Rediscovering Southeast Green Lake

7/28/25 Green Lake

Although Mary Jean and I both know Green Lake well, Roy does not. We decided it was a good time to further his education of our favorite lake. Last fall, I showed him the lake’s north end, so this time we met on the southeast side. In particular, I thought it would be fun to start at Green Lake United Methodist Church, which is as close to a European stone castle as anything in Seattle might be. Since I’ve sketched other parts of the church before, I focused on one “tower” to fill the last page in our round-robin single-sheet signature booklet (below).

Green Lake United Methodist Church

At lower right is a different church that I see regularly but had never stopped to sketch before.

Restaurant Christine

From there, we continued walking and sketching around the lake until we got to the Tangletown micro-neighborhood in the south end of Green Lake, where we stopped for a delicious lunch at Restaurant Christine.

Exploring familiar territory with someone who hasn’t seen (or sketched) the area before always gives me a fresh view.

Color notes: I’d like to start exploring more variations of primary and secondary triads available in Caran d’Ache Neocolor II’s palette. Many Neo II hues are not available in the Cd’A Museum Aquarelle line, which I’ve become familiar with, so it’s fun to try new combos. I also find that choosing a very limited palette of just three or even two hues (a warm and a cool; a sketch I made at Sketcher Fest is one example) makes it much easier for me to interpret and mix color temperature shifts. I’m not especially fond of the primary triad I used in this Green Lake sketch (top of post), though. The blue leans too hard in the violet direction, which results in an odd green when mixed with the yellow I chose. I find that these waxy, water-soluble crayons don’t blend in the same way that Museum Aquarelle pencils do (which I still prefer in that regard). 

New Digs for Drawing Jam

 

12/7/24 I don't often get to draw a bunny in a 
Liberace-inspired tux! So frustrating not to be able 
to see his face or the front of his outfit well.

Except for the pandemic years, I’ve been attending Gage Academy’s Drawing Jam annually since 2012. Last Saturday was the first time the event was held at the school’s new South Lake Union facility, and it was also my first visit since it moved last summer – an exciting first for me!

My personal tradition has always been to arrive at least a half-hour before the opening so I can get a prime seat in the costumed models’ life-drawing studio, one of the most popular attractions. I recall many cold and rainy waits outside Gage’s door and one particularly memorable year when the temp was 20 degrees. Per tradition, it was pouring Saturday morning, but when I arrived around 15 minutes before opening, no one was waiting outside the door – I was the first attendee to arrive! And they let me in early! That set the right tone for the rest of my visit, which was more relaxed and less crowded than all previous Drawing Jams.

Oof... first sketch felt very rusty.

I don’t know if it was actually less attended or if it was just that the new building is so open and spacious that it just felt less crowded. (I’ve heard that the square footage of the new building is actually smaller than the old school.) In any case, I enjoyed the relaxed vibe all day. Even the most popular costumed-model studios didn’t feel uncomfortably packed.

Hallway and gallery lighting is much brighter so that student and instructor art on all the walls is easier to view. The previous facility was a very old building that was either roasting or freezing, and the toilets were scarce, delicate and unreliable at best. Hallelujah – the new school offers a long bank of unisex restroom stalls containing reliably functioning toilets!

When I got frustrated with the poor lighting, I focused
on limbs that had some light on them.

My only complaint (and it’s significant) is that lighting in the life-drawing studios was not directed properly: The backlit models’ faces and fronts were completely in shadow, while the artists had lights glaring in their eyes! Frustrated, I didn’t spend as much time drawing models as I usually do and had more fun sketching the artists and musicians.

Finally I got so annoyed with the lighting that I stepped to the back of the studio and had more fun sketching the other artists. Meanwhile, the model was in the dark. :-(

It was fun sketching Ask Sophie, a band that was familiar from sketches I made at Drawing Jam in 2019.

I’m not sure what’s up with the lighting – Gage has been offering life drawing for all of its years of existence and certainly knows how to light models optimally for drawing. I have given them feedback, and I’m hoping it’s just a fluke of Drawing Jam and not a reflection of typical studio experiences. I would love to return to a regular life-drawing practice again – I have sorely missed it (and I sure felt rusty on Saturday).

Gage Academy's entryway

DJ'd refreshment area offered coffee and pastries during the Jam. That evening, it became a 21+ drink and draw.

Well-lighted hallways for viewing art.

I had the place to myself for a while. . . a leisurely look at all the art.

Lots of pencils among the free art supplies! In the interest of downsizing, I helped myself to only one pencil!

Reliably functioning toilets! Hallelujah!

A rare photo of me at Drawing Jam. . . taken during a break, so I'm looking at my phone! :-0 (Image borrowed from Gage Academy's Instagram)

Tangletown Cheese Boat

 

6/19/24 Tangletown Public House, Green Lake neighborhood

If you read my haiku in yesterday’s post, you may be curious about the “cheese boat.” I was curious, too, when I saw it on Tangletown Public House’s menu. Taking a break for lunch after sketching nearby street trees, I had previously eaten at Tangletown years ago – long before the pandemic – and the menu had been upgraded significantly from the typical appetizers offered with brews. A cheese boat is described as “a Georgian Khachapuri, a cheese stuffed baked bread.” I chose the Green Lake version, which came with eggs and scallions. It’s like a calzone that someone forgot to fold over – and overstuffed with cheese! After walking more than 11k steps, I happily wolfed down my day’s minimum requirement of calcium.

What you see remaining on the plate is the part I took home for a couple more meals!

Material note: My magenta Uglybook is full, and I’ve moved on to one of my all-time favorite Uglybook colors, grunge green. It’s an ideal midtone between black and white. My eyeballs, however, are still seared from that bright magenta, so it’s going to take a minute to adjust to green again.

One Pole for Another

 

6/18/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

My spidey sense tingled when I saw the sign: ROAD CLOSED. I walked down the middle of the closed street toward the big action: An old utility pole was being replaced by a new one.

Ten years ago I had a front-and-center view of all the action from our upstairs bedroom window when the pole right outside our house was being replaced. Compared to that view, this one from ground level wasn’t nearly as good, and I had to walk around to the other side of the intersection once because the traffic circle tree was blocking my view. Things were happening and changing fast, but I tried to capture as much of the action as I could.

This is one of many reasons why my favorite form of urban sketching is on my daily walks: I never know where the action will be until I find it.

Loud Retreat

 

6/17/24 Retreat, Green Lake neighborhood

Sometimes my urban sketches include haiku that I intend to be quiet reflections on my experiences of making those sketches. Other times, I just want to complain.

After finishing a page of sketches, I like to sit quietly afterwards to write the haiku. I like to do it as soon as possible so that my impressions from the experience are still fresh. (My mom, a haiku poet for most of her life, used to say the same thing about her own writing practice: If too much time passed after making an observation, the poem could be lost.) I had just made some sketches of trees at Green Lake, so I stopped for coffee at Retreat to write. Inside, the café was too noisy with loud music and conversation, so I hoped that the outdoor seating would be quieter.

Unfortunately, the only other party seated outside was a group of three women all talking over each other loudly and continually. I wanted to quote some of the dialog, but they interrupted each other so often that it was difficult to capture anything. I managed to write the haiku (not on this page, though), but not without grumbling.

On top of all that, I had been served the sloppiest Cortado ever: The barista had spilled half a shot on the counter instead of in the glass, then poured the milk over with such bad aim that the glass was sitting in a puddle when he handed me the tray. Oh, well – it gave me more to complain about.

Green Lake Street Trees

 

6/17/24 Green Lake

Sketching all the special street trees in Maple Leaf in Taha Ebrahimi’s book was almost too easy. I’ve already moved on to the trees of Green Lake, which will take longer because there are 10 of them scattered over a wider area. Shown above are two that are closest to home – a ginkgo and a southern catalpa.

Scanning a street as I search for a tree’s address (the residence closest to the tree), I can sometimes guess from a block away which tree it will be: Often the widest or with a distinctive trunk. Like the spectacular snow gum eucalyptus I sketched in Maple Leaf, this magnificent catalpa has an extraordinary trunk that I spotted easily from a distance. It is certainly a candidate for a more complete portrait later this summer.

“Untethered” Sketches

5/16/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood. On a golden hour walk,
I found the distant downtown buildings to look more silvery than gold.
As I sketched, a bird nearby caught my attention, so I quickly used the
Merlin app to identify it while also trying not to lose the rapidly falling light.
OK, I guess this sketch does have a story!

Although it may seem like all my urban sketches are now taking a comics-like form, I still make some one-off sketches on location that have no sequence or inherent story. (And some one-off sketches do have a full story – at least told in words.) My current focus on the comics approach, however, makes those sketches feel incomplete in some way – like I left the scene without finding one more sketch that would have given the first sketch more context. Regardless, I value all sketches, even the ones that now feel story-less. They are simply part of a different process.

5/17/24 Ducks near Green Lake

6/6/24 Rabbit seen on my walk

I recently read Craig Thompson’s Carnet de Voyage, a sketchbook diary about the comic artist’s travels through Europe. Initially, I thought all of the exquisite brush pen drawings were made on location, but that’s not the case; I think many were done with photo references and from imagination. Nonetheless, they were all done during the trip itself, not afterwards, and are impressively finished drawings that do not look “sketchy” at all.

5/23/24 Roofers at our neighbor's house (On second thought, I think this qualifies as comics.)

This quotation from Thompson’s book resonated with me and helped me identify the difference between a comics sequence and a one-off sketch:

A page of comics has its home – in a story; in a book. But a sketch is untethered, exposing process. The lines themselves aren’t special, but the memory attached to the stillness while making those lines.

Whether a sketch is part of a sequence or “untethered,” it always becomes special from the memory of making it. That has always been the most important part of urban sketching: My sketches are not necessarily about “special” moments; they are moments made special because I sketched them.

5/10/24 Maple Leaf. A walk during the golden hour.

6/10/24 Maple Leaf. A sketch for National
Ballpoint Pen Day.

Northwest Seaport’s 60th Anniversary (Plus Bi-Bim-Bap)

 

6/15/24 Lake Union Park historic ships

Although the weather gods teased us with dire forecasts of rain, hail, lightning and thunder, they took mercy on USk Seattle last Saturday – windy but dry to the end! A good turnout of brave sketchers showed up for the 60^th anniversary celebration of Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center, which preserves and restores historic work ships on Lake Union.

To capture a survey of ships, I made small sketches of the historic tug Comanche, the Fremont Tugboat’s Dixie, and the lightship Swiftsure. Painted red, the 120-year-old Swiftsure is always popular among sketchers. In fact, I’ve sketched it myself several times, but this time I wanted a tall, narrow view to fit the space on my page spread, so I focused on the mast. (My current comics-like approach helped me see a composition I might not have chosen otherwise.)

6/15/24 Stone Korean Restaurant

After the outing, I joined a few sketchers for lunch at nearby Stone Korean Restaurant. Although I’ve had traditional bi-bim-bap, in general, I don’t eat Korean food often, so many dishes were new to me, like the delicious veggie pancake that the table shared. For my entrée, I chose a hot pot-style bi-bim-bap with crispy, toasted rice on the bottom – very different from regular bi-bim-bap and so delicious! Served in a dangerously hot cast iron pot, the food stayed hot for the duration of my sketch – an ideal sketch-meal!

I was so ignorant of Korean foods that another sketcher accused me of not being Asian, but now that she has educated me, I’m looking forward to enjoying more Korean meals.

Maple Leaf’s Street Trees

6/13/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

When I learned about the very special bigleaf maple in the Ravenna neighborhood from Taha Ebrahimi, I also learned that she had recently published a book devoted to many special trees in Seattle – specifically urban trees growing on public rights of way. Street Trees of Seattle is organized by neighborhood, and each tree is described and shown on hand-drawn maps. In addition, the author’s drawings of many of the featured trees, their leaves and other features are also included in the 288-page book. What a gem of a tree guide for someone like me who knows very little about trees but loves drawing them!

I bought a copy right away and was delighted to find that all eight of the trees documented in the Maple Leaf section are right on my various walking routes! In just two days, I sketched seven (I skipped one that was mostly behind a fence). My summer project will be to choose at least a few to make larger, more detailed portraits.

Although Green Lake is technically not my neighborhood, it’s within walking distance, so I plan to sketch as many as possible of the 10 trees documented in that neighborhood, too.

6/14/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Street Trees of Seattle, by Taha Ebrahimi

Melia

 

3/9/24 Melia (5-minutes each)

Feeling a bit rusty is one thing. Scouring off five years of heavy corrosion is another!

That’s how I felt Saturday at Gage life drawing – the first time I’d been back in the studio for a full open session since 2019. Of course, I’ve tried to keep up my life-drawing practice all along: I did a little at Drawing Jam last December; I did long-pose life drawing at Gas Works Park in the summers of 2022 and 2021; and a couple times I took classes that included live models. (I’m not counting the couple of years of practice I did with models on live video; while it was all good practice, if it’s on a screen, it’s obviously not “life.”)

Both sketches in 5 minutes

Somehow, though, none of that was quite the same as being back in the studio for three solid hours of short poses, just trying to find my groove again. Fortunately for me, my re-initiation was with Melia, an excellent model with a dance background, she told me, which was apparent in her strong, dynamic poses. I tried my best to convey her grace and fluidity with brush and pencil marks that felt as stiff as getting out of bed each morning.

5 minutes

5 minutes

Regardless, the practice was exactly what I needed as a run-up to the One Week 100 People challenge, which begins today! In my eighth consecutive year of participating in the online challenge initiated by Marc Holmes, I plan to do my hundred all from life. As usual, I’ll be posting my daily sketches on Instagram and catching up here on my blog when the challenge is over. Are you in this year?

10-minute pose

10-minute pose

5 minutes each

10 minutes each

20-minute pose

Merry Chickadee

12/6 - 12/17/19 chestnut-backed chickadee at our feeder

We are seeing a couple of new regularly visiting birds at our feeder lately: a nuthatch and a chestnut-backed chickadee. Black-capped chickadees have been among our most common visitors, but we’ve never noticed the chestnut-backed before this year.

The nuthatch is especially fast, furtive and unpredictable, so I have yet to complete a sketch of one. But the chestnut-backed chickadee has visited often enough that I’ve been able to sketch this much over the course of a couple of weeks, adding a detail or two each time I see one. I apologize that it’s a rather rough sketch to send you as my holiday greeting, but since chickadees are frequently shown on Christmas cards and such, it will have to do. Merry Christmas!

12/25/19