The Last Space

About 20 years ago, I was making abstract paintings, collages and fiber works to sell in group shows and galleries. Everything had to be ready to hang to show, so I started using three-dimensional canvas-covered boards that didn’t need expensive glass framing. I sold some, but not enough to make a dent in my sizeable collection. They took up a lot of space.

After I decided to stop selling, I stashed them all. I didn’t have a plan, but I also wasn’t ready to dump them.

This week I began tackling the last space needing downsizing during Phase 3: The small attic behind my original studio where that old work has been all this time. One thing I’ve learned from downsizing these past two years is that much of what I held onto decades ago is now easy to let go of. I unceremoniously added the artwork to the heap that will be hauled away by my junk guy next week.

As the heap grew, I realized I still appreciate the process that was behind the work – without having to keep the work itself. That’s what made it easy to dump it. Making the work brought me to where I am today and will continue taking me on my creative journey. Whether that work exists is not related to the growth it represents. It was a good feeling to acknowledge that.

Actually, I didn’t get rid of everything. I saved four collages that I still like and that have meaning for me. Instead of putting them back in the attic, I went through the house and took down some other old collages that I had tired of long ago. I tossed those and replaced them with the ones I hadn’t seen in decades. They seemed fresh again.

Dilapidated Garage

 

8/16/24 Macrina Bakery, Maple Leaf neighborhood

Whenever I sit at Macrina Bakery’s outdoor tables, I wonder about the dilapidated garage across the street. The wood is rotten, the roof sagging, the door askew and always partially open, moss and old vines everywhere. What’s surprising is that it doesn’t at all go with the house it belongs to, which is very well-kept and with a lovely yard. As I sketched it and the old pickup in front of it, the owner came out, opened the broken door, and went in to get a very old motorcycle. After a loud, stinky warm-up, he rode off in a cloud of smoke. It may not go with the house, but the garage does go with its contents.

Heads are Over-Rated

 

8/13/24 Green Lake Village courtyard

After sketching the sequoia, I had planned to walk home directly, but the sketch took longer than expected, and I suddenly found myself famished. I decided to grab a bite at PCC while I worked on a haiku about the sequoia (see previous post).

Finished with that, I started sketching my lunch and other things I saw in the Green Lake Village courtyard. At upper right, I enjoyed drawing the strong shape of the man’s hand against his face, but then I badly botched the shape of his head. Rather than try to fix it, I remembered how opaque Sharpie Creative Markers are – two of which I happened to have in my bag. A couple of layers of acrylic paint and voila! No more botched head. The hand was the most interesting part about him anyway.

Speaking of Sharpie Creative Markers, in my review (linked above), a minor complaint was that these markers are available only in sets. I broke the white one, which is the most useful to me. I’ve since learned that Blick carries a 2-pack containing black and white, which is better than buying all 12 colors just to replace the white. I admit, though, that I’m having fun with the other colors, too! They layer nicely without leaving behind marker-y streaks.

This Moment

 

7/6/24 Maple Leaf

Although plants and animals suffer from lack of rain, I appreciate this time of year when I can go out for my daily walk without checking the weather first (in other words, no excuses). Sometimes I have to consider the heat, but I don’t mind planning my walks for early morning if I have to – that’s the best time anyway, when the air is still fresh and the day unburdened (and I get to see lots of dogs on their walks).

7/7/24 Maple Leaf (Unexpected to see a Goldfish Crackers truck in the 'hood!)

When I know I have time to sketch as much as I want, I try to find some kind of narrative to what I observe. It’s always challenging fun to put the sequence together, not knowing what will follow each sketch until I draw it. Occasionally I give myself the additional challenge of narrating the sequence with a haiku (usually prompted by whether I have space on the page).

7/8/24 Mt. Rainier from Maple Leaf Park

Often I attempt neither narrative nor haiku – just the usual random walk-sketches that have made up the bulk of my urban sketching for years now. Although we still have several more weeks of reliably dry and pleasant walking weather, this time of year always feels precious and fleeting. Each sketch is a mantra: Appreciate this moment.

7/10/24 Maple Leaf

7/15/24 Maple Leaf

7/24/24 Maple Leaf

7/22/24 Maple Leaf

7/28/24 Cloud City Coffee (This is one of my ongoing self-challenges:
Trying to draw only part of what I can fully see. It's never as easy
as it seems like it should be.)

7/30/24 Green Lake and Maple Leaf

8/2/24 Maple Leaf

Gray Matters

Hard-working grays

In clothing, home décor, accessories and other products, gray is one of my least favorite colors (though I just bought a gray T-shirt, so there are always exceptions). I rarely choose gray if other color choices are available. In sketches, however, gray is supremely handy for many tasks, and I have used it for years, especially in markers. With watercolor pencils, I’ve used gray markers as a grisaille. With Uglybooks and my comics look, gray markers have again proven their utility.

Although the strong color of the Uglybooks paper itself usually serves as the midtone (between white and black), I often use gray as a fourth value between the paper’s hue and black.

Other times, I use gray to imply background or other elements that I don’t want to detract from the focal point. In these cases, I’m not necessarily emulating the values I see. The areas I draw in gray might be much darker in reality, but I downplay them to reduce the contrast (and therefore avoid attracting the eye).

My current favorite gray marker is the Faber-Castell Pitt Dual Tip Marker, which I recently mentioned in my post about favorite comics media. It’s handy to have two tip sizes, and the ink is the same waterproof, non-bleedy, non-smelly ink I’ve always enjoyed in Pitt Artist markers. I especially appreciate how the ink can be layered, appearing subtly darker as I apply more. (Details taken from sketches previously shown are below.)

The yellow paper is too high key to be a midtone, so gray serves that role here.

Gray used in the background implies the context without drawing the eye in that direction.

Same with this one -- grayed-out background elements imply the context.

Here the gray ink serves as a fourth value.

More implied background and shadows indicated with gray.

Again, shadows and implied background elements.

Cold Gray III has long been a favorite, but just lately I’ve been using Warm Gray III, which is significantly lighter than Cold III (I’ve always been annoyed about the inconsistency in Faber-Castell’s grayscale values between the Warms and Colds and even within each). It pairs nicely with the tan Uglybook I’ve been using lately (below).

8/7/24 Ravenna and Green Lake neighborhoods. I like Warm Gray III as a fourth value with tan paper.

Finishing Ravenna

 

8/1/24 Ravenna neighborhood. This Doug fir is one of the most magnificent street trees in this series -- enormous and split right down the middle.

These are the last of the street trees in the Ravenna neighborhood documented in Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle. These are also probably the last I could do on foot, which is sad, as I’ve so enjoyed having street trees as a destination and purpose of my daily walks this summer. Ironically, getting into my car to go after a tree requires more effort because I like to use gas efficiently. I always feel like I need to have another errand or appointment in the same direction or area. But the documented trees will also give me a good excuse to explore neighborhoods I might not get to otherwise.

The most notable tree here, from my perspective, is the Italian cypress (below). It was so completely obscured by the shade of the larger trees around it that I could hardly see it. I wondered how it could ever get enough sunlight to survive – and it wasn’t looking very healthy.

8/1/24 Mini peach and Italian cypress, Ravenna neighborhood

8/6/24 English walnut, Ravenna neighborhood

Material note: I’ve started a new Uglybook – in tan! With so many vibrant, saturated colors available, why would I take a turn with such a traditional hue? Maybe I’ve had too many bright colors consecutively and needed a palette cleanser? Actually, back in the Dark Ages when toned books came only in tan or gray, I enjoyed making tonal sketches on tan paper. It’s a nice change. And at the rate I fill these little books, it won’t be long before I’m back to something brighter.

Diary Comics from Life

7/31/24 Green Lake and Maple Leaf

My initial diary comics self-challenge last spring was to get myself to sketch more from memory and imagination. After the month was over, I did a few more comics pages like that, but eventually I petered out. It’s just so much easier, less time-consuming and almost always more satisfying to draw from observation. It’s really difficult to maintain my motivation unless I’m sketching from life, which I can almost always find a way to do. When I simply can’t get out for a sketch from life, I use a photo as a last resort, but that’s a rare day.

7/8/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Instead of continuing to push myself to do something I don’t find satisfying, I’m content to visually document my day on location. The page spread I made on July 31 (top of post) is a good example: Each vignette made from life, and the collective spread a story about how my day went.

7/11/24 U Village and South Lake Union

The result is no different from other attempts I’ve made (initially in 2020 after seeing a prompt from USk Japan and continued later as my scribble journal), but the difference in process is significant: I carry around my pocket-size Uglybook wherever I go. The larger sizes I tried in the past meant that I used the books only at home, and inevitably toward the end of the day when I was tired and out of time. That did push me to use my imagination and memory more, but it often felt like a chore more than a pleasure – which is why the habit wouldn’t stick. My current format is always fun because it’s what I do so naturally.

7/26/24 Seattle Fish Guys, Central District

The comics format is also good practice for working on page composition and design – making the disparate images look like they belong together. It’s not the same as challenging myself to work from my own head, but it’s satisfying as a practice that I have wanted for a long time. It’s finally sticking.

Leisurely Sketchwaiting

 

7/29/24 Capitol Hill neighborhood

A favor to a friend gave me a leisurely sketchwaiting opportunity in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where I rarely make time to simply wander. Walking the mile or so between the main business area on 15^th Avenue East and Volunteer Park took me past many classic Seattle Craftsman bungalows and old trees. Eventually I ended up at Caffe Ladro, where I enjoyed a relaxing Cortado and coffee cake.

Capitol Hill Caffe Ladro

The older sketches below were more of the usual sketchwaiting type – just filling moments while waiting for someone or something to happen. With a sketchbook in hand, a minute is as good as two hours.

5/2/24 Meridian Park

7/9/24 Green Lake

5/8/24 Aegis Living, Maple Leaf

Fresh Flours as Reward

7/15/24 Fresh Flours, Greenwood/Phinney Ridge neighborhood

If you’ve ever lived in the same house for several decades (36 years, actually), you know that “stuff” accumulates. It’s a lot of work to un-accumulate all that stuff, but I’m on it.

Fortuitously, just as I was gearing up for the task, the Maple Leaf neighborhood held it’s annual FREE Yard Sale event: Nothing could have a price, and anything was up for grabs if you put it out on the sidewalk in front of your house. Putting your address in an online map of participants helped people find you, especially if you had any specialty items that you wanted to note in your listing. I had never participated in the event before, either as a giver or a taker, but it motivated me to put some stuff in boxes.

I never had so much fun getting rid of our old junk, which, it turns out, other people want! Except for one drawer that I didn’t get to, I cleared out my kitchen of much excess that had ceased to spark joy years ago, if it ever did (how do all those plastic containers reproduce?). I had noted LPs, CDs and analog audio equipment in my listing, and several happy “shoppers” picked through our huge entertainment center filled with cases of music. I enjoyed meeting neighbors, and it felt rewarding to see others delight in things I no longer needed or wanted. (A young woman exclaimed that my Star Wars soundtrack album would thrill her husband, and it gave me great joy knowing that he would receive it.)

By day’s end, very little was left of the dozen or so boxes of stuff I brought out that day. I put what remained into my car and drove it over to Goodwill the next day, where the line of cars wrapped around the block (likely all from Maple Leaf).

Feeling so satisfied that I was actually smug, I went to nearby Fresh Flours to celebrate. It was an exhausting weekend, but it felt so good that I’m now motivated to keep putting things in boxes and moving them out.

A note about Fresh Flours: This bakery’s plentiful sidewalk tables are on busy Phinney Avenue within visual distance of the Woodland Park Zoo. Three times just while I was sketching, a neighbor would pass the café on their walk and see friends seated at the café, pull up a chair, and join the party. It was fun and heartwarming to see a community interact this way. 

Ravenna Street Trees

 

7/13 - 7/14/24 Ravenna neighborhood street trees

Now that I’ve finished sketching the trees in both the Maple Leaf and Green Lake neighborhoods, I’ve moved on to Ravenna’s trees documented in Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle. Ravenna starts on the southern edge of Maple Leaf and goes all the way to the U-District, which is  a long walk for me. I might drive partway to the ones on the southern half, but these two near the eastern edge of Maple Leaf are easy to get to – a western hemlock and an orchard apple.

Sketching in neighborhoods often results in interesting conversations (or overhearing them). As I sketched the hemlock, I eavesdropped on two neighbors discussing a questionable man who had been seen carrying a case of beer, littering cans as he went and sometimes sleeping in people’s yards. One of those neighbors also told me that several flicker families have made their homes in the hemlock over the years. When he had first noticed me sketching, he thought I was an arborist taking census.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood 

The next day, another neighbor who had spotted me sketching the apple tree was concerned that I was from the city and planning to cut the tree down if it was diseased. She loves the apple tree, she said, especially since she had recently lost her own old dogwood to disease.

I enjoy that these street trees give my daily walks a destination and focus.

Material note: I’ve noticed that this particular Uglybooks color is very difficult to photograph accurately, either with my camera or with my scanner. You wouldn’t know it from this image, but the color is much closer to a warm cyan than the cool light cobalt you see here.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood

New Gas Mains – Again

 

6/27 - 7/4/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A year ago, a huge utility project began in the ‘hood, and it took nearly that long to finish as it moved northward a block at a time. New natural gas mains were going in. This summer, the same utility has begun another project. This one is a bit more intrusive because the work is closer to home. Parking has been restricted, so a lot of my neighbors have to keep moving their cars, making it harder for all of us. It’s noisy, dusty and inconvenient, and sometimes the jackhammering feels like an earthquake, but I’m trying to make the best of it – and you know what that means!

I knew this story would go on for weeks (possibly months? I hope not), so I had plenty of time, but I wasn’t sure how to capture the equipment and action in a comics format. I could have filled up the spread in one day, but I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to work over time. I made these three sketches over the course of a week, keeping in mind different perspectives and overall compositions. It was surprisingly difficult for me to wait between sketches – I always feel compelled to fill up a spread all at once. It must be my natural inclination as a daily journal keeper.

I wish I hadn’t mixed brown and black inks for the frames . . . it was an experiment, but I think the spread looks less cohesive.

Ballard Blocks

 

7/1/24 Ballard neighborhood, mostly viewed from Top Pot

The west edge of Ballard near the Lake Washington Ship Canal is a part of the neighborhood that I rarely get to except when I go there for my annual routine mammogram. After my appointment, I thought I’d walk in the more industrial direction and stop for a coffee and a sketch along the way, but none of the cafes I passed had outdoor seating for the beautiful, sunny day. (I was also doing reconnaissance on free parking options for future reference.) By the time I got to the Ballard Blocks, I was hot, so Top Pot Doughnut’s AC was more appealing than an outdoor table. The iced latte hit the spot.

As in many Seattle neighborhoods, this area of Ballard exhibits a familiar mix of nice, older homes, upscale condos and apartments, gritty industry, trendy retail shops, and shabby recreational vehicles housing residents who are probably not enjoying recreation. Eating my Summer Limited Edition Blueberry Glazed Pot Holes while sketching in air-conditioned comfort, I pondered my privilege.

Breeze and Brews Keep Sketchers Cool

 

7/5/24 Project 9 Brewing Co.

On the first day of our heatwave, a few members of USk Seattle gathered at Project 9 Brewing Company for a drink & draw. Although the temps were in the mid-80s by late afternoon, a decent breeze on the well-shaded north side of the brewery kept us relatively comfortable (aided by good brews).

It was a fun evening of chat about art, art materials and even knitting, as almost all of us were or used to be knitters. Bonus (for me): Several dogs were present at the pet-friendly venue, including cooperative model Pine, who was part of our party.

Portland, Part 4: Diary Comics/Walk-Sketch Journal

6/23/24 My lunch at McMenamins Olympic Club in Centralia on the way down to Portland.

What’s the difference between my sketch journal, my walk-sketches, and my diary comics? Nothing, apparently, and it became especially evident in my sketchbook while I was traveling. I think the only distinction was in my mind while I made transitions from one to another as my processes and approaches morphed along the way.

6/23/24 Portland

Travel gives me an opportunity for intensive sketching that I don’t have during my usual daily routines and responsibilities. That intensity encourages a full integration of “destination” urban sketching (such as Ole Bolle, which has been on my “to-sketch” list ever since I found out about it) and more ordinary sketches of the type I make when I’m home. Away from home, everything is fresh, even the mundane, and it all feels part of my “travel journal” (which in this case, a three-day trip, was just my usual daily-carry Uglybook).

6/24/24 Lunch with Cindy (sketch of us from reference photo) and my takeout dinner

One of many reasons I chose to stay at the Inn at Northrup Station was that I knew from prior stays that it is in a very walkable area of the Pearl District. Just as I do at home, I took a daily walk around the neighborhood and sketched along the way. And when I travel, it’s only natural that I want to document more things like meals, which made it easy to make sketch journal/diary comics pages. (Almost all sketches were made from life except as noted.)

6/24/24 Portland (streetcar sketch from reference photo because it was always on the move)

When I make a series of small sketches as I do with my comics approach, it’s faster and therefore easier to cover more ground while traveling. This is something I discovered in 2019 in blistering Amsterdam. I talked about it again when an insightful urban sketcher made the samediscovery when she traveled. Doing it regularly at home leading up to the trip made it completely effortless while I was on the trip.

6/25/24 Pearl District

As I’ve said before, the best way to prepare for travel sketching is simply to sketch on location regularly when you’re not traveling. 

6/26/24 From my last neighborhood walk in the "alphabet district" before I hit the road again.

Incidentally, you’ll note from my journal pages that I went to Powell’s City of Books, a can’t-miss mecca for book lovers visiting Portland. Hell-bent on downsizing my stash of everything, I nearly had to tie my hands behind my back to resist books I wanted, but resist I did. The only thing I succumbed to was a pack of three small notebooks with vintage colored pencil and color-mixing images on the covers.

Portland, Part 3: USk Portland at Tanner Springs

 

6/25/24 Tanner Springs Park, Portland

Another highlight of my trip down south was meeting up with Urban Sketchers Portland. Vicky Porter, a sketcher I had met at a couple of USk symposiums as well as Sketcher Fest last year, kindly organized an ad hoc outing for my visit. We gathered first at Ovation, a Moroccan coffee shop near Tanner Springs Park, then spent the rest of the time sketching in or near the park.

Sunny and growing hotter by the minute, the morning drove all of us toward shade, which was cooled by the ongoing breeze. Most of the others chose to sketch inside the park, which includes a unique, humanmade pond filled with lily pads, other vegetation and small fish. I tried to make a tonal study contrasting the reflective water, stairways, an unusual barrier wall and the geometric walkways, but I had trouble separating the tones of the various types of shadows. It was a good challenge to attempt, though.

After that, I walked around the park and made a few small street scenes, including a couple of Portland’s many bridges.

A few scenes around the park

Many thanks to Vicky and USk Portland for coming out to sketch with me! I learned that a number of Portland sketchers will be coming up for Sketcher Fest next month, so Seattle USk will have an opportunity to reciprocate.

I know I say this every time I travel, but the single biggest benefit of being a member of Urban Sketchers is being able to find fellow sketchers to meet with no matter where I go – whether it’s the other side of the world or just across the state border.

Tina, Vicky, Cindy, Leslie and George at the throwdown

Leslie, Vicky, Paula and Tina at the park