A Landscape Retrospective

7/20/12 The first sketch in my Pentalic landscape sketchbook.

If you’ve kept up with my blog over time, it might seem like I’ve tried a lot of different sketchbooks and switch around frequently, but in fact, except for occasional dalliances, I’ve been stable for quite some time. I do simultaneously use a number of different sketchbooks and notebooks, but that’s because each has a different purpose. And while I choose from a variety of sketchbooks when at my desk (different papers, sizes and formats for different needs), all of the on-location sketches in my ongoing series of handbound, daily-carry sketchbooks are made and kept in chronological order. That chronological continuity appeals to me. The books have become a metaphor for life – each page turned is like one day following the next.

7/25/12 Starbucks

The one exception to that chronology is a landscape-format Pentalic watercolor sketchbook that I began about a year after I started sketching. At the time, I knew that a lot of watercolor-using urban sketchers preferred it, so I had picked one up, but frankly, I didn’t know enough about watercolors to take advantage of the fine quality paper in it. It turns out I didn’t know much about landscape-format books, either.

The very first sketch in it, dated July 20, 2012, was made at Phinney Farmers Market on one side of the page spread (top of post). Another sketch made a few days later is in ink only, again on one side of the spread (above). In a sketch dated Jan. 3, 2013 (below), I dabbled with a straight-to-watercolor technique in a sketch of a pickup truck – yet again not taking advantage of the landscape book’s format.

1/3/13 Green Lake parking lot

When open, a landscape-format book can be awkward and unwieldy to hold, especially while standing, and I realized that it didn’t make sense to use it unless I was planning to take advantage of a full page spread. In addition, the Pentalic 140-pound paper is relatively toothy, so if I wasn’t planning to add watercolor, it wasn’t a pleasing surface for fountain pens. Eventually I figured all of this out and decided to save the sketchbook only for times when I anticipated being in a place where broad landscapes and skylines or tall narrow objects might make the format useful. I also always bring it with me when I travel.

6/28/13 Seattle skyline

In June 2013 I used the Pentalic for a skyline view of downtown Seattle from Jack Block Park. In 2014 we went to Cannon Beach for the first time since I began sketching, and the landscape format came in very handy. A year later in Arles, France, the Pentalic was ideal for an obelisk I sketched in a town square. A few months later I went to the West Coast Sketch Crawl in San Diego, and the landscape format was required for the commanding size  of the USS Midway. In November that same year, the Tokyo Tower, too, demanded a long, skinny page.

5/19/14 Cannon Beach, Oregon

8/9/15 USS Midway, San Diego

I finally came to the last page spread in the Pentalic while I was in Bath, UK, and the tall-spired St. Michael’s Without Church was just right for it.

5/13/15 Arles, France

11/7/15 Tokyo Tower

Unique among my many sketchbooks, the landscape Pentalic has become a retrospective of four years of sketching all in one volume – the only book that covers a span of that duration. As much as I appreciate chronology, I love looking through this slim, 48-page sketchbook and seeing the various scenes I’ve sketched, places I’ve visited and especially how my sketching skills and style have grown.

I just bought a new landscape-format book – this time a Stillman & Birn softcover Beta. As before, I’m going to use it only when the format is called for, so it will take a while to fill. Someday I’ll have another retrospective volume.

Updated 6/21/18: Here's my retrospective of the landscape-format Stillman & Birn that I just filled.

8/10/16 Bath, UK

France, Part 4: Villefranche-sur-mer

5/26/15 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Pentalic Aqua Journal (the bay view from our hotel balcony)

Our final stop in France was Villefranche-sur-mer, a small resort town a short train ride from Nice. Unlike Nice’s shiny glamour, Villefranche is a charming village with crooked, narrow streets. It has a slow, sleepy quality (except when a cruise ship is in town!) that is just our pace. The pastel-colored buildings, palm trees, lovely beach on the bay and warm sunshine all made me feel like we were not just traveling but on summer vacation at last! There, we could finally relax at outdoor café tables and enjoy the music of street performers.

5/26/15 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper
(my favorite curved street in Villefranche-sur-mer)

One of the best parts of our stay in Villefranche was our third-floor hotel room at the Hotel Provençal with a wrap-around balcony that gave us a 270-degree view of the town. It was clearly the best room in the place, yet we didn’t ask for it or pay extra for it – what luck! Several times I precariously balanced my paints and sketchbook on the balcony railing to sketch the view and even the courtyard of the hotel next door. In the early morning, swallows darted everywhere, missing me by inches!

Since I wasn’t home for Memorial Day when I usually pay my respects at a cemetery, I was pleased to be able to sketch a war memorial at the Villefranche Cemetirie.

We flew home from Nice with vibrant memories, a full sketchbook (Greg filled several camera memory cards, too) and a long list of things we have saved for our next trip to France!

5/27/15 various inks, watercolor (the view of the
neighboring hotel's courtyard from our balcony)

5/26/15 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor (a bell
tower visible from our balcony)

5/27/15 Sailor Doyou and other inks, Caran d'Ache
Museum colored pencil (war memorial in the
Villefranche cemetery)

5/26/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor (Villefranche beach)

5/26/15 various inks, Museum colored pencils
(Villefranche beach)

5/27/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor,
Museum pencils (Villefranche cemetery)

5/26/15 Museum pencils, Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun and Tsuyu-kusa inks
(Citadelle)

5/28/15 watercolor, Molotow white acrylic pen (the bay and a tiny peek of the
ocean behind the land, sketched from our balcony)

5/27/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor
(Villefranche's colorful buildings)

5/27/15 (Platinum Carbon and other inks,
Museum pencils (Villefranche cafe)

5/27/15 Sailor Doyou ink, Museum pencils (buskers band)

Our hotel room was the one with the
"Provencal" sign above it. Check out
that wrap-around balcony!

I tried not to look down as I sketched from the balcony!

France, Part 3: Arles

5/23 - 24/15 various inks,
Caran d'Ache Museum
pencils, Pentalic Aqua
Journal
(Place de Republique Obelisque,
Arles)

Famous for being the home of Van Gogh, Arles wasn’t even on our initial trip-planning radar; our intention was to go directly from Sarlat and the Dordogne region to the south of France. Getting there by a series of non-high-speed trains, however, would have meant a very long, grueling day, so we started looking at stops along the way. Small yet full of ancient Roman history, Arles on the Rhône River struck our fancy.

Van Gogh knick-knacks aside (I decided to forego the plastic placemat reproductions of “Starry Night” and coffee mugs depicting Vincent’s self-portrait), Arles is a fascinating town of Roman artifacts like an Amphitheatre Arenes and Theatre Antique. Musee Departement Arles Antique is an especially interesting museum where we spent an afternoon learning about sculptures, pieces of ruins and a remarkable flat-bottom barge from the 50s A.D. that had been discovered in the Rhône in 2004. I was torn between sketching and learning at this museum, but I did manage to sketch a number of very old sculptures.

5/24/15 Sailor Doyou ink, Museum pencils
(detail of Obelisque)

I think I spent the least amount of time sketching in this city compared to others because I spent the most time simply taking in its history. One sculpture that particularly caught my sketcher’s eye, however, was the tall, pointy Place de Republique Obelisque. If you’ll recall from my pre-trip planning post, I was undecided about whether to pack my half-used landscape-format sketchbook. For one thing, I don’t like having out-of-sequence sketches in a random sketchbook instead of included in my main travel sketchbook. I also knew I wouldn’t use it often, if at all, since I rarely make long, narrow sketches. At the last minute, though, I threw it in, and as it turned out, it came in handy three times. The first was for the La Roque landscape. The second was for this obelisk, whose height would have been difficult to capture otherwise. On my first morning there, I sketched the main sculpture. The next day I went back to fill the space at the bottom of the sketch with a close-up of one of the four lions in the corners of the base.

5/24/15 various inks, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper
(Amphithetre Arenes, Arles)

The Amphitheatre Arenes was an especially challenging sketch subject. I’m not sure how it compares to the Coliseum in Rome, but let’s just say it’s huge. The main difficulty in sketching something like the Arenes is trying to decide how much of it to fit onto a dinky sketchbook page. I don’t think I came close to indicating its vastness, but I have fond memories of actually sweating a bit in the sun as I sketched! Yes, we were finally in the warmer southern end of France!

To see photos from our trip, please look at my Flickr photo album.

5/24/15 Platinum Carbon ink, Platinum brush pen
(Church of St. Trophime, Arles)

5/24/15 Sailor Doyou and other inks,
Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencil
(Cloitre Saint-Trophime, Arles) 

5/23/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, Museum pencils
(Arles Theatre Antique)

5/23/15 Sailor Doyou ink, Platinum brush pen
(statue of Neptune, Musee Arles Antique)

5/23/15 Platinum brush pen (Musee Arles Antique)

5/23/15 Sailor Doyou ink (statue of Colossale
d'Augusta, Musee Arles Antique)

France, Part 2: Sarlat-la-Canéda and La Roque Gageac

5/20/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper
(a Sarlat village street from our third-floor hotel room window)

From the beginning of our planning, a key component of our France itinerary was the Dordogne River valley. Initially inspired by scenes we saw on a Rick Steves program, we knew we had to find a way to get there. Unfortunately, it’s an area that is much easier to get to and see by car than any other vehicle, and we had decided we didn’t want the hassle of renting and driving. That meant we spent quite a bit of time researching and riding trains. On the upside, I sketched a lot of fellow train passengers.

5/19/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Rhodia notebook
(train passengers)

If you’ve seen my sketches over time, you know that architecture really isn’t “my thing” as far as subject matter goes. But old Sarlat-la-Canéda is filled with an architectural style that even I adored sketching. The relatively simple lines, steep roofs and just enough run-down crookedness made the buildings less intimidating to capture. The rain and cold (45 degrees in the mornings) made it hard to sketch much outdoors, but our hotel room window looked out on a charming street that I sketched happily and comfortably indoors.

From Sarlat, we took a day trip to picturesque La Roque Gageac right on the Dordogne River, and it was even more lovely and delightful than it looked on Rick Steves. Luckily, the day began sunny and warm, and it was a good thing I started sketching right away, because by afternoon an amazingly strong wind came up that made sketching difficult. Again, I was smitten by the storybook architecture in this riverside village. For an afternoon break, I stopped for espresso and a strawberry tart in a café and made a rare food/beverage sketch a la Liz Steel!

To see photos from our trip, please look at my Flickr photo album.

5/19/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Rhodia notebook (train passenger, awake and asleep)

5/20/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor (Sarlat)

5/20/15 Sailor Doyou and other inks, Museum pencils
(Cathedrale Saint-Sacerdos, Sarlat)

5/20/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown and other inks, Museum
pencil (Sarlat)

5/21/15 various inks, Museum pencils
(La Roque Gageac)

5/21/15 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor
(La Roque Gageac)

5/21/15 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor (My snack at Brasserie du Roc in La Roque)

5/21/15 Platinum Carbon and other inks, watercolor, Pentalic Aqua Journal (La Roque Gageac)

A Cannon Beach Christmas

12/23/14 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencil, watercolor, Pentalic watercolor sketchbook

Our Christmas gift to each other this year was to spend most of Christmas week at one of the most beautiful places on earth (which is, luckily for us, only four hours away): Cannon Beach, Oregon. We usually go in the spring or fall, but our favorite beachfront hotel was offering a half-price deal during the month of December, so it was impossible to resist. Both festive and serene, the town was dressed up in lights for the holidays, and yet we had the place nearly to ourselves. It was the best of all holiday worlds!

12/23/14 Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi ink, colored pencils, Canson XL

The beach itself, on the other hand, was somewhat dark and somber – not from the weather (which was mostly moderate and only a little rainy) but from weather-related events. Last week’s storms pushed in a lot of debris from the ocean, including piles of plastics and other garbage from the 2011 Japan tsunami that is finally reaching Pacific Northwest shores. That devastating event had caused a swirling garbage pit to float around on the Pacific for all these years, and some of it is finally here. A crew of city staff and volunteers was busy at work during low tide picking up as much debris as possible from Cannon Beach’s normally pristine sand.

At the same time, hundreds of dead birds were all over the shoreline everywhere we looked. We asked around to try to find out what caused the kill, but we weren’t able to determine whether it was a natural phenomenon or related to the garbage.

12/23/14 Super 5 Frankfurt ink

Fortunately, not all the sea birds were dead: Every morning when I opened the curtains, a seagull would immediately appear on our deck railing, hoping for handouts. Persistent as well as patient, he always stuck around long enough for me to fill a page or two in my sketchbook. Other times I’d simply watch a flock of gulls soaring over the water and try to capture the gesture of flight without resorting to the stereotypical twin curved lines I used to draw when I was a kid. 

Despite evidence of various traumatic events, we enjoyed many long walks along the shores of Cannon Beach – still one of the most beautiful places on earth.

12/22/14 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencil, watercolor, Stillman &
Birn Beta sketchbook

One of hundreds of dead birds on the beach.

Barnacles growing on a plastic bottle.

Lots of debris washing up.

Greg taking photos.