One Week 100 People, Year 10, Part 2

 

3/12/26 Green Lake Starbucks

What would have been Day 3 turned out to be too busy to sketch people, but I kept apace on Day 4. I began in the morning at Starbucks, where I caught a crew of Seattle Public Utility workers, five men of all colors, taking a long break with lively discussions. I wish I could have composed them all on the same page, but sometimes some were blocked, then others, and I was afraid they’d all get up and leave at any moment.

Although I caught a few on my walk, most of the rest came from my parked car at a Northgate strip mall. It wasn’t as busy as the grocery store where I had sketched earlier, so I had to be more patient; it must be like waiting in a duck blind! Bonus points: three dogs!

3/12/26 Green Lake and Northgate 

Northgate Plaza strip mall parking lot

We all woke on Friday the 13th, the final day of One Week 100 People, to the season’s unseasonable first snowfall! Whaaat??! As I’m skittish about driving if I see even one flake falling, I gratefully accepted Kim’s offer of a ride to Bellevue Square retail mall. It’s become an annual tradition for USk Seattle to work on 100 People there. Despite the joint outing with Eastside Sketchers, the snow must have kept many away, as we had a small turnout.

3/13/26 Bellevue Square

The mall is always a fruitful location for drawing people – so many small stories everywhere. It’s also just a fun place to people-watch. So different from Seattle, the women really dress to the nines in Bellevue. I especially enjoyed the formidable challenge of sketching people walking up and down stairs, which was easy to see through the transparent walls of the stairwells.

I apparently can't count while I draw!

I thought I was done, but as I waited for others to show up for the throwdown, I couldn't resist
drawing this dog (only one of two I saw at the mall that day)!

I was planning to sketch all 100 people in the large lavender Uglybook, but I didn’t estimate well and ran out of pages on Day 4. I had just enough left in the orange book, though, to finish off One Week 100 People. With that, I could put both the large lavender and the large orange Uglybooks into my bookcase of completed sketchbooks (I’ve officially decided that this is the year of completing partially filled sketchbooks).

Small but hardy turnout!

One Week 100 People, Year 10, Part 1

 

3/9/26 Metro Market parking lot, Crown Hill neighborhood

Although I participate in a few annual drawing challenges regularly and others more sporadically, my all-time favorite is One Week 100 People. Reading Marc Taro Holmes’ blog reminded me that this was the 10^th year of the challenge, which means I’ve participated for 10 consecutive years!

If you scroll through all the years, you’ll see that my style hasn’t changed much, nor has my goal: To capture people from life as simply as possible but also as unique individuals, not generic symbols. At least one year, I went to a studio life-drawing session for some part of the hundred. During the pandemic, I made self-portraits from a mirror – the only year I didn’t hit a hundred! All the other sketches were done in public spaces capturing whoever I saw. It’s all been so much fun while being great practice.

Sketching from my car in a grocery store parking lot has become a reliable though challenging standby: A regular stream of people going in and out. My favorite part is when they load groceries into their cars. With only seconds per sketch, it’s often frustrating, but I enjoy that tension. By comparison, Metro Market’s café was slow.

Metro Market cafe

That was Day 1. The next day, Roy, Mary Jean and I met at Third Place Commons to work on our hundred together. We all noted that the place was full of ideal “victims”: Some groups held meetings; others played cards. A crafting group was working on needlework and knitting; another group was painting and drawing. I caught a trio of bluegrass musicians jamming together. The best part: Almost everyone hardly moved!

3/10/26 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

(Stay tuned for the rest of the week in Part 2.)

Finishing a Hundred-Plus at Pike Place Market

3/6/25 Fishmongers at Pike Place Fish Co.

LINK light rail southbound

On Day 4 of One Week 100 People, Roy, Mary Jean and I met at Pike Place Market to hammer out a few more. All of us were close to hitting a hundred, so the pressure was off, and it was pure fun.

After warming up on my light rail ride into town (at left), I got rolling at Pike Place Fish Company (top of post), famous for throwing salmon to each other to entertain tourists. At 10 a.m., the Market was still relatively empty enough that I actually had an unobstructed view of the fishmongers for a few minutes.

For the rest of my hundred, I strategically stood near the intersection of First and Pike, which has an all-way walk signal. That means pedestrians have to wait a bit longer than usual to cross, giving me a little more time. The most fun, though, was the guy making balloon animals (99), who eventually fashioned himself eye-catching headgear (103).

Roy shared his halo-halo with us!

I sketched 103 – 107 (I just realized I counted 103 twice) over lunch at Ludi’s Restaurant (below), which has a menu focused on authentic Filipino dishes. On Roy’s recommendation, I got a traditional silog with (nontraditional) veggie lumpia, all of which was delicious. The highlight of the meal, though, was the bright purple, ube-flavored halo-halo that Roy shared with us for dessert! It’s an amazing concoction of shave ice, sweet beans, coconut milk and some kind of unfamiliar fruit, all topped with ube ice cream, three cherries and a plastic flamingo. What a mess we made on the table sharing it!

Lunch at Ludi's Restaurant. All three of our round-robin concertina books are close enough to being filled that we decided to call the project finished. It's so much fun to go back through it and see the sketches MJ and Roy made. I cherish my book!

LINK light rail northbound

On the light rail ride home, I managed two more. The last one on the train, 109 (at right), may be my favorite of the whole week (despite being caught sketching her).

Since I knew Day 5 would be very busy, I didn’t expect to get any people sketched. You probably know, though, that I can be an over-achiever, so with one day left to the challenge, I couldn’t let it go. I snagged a few more at the Safeway pharmacy and Aegis (below). My final total: 113 (or maybe 114, since I can’t seem to count and draw at the same time).

3/7/25 Sketchwaiting at the Safeway pharmacy
and a couple of folks at Aegis

Caregiver at Aegis

113 in the Books!

 

3/3/25 Metro Market parking lot

One Week 100 People is always my favorite annual drawing challenge. Lasting only five days, it’s intense and challenging but also short and entirely doable because it has no restrictions. Sketches can be done from life, from photos, posed, candid, whatever. The only goal is to practice drawing people as much as possible for five days.

3/3/25 Metro Market parking lot

My personal goal has always been to draw all one hundred from life. The pandemic year made that difficult, so I tried to do a hundred selfies (I only made it to 58, the only year I didn’t hit a hundred). The other years were completed from life. This was my ninth consecutive year participating, and I had a ball!

3/4/25 Victrola Coffee

As I usually do, I chose simple materials that would enable me to capture quick gestures, no details and no color. This year I chose my favorite Pentel Pocket Brush Pen with occasional spots of a white Sakura Gelly Roll. Of course, my trusty daily-carry Uglybook was the best place to put all those people!

3/4/25 Victrola Coffee

Shown here are Nos. 1 through 82. Tomorrow I’ll show the rest. (Sorry that these got out of order . . . Blogger is not very friendly when uploading multiple images at once.)

3/4/25 Aegis Living and Victrola Coffee

3/4/25 Green Lake and Aegis Living

3/5/25 Bellevue Square (this spread and all that follow). This day was especially fun as it was with USk Seattle, and we were all working on our 100 people!

Bellevue Square turned out to be a particularly useful place to practice people walking up and down stairs. The handrail walls are transparant, so it was easy to see the legs and feet. Not easy to draw them, though!

Dilettante Mocha Café (and Fresh Uglybook)

 

3/15/24 Dilettante Mocha Cafe, Bellevue

To work on the 100 People challenge, Ching and I met at Dilettante Mocha Café in Bellevue’s Bellefield Office Park, which was new to both of us – a nice, large space with lots of natural light. It was a good opportunity to give a solid spin to my fresh Uglybook in a fantastic pea soup color! After failure of the brilliant but dark purple book as a daily-carry for various complicated reasons, I chose the hue carefully: I wanted one that would work well as a strong midtone between black and white.

3/15/24 first test sketch in Maple Leaf

Testing it with a small sketch that morning on my walk, I loved the way both black and white pop equally on the warm green, and the red Posca marker complements it well, too. Score! One of my favorite Uglybook colors is called Grunge green of the same value but slightly cooler. I think this warmer pea soup color may be a new favorite.

Another Hundred-Plus in the Books

 

3/11/24 Bellevue Square

On March 10, 2020 – only days before Gov. Inslee shut the state down for the potentially deadly “novel coronavirus” – Urban Sketchers Seattle met at Bellevue Square. Planned weeks earlier when most of us were still uncertain and confused about COVID-19, the outing suddenly seemed more ominous, now that it was upon us. The day before the outing, the other admins and I discussed at length whether we should go forward with it or cancel. Although we did go ahead with the outing, it was not without trepidation on my part. In retrospect, I’m happy that we did because we would not see each other in person again for a year and a half.

All of that was still a vivid memory almost exactly four years later when USk Seattle met at Bellevue Square again. Like last time, the objective was to sketch people for the One Week 100 People online drawing challenge – except this time we all did so without anxiety; in fact, we all had a great time. Meeting there again for 100 People felt like an important circle to close.

As always with this challenge, my goal was to capture quick gestures: not much more than stick figures, really, except that I wanted them to be unique, individual stick figures – not generic.

I thought I got 50 that first day of the challenge, but after I posted my sketches on social media, someone pointed out to me that I had counted wrong – I actually got 54!

The second day I caught a few at Green Lake before my walk, then managed a bunch from my car in the Metro Market parking lot. Remembering that tactic from a previous year, I found the grocery store lot to be especially fruitful. I parked in back facing the entrance. I could see the regular stream of people going in and out of the store. Especially fun and challenging was trying to sketch them as they loaded their hatchbacks with groceries. I polished off 55 – 81 on Day 2.

3/12/24 Green Lake

Metro Market parking lot

On Day 3, I met Roy at Project 9 Brewery for lunch. Unfortunately, I may have oversold it: I told him it would be a great place to sketch people because my prior visits had been fairly busy. On this day, however, the lunch hour seemed slow, and I had to attack several victims more than once (including Roy) to hit the golden number: 82 – 100 people (and one dog) on Day 3!

3/13/24 Project 9 Brewery

I was hoping to get all 100 in the green Uglybook, but I didn't make it, so I started this dark purple one, which is the last of my partially used books that I want to fill before starting a fresh one. This color is going to be tough to finish, though... the gold Posca works as the lightest tone, but purple is too dark to be a mid-tone, so I might need a second Posca.

After my sprint was over, I kept going for the rest of the week (I’ll show those sketches soon), but I could stroll instead.

As it is every year, the 100 People challenge was great practice and a lot of fun! How did you do?