My Sketchbook’s Gifts to Me

 

Another partially used sketchbook conquered.

My goal to fill partially used sketchbooks continues. My latest conquest is this Hahnemühle Akademie Aquarelle sketchbook. For student grade, it contains excellent paper, but once I discovered Hahnemühle’s watercolor books containing 100 percent cotton paper, especially on location, there was no turning back.

What makes this book unusual is that it is entirely filled with sketches using reference photos and some imaginary work – not a single page drawn from life. I did a lot of portrait practice, both human and animal, direct watercolor challenges, workshop exercises, composition practices – all done from home.

An exercise in imaginative drawing and watercolor play.

The superpower of working on location is that the sketch becomes permanently infused with sensory memories from the experience. When I look back at an urban sketch, especially from my travels and other experiences that were new to me, all the sounds, smells and feelings of making the sketch come rushing back.

This book doesn’t evoke any memories or feelings in that way. Even when I sketch from a photo I’ve taken myself of a place I know well, the superpower of drawing from life doesn’t work. Although seeing a portrait made of an Earthsworld stranger sometimes  makes me recall whatever struggle or satisfaction I may have felt from an approach or medium I was trying, the subject and experience have no other emotional connection.  

Lots of Earthsworld people! I usually crop images neatly for this blog, but here are the full pages, messy scribbles and all.

This volume, however, is emotionally meaningful in a different way. I began using it in March 2023 in the midst of my most difficult, painful caregiving years. Most pages were filled late at night when I could finally take respite to recover from the day’s challenges so that I could sleep. I now see the book as the direct product of the art therapy that probably saved my life (or at least my sanity). Recalling that time, it’s hard to look through now, but I’m also filled with gratitude.

Composition studies using the Caran d'Ache mixed media set

I also appreciate the purely experimental nature exhibited in this book. With no connection to subject matter, I could focus exclusively on media, technique, approach or whatever else I was exploring. With my grounding in urban sketching, I tend to think of my sketchbooks mainly as repository for my on-location observations. The pages are finished products. But to many artists, a sketchbook is a place for play and experimentation. I have sometimes worried that I don’t do enough of that kind of play in my daily-carry sketchbook, but this book makes me realize I have been doing it all along – I just keep the play in a separate volume.

It is always with great satisfaction that I put away a completed sketchbook into my bookcase designated for that purpose, and my urban-sketch-filled books are usually the most rewarding. This one surprised me for all it has given back to me.

I filled the few remaining pages with doomscrolling prevention tactics and my recent Blick themed Neocolor II palette experiments.

Thornton Creek

 

5/21/26 Thornton Creek water quality channel, Northgate neighborhood

Northgate’s Thornton Creek water quality channel is less than a half-hour’s walk from home, yet I’ve sketched there only a few times. Although the freshly landscaped channel, new in 2009, was still growing in when I first sketched there in 2013, it’s now lush with mature plantings. This time of year, it’s a zillion shades of green with spots of colorful blossoms.

Kim and I take advantage of the sunshine.

I think the main reason I avoided sketching there for many years was that I was intimidated by all that green. In that 2013 post, I drew the landscaping but avoided painting it, knowing that I’d end up with “a huge, dark green mess.” A month later, I was brave enough to get my green paints out (see below), but the foliage was no less daunting.

Kim had never been to Thornton Creek channel before, so I took advantage of a gorgeous afternoon to introduce her to it. Somewhere in the 13 years since those previous visits, sketching layers of lush greenery became less formidable. It probably happened around the time I quit watercolors and embraced pencils! This time I added water-soluble crayons to the mix. While it’s not without challenges, I’m relieved that I’m no longer intimidated by layers of green.

I bravely got my watercolors out for this sketch in 2013.

375 and Onward

5/20/12 Magnuson Park, site of my very first USk outing

 A while back, someone in the global USk group had shared that she had reached a personal milestone of USk outings attended. That made me curious about how many I've attended, but I didn’t know how I would count them. Then I realized that I have posted on the USk Seattle blog every time I’ve participated – that made it easy. I went back through all my posts and made a spreadsheet of all the outings I’ve attended. It took a while to log them all, but now it’ll be easy to continue adding to the spreadsheet as I attend more.

Today, the 14^th anniversary of my very first USk outing, is a good day to commemorate the total to date: 375 outings!

My personal best was in 2025: 44 outings. Second best was 2017 with 39 outings. The worst year, of course, was 2020, when we met only for the first two-and-a-half months – five outings.

I’ve missed some outings, especially during the years I traveled heavily, so the spreadsheet is not comprehensive of all USk outings. Now that I’ve logged them all, though, I have a useful list of ideas, including some locations I’d forgotten about.

It’s funny now to read the blog post about that first outing, which took place only a few months after I had begun sketching. Here’s what I wrote:

On a rainy Sunday morning – the kind that would usually see me in my recliner with a second cup of coffee and the Seattle Times’ funnies – I drove out to Magnuson Park to join the Seattle Urban Sketchers at my first sketchcrawl. Introvert that I am, going alone to a social event like this – where I wouldn’t know anyone and I wasn’t sure what it would be like – is usually hard for me. The rain, the coffee and the recliner were all telling me I should skip this and go another time.

 But two things pushed me out the door: One was the Seattle Times’ full-page spreads that very morning of Gabi Campanario’s vibrant sketches of the new Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition. Talk about inspiring!

 The second was the commitment I had made to myself to give this sketchcrawl thing a try. It’s part of becoming an urban sketcher and getting out into the world – and really seeing the world.

 I’m glad I got out the door! Being part of my enthusiastic, supportive USk community has led to many friendships that I cherish. It feels good to be part of a tribe. (The sketch above is from my first USk outing on May 20, 2012.)

The Future is Finally Here

 

4/19/26 New Judkins Park Station and Mercer Island Station platform

Preamble:

For the first decade-plus of my career, I worked for the Municipality of Metro Seattle, which used to manage and operate the Seattle transit system. As tunnels were being burrowed for buses through the main downtown thoroughfare, disrupting traffic and businesses for years, most of the marketing was about how the new transitway would eventually be used for the region’s as-yet-to-be-built light rail system. This work wasn’t just for ourselves; our children and grandchildren would ride the light rail! (Much potential there for public relations copywriters like myself.)

That was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The 2020s, when all of it was slated to be completed, seemed like a very long way off. I’ll be sitting in my rocker by then, I grumbled, envisioning my 21^st century self. Meanwhile, my current tax dollars were already paying for that wonderful light rail system that I would be too old to use. (Even if I wrote it myself, the copywriting wasn’t enough to convince this grumbling taxpayer that it would all be worthwhile “someday.”)

Four decades later, I’m happy and grateful that I have lived long enough to enjoy that dream-like future (and I no longer begrudge my tax dollars). The light rail has been my most convenient form of public transportation for several years now.

My lunch at Dough Zone at Redmond Towne Center and Downtown Redmond Station

From my perspective, though, the pinnacle of the light rail system was the connection that opened only last month: After multiple, lengthy delays, each putting me one step closer to my rocker, the link between Seattle and the Eastside across Lake Washington was finally completed!

(Delays notwithstanding, this cross-lake link is an engineering marvel: It’s the first train in the world to operate on a floating bridge, which was, itself, the first in the world in 1940.)

Art at Downtown Redmond Station

During all those years that I had to commute to the Eastside for the second leg of my career, how wonderful it would have been to take a comfortable, modern train instead of bumpy buses or, most dreaded, my own car! I’m not grumbling about that, though. Now that the light rail can take me almost anywhere in the Puget Sound region that I’d like to go, I can enjoy easy, very inexpensive rides for fun in retirement instead of commuting to work.

All of that was just preamble (or maybe just amble). Today’s blog story is much shorter:

Kate, Jane, Ellie and I rode the new light rail connection all the way from Seattle to Redmond Towne Center last Sunday. Our mission was to scout the best stations for sketching potential and related amenities for a future USk outing. For me, it was also a satisfying sense of closure: Four decades of the promised future finally becoming the present.

Art and water feature at Bellevue Downtown Station

Bellevue Downtown Station

Art at Downtown Redmond Station

Jane, Ellie, Tina and Kate riding the historic rails!

Time Capsule

 

Eleven years to finish this sketchbook.

Only a few pages remained in this old Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook, which I began 11 years ago. I just finished filling them with my doomscrolling prevention program and other recent sketches made from photos at home.

The first several pages has sketches from Chandler O'Leary's workshop.

One reason it took so long to finish is that the book is spiralbound, a format I don’t like using in the field. Back then, with only a few years of sketching experience under my belt, I was still experimenting with different sketchbook papers and formats, and I didn’t know yet which worked best for me.

Thumbing through it before finally putting the book away on my completed sketchbook shelves, I felt a wave of nostalgia, poignancy and even sadness. The very first sketches in the book were those I made in an urban sketching workshop with Chandler O’Leary. They’re dated June 27, 2015. On a very hot day, we looked for compositions and made thumbnails at Lake Union Park. My memories, embedded in the pages, are bittersweet now because Chandler died in 2023 at the age of 41.

Lots of still lives

That workshop must have been where I realized I don’t like working around a cumbersome wire binding when I’m on location, as those are the only urban sketches in the book. Among the squashes, pencil sharpener and other still lives is my beloved “Stefano” portfolio. Sadly, I had decided that the beautiful, custom-made sketchbook cover, which had traveled with me to five countries, was no longer meeting my needs.

Exercises from Gal Cohen's online workshop

I also see some color swatches and media testing. After a long gap in time, I see assignments and exercises from Gal Cohen’s online workshop in 2024. The last dozen or so pages are some wacky palette experiments and other recent sketches.

Testing various water-soluble techniques

For many years now, my goal has been to minimize the number of sketchbooks I have in progress because I prefer to work through each one chronologically as much as possible. (That might be the goal, but I’m sure I still have a dozen going on concurrently.) I don’t like wide gaps of time within a book, and I certainly don’t want to take 11 years to fill one! Still, looking through this old Beta gave me a time capsule effect that I don’t get from looking at a sketchbook that I’ve filled in a few months. It’s precious in a different way.

Drippy acrylic inks?

Tina’s Top 10 Memorable Sketches of 2025

 

1/18/25 The People's March

Continuing a long-standing, end-of-year blog tradition, shown here are my 10 most memorable sketches of 2025. It’s always fun and illuminating to look back on all my sketches from the year and think about why some are noteworthy. 

As I always say in my intro to this post, these are not necessarily the “best” sketches I made this year; they are my most meaningful in various ways. In fact, in most cases it wasn’t a single sketch that was most memorable – it was the whole experience of sketching in that location. My sketches are not necessarily about special moments; they are moments made special because I sketched them. For me, that’s what urban sketching is.

 

4/14/25 Hollywood sign, Los Angeles

Jan. 18, The People’s March (above): This was the first of several protest rallies I sketched to document the anger and outrage many people have been feeling about the state of our country and its so-called leadership.

April 14, the Hollywood sign (at right): Although all the sketching I did in L.A. last spring was among the most memorable, I chose this little sketch of the iconic Hollywood sign as the most touristy and therefore emblematic of my visit.

 July 12, Old Dog Haven’s Pups on Parade (below): I had so much fun sketching dogs (some costumed) and their humans at this event that it will definitely be on my annual summer calendar going forward.

 

7/12/25 Pups on Parade

July 22, Hing Hay Park: Some of my favorite and most memorable sketching of the summer was during the days leading up to and winding down from Sketcher Fest. After all the hubbub was over, it was both relaxing and fun to sketch a familiar spot and experience it through the fresh eyes of an out-of-town visitor.

 

7/22/25 Hing Hay Park

Aug. 21, drawing pets at ArtSpot: Although none of the hasty pet portraits were my best work, the experience of drawing them during ArtSpot’s fundraising event was a fun and memorable time.

8/21/25 Sketching pets at ArtSpot (photo by Janet Wang)

 Aug. 21, Beacon Hill sketch outing: This USk outing in the Beacon Hill neighborhood became something of a media event: A Seattle Times writer and photographer gave us a little coverage as part of a story they were doing on Gabi Campanario.

 

8/21/25 Beacon Hill neighborhood

Aug. 29, Gasworks Brewing Co. drink & draw: This was my favorite USk drink & draw of the year, partly due to its location on Lake Union but mostly because it’s where I finally met Naoko, a sketcher I had been following on Instagram for years.

 

8/29/25 USk drink & draw at Gasworks Brewing Co.

Aug. 30, my childhood home in the Leschi neighborhood: It was a very special moment to finally sketch the house I grew up in.

 

8/30/25 My childhood home, Leschi neighborhood

9/22/25 elephants at the Oregon Zoo, Portland

Sept. 22, elephants at Oregon Zoo (at left): The highlight of my fall trip to Portland was a visit to the Oregon Zoo, and by far the most fun animals to sketch there were the elephants.

 Nov. 30,  the Seattle Marathon (below): Sketching the first marathon I had ever attended certainly made it a memorable occasion.

11/30/25 Seattle Marathon

Year-End Skyscapitos

 

12/22/25 sunrise, Maple Leaf neighborhood

After many consecutive days (weeks?) of gloomy, gray and wet sunrises, the dawn after the solstice brought a colorful one (at left). I think I missed the best of it by the time I got upstairs, but I was too delighted not to sketch its tail end. The other surprise was seeing how far south the sun rises this time of year (which is why I could see the colors so well). Yes, it happens every year, and yet it always surprises me!

There’s a chance for more, but looking at the weather forecast, these are likely the last skyscapitos of 2025. This is also a wrap for the Uglybook that I began on Nov. 10, 2022.

It’s the third white Uglybook I’ve filled. The others contain skyscapitos, but they also contain more randomness than this one does. When I bought the first three-pack, I was skeptical that I’d have enough uses for white Uglybooks; after all, I have plenty of high-quality sketchbooks containing white paper. I realized quickly, though, that the 80-pound paper is sufficient for the light washes I use with watercolor pencils in thumbnail-size sketches. More significantly, the inexpensive book invites small color captures of sky scenes that are changing by the second. It shouts, “Hey, we’re not making plein air paintings here! Just grab the color before it’s gone! Now!” Realizing that I did have a use for them, I eventually got a second three-pack. I’m glad I did; Uglybooks stopped making white books a long time ago, probably realizing that they didn’t need to compete in the traditional white sketchbook market.

12/12/25 sunset

Although book No. 3 contains a few random sketches, and some skyscapitos required different colored papers (like the dark blue one at right), for the most part, it’s a continuous chronology of sunrises and sunsets I’ve sketched the past three years. I appreciate that kind of continuity.

My life three years ago was very different from now. Back then, I sometimes sketched sunrises not with joyful anticipation but with dread of what the day might bring. Sometimes my sunset sketches were brief moments of respite after long days of pain and anxiety. Now I finish the book with peace and gratitude, looking forward to more skyscapitos in 2026.

Three years of sky color

November 26

 

2012

The more I think about the idea of a perpetual sketch journal, the more I think it’s probably not sustainable, at least if I try to execute it in the way I described during my recent musings (I do have more thoughts that I may talk about eventually, if they crystalize into concrete ideas).

While thinking, though, I kept reminding myself that my own PC’s hard drive can be used instantly like a perpetual sketch journal because I date every file I scan in a consistent manner. I can pick any date – say, Nov. 26 – and type “11-26-” into the search line of my “sketches” folder, and the search results will be every sketch I scanned on Nov. 26 since 2012 (the year I began sketching, 2011, wasn’t a complete year, and I hadn’t yet begun a daily habit).

Just for kicks, I did exactly that, and the sketches shown in this post are the results. (In some years, I made more than one sketch on Nov. 26, but I included here only one from each year.) Kinda fun, huh? Especially since it was so fast and easy. Although I’m still fascinated by the idea of creating a perpetual sketch journal organically in the same book, year after year, this was so much easier than trying to develop the physical mechanism for doing it. If this is the way I have to view my perpetual sketch journal, I might be OK with that.

(Ironically, a sketch for 2025 is not included here because it’s a Pencilvember sketch that I’m putting in a separate post.)

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

My Longitudinal Study Continues

The past and the future, five years at a time. (This is a terrible image. . . the new book's cover is forest green, not black.)

How often do we get to easily see what we were doing or feeling or thinking exactly one year ago on this date – or two years ago or five?

I blogged most recently in February this year about my five-year diary, a Leuchtturm 1917 Some Lines a Day. I’ve also written about it several times at the Well-Appointed Desk (my initial product review in 2020, a progress report in 2022, and a final follow-up in February).

Although it’s one of few things I talk about here that aren’t related to sketching, it’s similar to my daily sketch journal in that it tracks the ordinary day-to-dayness of my life. As I write each evening in my Some Lines book, I read the previous entries for that date on the same page, and I’m often moved or surprised by whatever I was doing in prior years. Any kind of diary (or sketchbook) will do this, of course, but a five-year diary puts all the years on one page so conveniently. It’s a compact longitudinal study of my life.

[An aside: Called a perpetual journal, nature journalists use a similar format to track year-to-year seasonal changes in plants and weather. I have often thought about how a perpetual urban sketch journal could be made. The main problem is physical: It would have to be a large, not-very-portable book to fit several sketches on a single page – in a heavy volume of 366 pages. A more compact idea would be to make a concertina booklet for each date, and the entire booklet unfolded would show five (or however many) years of sketches. But that would mean making 366 booklets (or half that if I used both sides)! And then how would they all be stored? Although the platform is dubious, I must say that Facebook very elegantly performs this perpetual sketch journal function for me in a digital format: Every time I look at my “Memories,” I can see every sketch I’ve ever posted on that date going back through my history on Facebook (which coincides fairly closely with how long I’ve been sketching). Well, maybe someday I’ll think of a workable format.]

I’m writing about my five-year diary again now because I finally completed the one I began on Nov. 16, 2020. That might seem like an odd date to start a dated diary that begins, like all diaries, on Jan. 1. I chose that date, however, because it’s my birthday, and I liked the idea of beginning a diary on my life’s anniversary rather than a date based on an arbitrary and meaningless Gregorian calendar.

The past five years have been, by far, the hardest and most painful of my entire life. Although it is often difficult to be reminded of what I was going through in years past, it is also gratifying to realize that I had pushed past that day’s hardship, survived, and even grown from it. I often feel compassionate toward my former self, wishing I could go back in time to reassure myself that things will get better eventually. Reading those entries never fails to fill me with gratitude.

I just cracked open a fresh volume on Nov. 16. Using the Some Lines a Day format has taught me how and what to write in it. Rather than record only what happened, I want to note how I felt about it. For example, the fact that a huge storm occurred is not nearly as moving as recalling that I felt scared because it was the first time I would worry about losing power while living alone in the house. The more specific the memory, the more interesting it is to read.

I skipped entire months in 2021, but I don't beatmyself up about it.
Sometimes absence of words speaks volumes.

I also find that some of the most rewarding entries to read are those that mentioned people I interacted with that day. This was especially challenging during the pandemic heyday when I hardly saw anyone, but it was gratifying to later remember the kindness of a grocery worker who loaded my food in the pickup lot or friendly words exchanged with an Amazon driver. It also makes me realize a whole year (or two or three) has gone by since I last had lunch with a particular friend – and seeing them again is long overdue.

I know historians like to read people’s diaries (God forbid mine should fall into the hands of a historian!) to learn about events of the times, but I avoid writing about current events unless I have thoughts or feelings that might interest me in the future. Mere facts can be Googled; my feelings about them cannot.

Gratitude, wonder, joy – those are the things I want to read about in the future. And although grief, pain and sadness are not easy to reread, I also appreciate that everything I felt in the past makes me who I am now. Reading those entries gives me perspective and insight.

Retrospection is a gift to myself, and my five-year diary is that daily gift.