boo view of the brilliantly blue Fremont Bridge.

After walking around Fremont for a while to warm up, I ended up at the statue of Lenin, where several other sketchers were already settled in at the former Soviet Union leader’s feet. Always a bit daunted by the formidable monument, I walked across the street for a more distant view. I chose a purple and green palette that would contrast strongly with Lenin’s red hand.

In fact, the red hand was just what I needed to fill the short time remaining until our throwdown, when the sun finally came out.

Statue of Lenin

Thornton Creek

 

5/21/26 Thornton Creek water quality channel, Northgate neighborhood

Northgate’s Thornton Creek water quality channel is less than a half-hour’s walk from home, yet I’ve sketched there only a few times. Although the freshly landscaped channel, new in 2009, was still growing in when I first sketched there in 2013, it’s now lush with mature plantings. This time of year, it’s a zillion shades of green with spots of colorful blossoms.

Kim and I take advantage of the sunshine.

I think the main reason I avoided sketching there for many years was that I was intimidated by all that green. In that 2013 post, I drew the landscaping but avoided painting it, knowing that I’d end up with “a huge, dark green mess.” A month later, I was brave enough to get my green paints out (see below), but the foliage was no less daunting.

Kim had never been to Thornton Creek channel before, so I took advantage of a gorgeous afternoon to introduce her to it. Somewhere in the 13 years since those previous visits, sketching layers of lush greenery became less formidable. It probably happened around the time I quit watercolors and embraced pencils! This time I added water-soluble crayons to the mix. While it’s not without challenges, I’m relieved that I’m no longer intimidated by layers of green.

I bravely got my watercolors out for this sketch in 2013.