A Wallingford Street (Plus Supplemental Kit Fail)

 

2/11/26 Wallingford neighborhood

Back in the day when I used to sketch all winter from my mobile studio, this was a favorite street scene type: Trees, cars, utility poles and wires with bonus backlighting – the type I could sketch easily while parked. After I started doing much of my urban sketching while fitness walking (beginning in 2019), I mostly stopped sketching from my car. I’ve missed this kind of “nothing” view – nothing of particular interest, but so quintessential of a residential Seattle street. Even though it’s not my street or even my neighborhood, it speaks of home and familiarity like nothing else does. Ironically, I was taking a fitness walk through the Wallingford neighborhood when I came upon this scene, and I stood between parked cars to capture it.

Too many colors; cumbersome case

Media and color notes: Although I’m generally satisfied with the results here, I have a couple of complaints. This was my first on-location sketch using my newly evaluated and downsized mixed-media kit. The addition of all the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons to my usual daily-carry colored pencils has given me too many color options: I took too long dithering about choices, and I also used too many colors, resulting in an incohesive palette. I should have stuck with no more than three to five at a time, which had been my rule when I first started experimenting with values-based hues.

The most significant complaint, though, is that the kit is still too much to hold when I’m (literally) on the street. One culprit is the Rickshaw Sinclair, which accommodates more crayons than I need or want access to. Even worse, I am constantly fumbling with the depth of the case, which makes the crayons difficult to reach. The injury added to insult was that when I kept trying to fold down the Sinclair’s edges to reach the crayons, stress was applied to the Derwent Drawing pencils on the other side, and all three points chipped! (Since I’ve been daily-carrying a few Drawing pencils, I have found that those super-soft cores break easily compared to most other high-quality pencils. Unfortunately, dropping implements is an unavoidable hazard of urban sketching!)

Just as I knew I would, I’ve returned to the same point yet again (as I have many times before): I must find a way to get everything I want to use into my daily-carry, or the excess will cause more frustration than mixed-media joy. ARRGGHH!