Playing Tourist in West Seattle

 

7/2/25 Water taxi from downtown to West Seattle

Last month when Mary Jean, Roy and I explored Pioneer Square Habitat Park at the waterfront, we were all reminded of the water taxi service as we sketched a boat there. Operated by the Washington State Ferries, it’s typically off my radar, but the pedestrian-only service between downtown Seattle and the east side of West Seattle is well used by commuters who want to skip West Seattle bridge traffic. With the fare being only a little more than a bus or light rail ride, we decided it would be a fun sketching excursion.

Feeling like tourists!

Meeting at the Washington Street Boat Landing pergola, we caught a mid-morning taxi. The ride across Elliott Bay takes only about 15 minutes, so we all sketched quickly from the deck. Accompanied by more tourists than commuters on that sunny ride, we definitely felt like we were in vacation mode, too!

On the other side, West Seattle offers some of the best skyline views of downtown Seattle from Hamilton Viewpoint Park and Seacrest Park, both short walks from the ferry terminal. It had been 10 years since I last sketched in the area, so it was familiar but felt fresh to me.

The view from Seacrest Park. This may be one of my favorite sketches so far using Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons. I'm finally feeling comfortable using them on location and getting into the color palette available in these water-soluble crayons. 

Mary Jean sketching at Seacrest Park

I made this sketch in our current round-robin sketchbooklet.

For lunch, we got a nice shady table at Marination Ma Kai, a Hawaiian-influenced seafood restaurant. *

Light rail riders, my lunch at Marination and coffee after the ferry ride home.

On the short ride back to downtown Seattle, we all agreed that it was fun playing tourists for the day on this easy getaway.

* The site of the Marination Ma Kai restaurant has personal significance to me and my family. It was the location of the former Seacrest Boathouse, where Seattle’s Tengu Club fishing community launched their boats. My father was an enthusiastic Tengu for many years. This article tells the story. A recent documentary tells the history of this club and how its Japanese American members were affected during and after World War II. The Tengu Club is recognized with a plaque outside the restaurant (below), and derby awards are displayed inside.

This plaque recognizes Seattle's Tengu Club, begun by Japanese Americans in the 1930s.

Clean Windows

 

6/30/25 photo reference

It’s embarrassing to admit: In 35 years, we had never had our windows professionally cleaned. We occasionally Windexed interior windows, but never the exteriors, and certainly not the three skylights. Making many, many studies through the bedroom and studio windows upstairs, I had found it increasingly frustrating trying to see through the haze of decades of grime.

Chatting with a friend one day, she happened to mention the window cleaning service she uses and highly recommends. That was all I needed; I called Husser Window Cleaning Service immediately.

Almost all of the 22 windows and glass doors they cleaned included storm panes that had to be removed and cleaned on both sides and screens that had to be removed and cleaned. They also cleaned all the tracks of windows that open.

This room is where I go for yoga and to view Mt. Rainier. When morning light pours in through
the now-clean windows, angels sing.

When Liam brought out the extension ladder to wash the skylights, I went out to sketch him, but it was so stressful watching him move around precariously on the roof that I couldn’t do it! I sketched this from a photo instead.

The next morning when I went upstairs to see Mt. Rainier, I heard angels singing!

“But I Might Need it”: How to Downsize Your Kit

2013 (Note the spare ink cartridges and multiple waterbrushes)

Long-time readers of this blog have seen my sketch kit get smaller over the years. Sometimes the reduction was only temporary, and more materials eventually crept back in. Sometimes the reduction was only hypothetical (search the term “Gilligan’s Island” on my blog, and you’ll find many examples of how I’d pack my kit for that fateful “three-hour tour”).

It took a global pandemic to shrink my sketch kit permanently. Once I got used to a daily-carry bag that was small and light enough to take fitness walks with, there was no going back. Even when I occasionally missed the so-called “full arsenal,” I enjoyed the liberty of lightness too much.

2015

Seeing my compact bag and kit, other sketchers have exclaimed that they’d like to get their own sketch kits (hauled in a huge backpack or wheeled bag) down to a more manageable size, but they just haven’t figured out how. Peering into their bags, I can see that they continuously carry items they “might need,” yet they confess they have not used them in months/years/decades. (By the way, all of this resonates with general downsizing of an entire home, if you catch my drift.)

I’ve noticed that often the people who seem overburdened by their loads are the same people who lament that they don’t get out to sketch as much as they’d like. Hmmm . . . ya think there’s a connection?

2016 (This was my most mixed-media year! I loved fountain pens,
markers, watercolors, watercolor pencils and brush pens, and darned
if I wasn't going to bring them all to the Manchester symposium!

While it’s none of my business how much stuff others want to haul around, I believe strongly that anything that keeps you from sketching as much (or as easily) as you’d like is a problem. The objective is to sketch, and we shouldn’t let carrying our materials keep us from that objective. (For that matter, we shouldn’t let owning too many materials keep us from that objective. See: downsizing.)

I’ve been thinking for a while about writing this post, and my recent visit to Poulsbo when I inadvertently left behind my auxiliary tote bag reminded me of the very points I wanted to make in such a post (and I had to listen to my own lecture that day). The first bullet point is my guiding principle for carrying less. The other points are suggestions on ways to downsize:

2018 (disregard the numbers; they refer to a different post)

• Having fewer options “forces” more creative solutions. A favorite example is when I was sketching a fire station during a minimalism challenge – and I had no red! How could I possibly sketch a fire station without red? Ta-da – my four-color ballpoint pen (which I keep in my bag for general notetaking, not sketching) came to my rescue.
• A friend and I just had a conversation about how the 80/20 rule applies to sketch kits: We all use about 20 percent of our materials 80 percent of the time. That rule applies even with my minimal kit. Consider which items you use 80 percent of the time and remove the rest.
• Whatever is your color medium of choice, choose a minimal palette – say, six to 10 colors. Esthetically, a limited palette looks more cohesive. It also encourages mixing and experimenting with hues that at first may not seem “right.” Some of my favorite sketches have been primary and secondary triad experiments. One time, I was dismayed that my limited palette didn’t include the right periwinkle hue to sketch a Bachelor’s Button. I was “forced” to optically mix some unexpected colors, and I was delighted with the result.

• 

  2021 (This version of my pandemic kit was minimal even for me!)

  Stop prepping for every possible sketch “emergency.” I used to carry a small pencil sharpener routinely. It’s tiny and doesn’t weigh much, so it seemed like an easy carry. The one or two times I actually needed it, though, it was lost at the bottom of my bag. It wasn’t worth the bother of digging it out. I finally took the sharpener out and instead use other sharpeners at home that do the job more effectively.
• Along the same lines, stop carrying “spares” of favorite materials. This was a biggie whenever I traveled. I knew I couldn’t just go back home to get more, and local stores might not carry exactly what I needed, so I always carried extras (pencils, pens, ink refills, entire sketchbooks) of things I felt I couldn’t live without. Almost always, I brought them all home again without using them. On all my post-pandemic trips (Dallas, Portland and L.A.), I cut the cord on spares. Guess what? I lived!

(Shown in this post are a few of my sketch kits over the years. For a look at all past sketch kits and bags, see my Sketch Kit Archive page.)

Current: lean and mean

Early Summer Treats

 

6/30/25 Mt. Rainier and The Brothers from Maple Leaf

Our first heatwave of the official summer season was just getting under way. It was an old-school, Seattle-style heatwave – the kind that cools down to the high 50s at night, no matter how hot it gets in the daytime, and lasts only a couple of days. Not that newfangled, triple-digit “heat dome” stuff.

I got out early for my walk to pick up a few groceries. In these parts, it’s a treat to be able to take a walk in a T-shirt (with no other layers!) when the air still has that crisp freshness. Cherries were ripening on the trees, and my neighbors’ Lucifer crocosmia were beginning to bloom.

Crossing the Northeast 80^th Street Interstate 5 overpass, I stopped for my ultimate treat: a view of both Rainier to the south and The Brothers to the west from a single point.

Yes, this is why I live here.

Cars and Community in Greenwood

 

6/28/25 Herkimer Coffee, Greenwood neighborhood

A couple more pups outside Herkimer

As I do every year, I arrived at the Greenwood Car Show by 7:30 a.m. and started the day by walking the entire 20-block length of the show. On that first walk-through, I don’t sketch; I just look and enjoy. Although noisy and heavy with the smell of exhaust, the parade of cars on Greenwood Avenue getting into their spaces is exciting and full of anticipation.

Then I walk halfway back up again to get breakfast at Herkimer Coffee, grab a table outside, and watch the street action unfold (top of post). Over coffee and a scone, I often sketch more dogs than cars, as lots of pups get tethered to the bike racks while their humans go in for sustenance.

By the time USk Seattle meets at 10 a.m., I’m already warmed up and ready for action myself!

Greenwood Car Show

Although I’ve felt for many years that the Greenwood Car Show is my favorite summertime event, I don’t always stop to consider how different it is from other big annual events that roll around this time of year.

What is it about this show that makes it my favorite? Although I do enjoy seeing and sketching classic cars, it’s not just the subject matter. Despite attracting crowds from all over the city, the Greenwood show somehow manages to maintain its neighborhoody feeling. I kept seeing families running into friends there. Cheerful conversations were all around.

The sketch at top right on this page is my favorite this year. Spontaneously, I got the idea to draw the white lines over the black, and I love this look.

Then there’s the whole car enthusiast community: Owners chatting about all the work they’ve done, how long they’ve owned it, and all the cars that came before and after it. As I sketched, I overheard people reminisce about cars they or previous generations once drove, and I did my share of feeling nostalgic, too (I always look for Datsun Z cars of my high school fantasies).

Cars have always been a strong part of American culture, and the Greenwood Car Show drives (ahem) that point home. I’m happy to be part of it every year, catching the stories in my sketchbook.

Ahhh, my high school fantasy cars!

Greenwood Avenue is closed to traffic for the show, but not to this guy's eye-catching vehicle!

On Saturday night, I got some takeout sushi for dinner. Sketchwaiting outside Akebono, I was still in car show mode and gave my own Miata a little sketchbook love. 

Poulsbo

 

6/27/25 Poulsbo and Bainbridge ferry

Right around the time I was trying to channel my inner Virginia Hein at Descanso Garden in L.A., she was moving up here to Washington. Although I missed my chance to sketch with her at one of her favorite hometown locations, I was happy that her move probably meant I’d see her more often now.

Last Friday Roy and I decided it was time to officially welcome her to the Pacific Northwest. Looking at the map to find a location that might be about halfway between Virginia’s new home in Port Townsend and Seattle, I spotted just the right place. Riding a ferry over to the Peninsula, we met her in cheerful Poulsbo for the afternoon. A town that I had not visited in several decades and certainly had never sketched, Poulsbo was new to all three of our sketchbooks.

After a leisurely catch-up lunch, we sketched at the Poulsbo waterfront where we were lucky enough to catch the town’s Makers Faire, an annual arts festival. The town’s Scandinavian heritage was apparent in décor and lore. While Roy sketched from a café, and Virginia painted the low-tide beach, I had a great backstage view of musical duo Lucas Music. At first I thought I should move around to the front and sketch them as part of the audience, but I couldn’t resist being able to put the town buildings in the background.

Musical duo Lucas Music performing at Makers Faire

The market area was unusual in that a glacial erratic boulder was in the middle of it. Though much smaller than the one in Wedgwood, it was still fun for kids to climb.

Makers Faire and ferry

Roy and I also had opportunities to sketch on the short ferry rides between Seattle and Bainbridge.

It was a super-fun time with Virginia that I hope to do again soon and more regularly!

Material note: Feeling the pressure of the ferry schedule, I was rushing a bit to get out the door and inadvertently left behind my entire auxiliary tote bag! In it were a Hahnemuhle sketchbook and Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons, which I’ve recently figured out how to use more easily in the field. Although I was momentarily disappointed not to be able to use color, the day turned out gray and drizzly anyway, so my usual daily-carry Uglybook, brush pen and markers worked out just fine.

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, Virginia!

Reignited

6/20/25 Green Lake

It’s been well over a year since I first became interested in the concept of on-location comics, inspired by Drewscape. Ever since, I’ve been intrigued, challenged and motivated by trying to capture the story of a location with multiple small sketches on a page in comics style. I’ve also enjoyed watching my process evolve into my own current style.

Just lately, though, my interest had started lagging because I felt I had pushed the concept as far as I could go. Whenever I try something new, I seem to eventually hit this point in the process when it starts to feel less challenging, like it’s coming too easily, and then I look around for something new.

5/13/25 Roosevelt neighborhood

This recent YouTube from Drew came just in time. Showing his approach live, he reignited my passion for this unique approach to urban sketching. Once again, he talks about how combining multiple small sketches on a page tells a more complete story of a place than one sketch could. For me (and these are my own thoughts, not his), not knowing what the next sketch might be and not being able to plan it means I have to trust the process. That’s what creates tension and also excites and motivates me to keep going.

Sometimes this approach leads to a dull page without much story, and I’m disappointed. But how is that different from a single sketch turning out less appealing than I had wanted and feeling disappointed by that? It’s exactly the same. I still love the comics approach, and I’m grateful to Drew for once again inspiring me.

Maybe my challenge now is to find a way to push it in a direction that I’m not yet aware of. Or not. In any case, I just have to trust the process. 

4/25/25 Pike Place Market and Seattle Art Museum