Light and Dark at the Chapel of St. Ignatius

 

12/10/25 Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle University

With another atmospheric river promising record-breaking flooding in the region, it was hard to push myself out into the torrents Wednesday morning. (I’m totally safe from flooding here in the city, but some riverside communities have evacuated, and the state has been declared an emergency.) As if that weren’t bad enough, to arrive at the 9 a.m. sketch outing, I had to leave the house at 8 – the sun was barely up! When I retired, I swore I’d never leave the house in morning darkness again!

Beautiful interior lighting with subtle tints

Despite my grumbling, drippy coat and all, as soon as I stepped inside Seattle University’s Chapel of St. Ignatius, I was happy that I had come. The chapel has the most architecturally intriguing interior that I’ve sketched in a long time. I wish I’d thought to take more photos to show the fascinating lighting, but I was too engrossed in trying to capture it in my sketchbook.

Although I hadn’t been inside before, I find most churches to be dark inside, so on that hunch I brought along the black Uglybook that I’ve been making nocturnes in. It was a super-fun challenge to try to convey all the different values emanating from hidden windows. Sketchers who used color also tried to capture the varying colored window glass that tinted the walls subtly.

For my second sketch, I chose the wood crucifix. Very dimly lit from one side, it was a fascinating tonal study, too.

Finally, in the time remaining before the throwdown, I walked out to the vestibule to sketch through a large, wet window with a view of the chapel’s reflecting pool and trees wearing holiday lights.

Reflecting pool outside the chapel. The USk Seattle stamp wouldn't show up on black paper, so I used a tiny sticker instead.

After the outing, Mary Jean and I walked to nearby Piedmont Café for coffee (below). During the Big Dark, I have fun sketching nocturnes even in the daytime!

12/10/25 Piedmont Cafe, Capitol Hill neighborhood

White on Black at Asian Museum

 

10/19/25 Lokeshvara with raised arm, 11th century Cambodia, Seattle Asian Art Museum
(white colored pencil, chalk pastel on black Arteza paper) 

Followers of this blog know how much I love making nocturnes during the darkest part of the year, especially around the holidays. I’ve also occasionally enjoyed doing life drawing (when the model had sufficiently dramatic lighting) using white pencils on black paper. I had never thought to use white on black to draw museum sculptures, but it actually makes a lot of sense, since museums typically allow only pencil use inside the galleries. When I saw that Gage was offering a unique workshop on this subject, it blew my mind open.

Taught by Rebecca Strong, the three-hour workshop had a single, distinct focus: Draw a sculpture at the Seattle Asian Art Museum using white pencils on black paper. In her supply list, she mentioned a number of types of pencils – white colored pencils as well as pastel, chalk and so-called “white charcoal.” She offered to share her own pencils, and we could also bring whatever we already owned. (I had to laugh at that part: If I brought “whatever” I already owned, it would be quite a load! But I do love it when I take a workshop and don’t have to buy a single new thing!)

Avoiding drawing lines, we were instructed to squint to see tonal values more clearly and use white media to shade only the light. After a short demo, she let us loose in the exhibits that housed the most sculptures, and we were to choose one to draw.

A simple supply list: black paper and an assortment of white pencils.

In the same way that we use a range of grades from hard to soft when working with graphite, Rebecca suggested using a range of white pencils from hard to soft. I started with a Stabilo All (I’m not sure what that pencil is made of, but it is billed as a “marking” pencil that can write on glass and metal) and Faber-Castell Polychromos as my harder “grades.” I then moved progressively softer and more opaque with Prismacolor, Holbein and finally a Conte pastel pencil. The Conte worked especially well as a smudgy background on the right side of the drawing.

As it always does when I draw only the light, my brain had to do a rollover. Of course, my tonal work in colored Uglybooks the past several years certainly helped me make the rollover more quickly. Using nothing but pencils, the result is more interesting and dynamic than it often is (at least for me) using only graphite.

What a fun challenge! I see myself visiting more museums this winter with this new focus in mind and more white pencils in my bag.

Walk-Sketch Randomness

10/18/24

9/24/24 

Most of my walk-sketches get posted on my blog chronologically because I have some kind of story to tell, either about the subject, media explorations, or whatever. Still, I realized I had some sketches from September and October that I hadn’t shared. I don’t want to get too far behind, so I’ll catch up here, along with a few for Pencilvember.

10/27/24

The one from Sept. 24 (top left) is something of an anomaly. Out for a walk with my daily-carry Uglybook, I wanted to capture the thick fog on that strangely warm morning, and watermelon red just wouldn’t do it. I didn’t have a white sketchbook, but I always have a Field Notes jotting notebook and a graphite pencil with me.

The only other sketch here with much of a story is Oct. 18 (top right) – an excavator digging up trees and roots from a driveway and yard. Back in August, I wrote a post about an old, dilapidated garage I see whenever I get a table at Macrina Bakery’s outdoor seating area. Out of place on that tidy street, the eyesore of a garage had been that way for years. Not too long after I made that sketch, I walked by one day and realized that it had been taken down! On Oct. 18, I saw that the entire yard was being excavated, including some small trees. The excavator operator saw me sketching and alerted the owner, who was attending.

“Is there a problem?” the owner said, crossing the street toward me with a worried expression. (People seem to interpret sketching as furious notetaking.)

“Oh, no problem at all – I’m enjoying sketching your excavation!” I replied. Relieved, he started chatting about his ongoing plans. His project is done now, and the landscaping looks nice, but strangely, I sort of miss the garage, even if it was an eyesore. I’m glad I sketched it when I did.

Included in this randomness are graphite sketches from a few days ago. The Faber-Castell Pitt Graphite Matt pencil that I started Pencilvember with wasn’t doing it for me, so I’m trying out different pencils now. The 8B Mitsubishi Hi-Uni Super DX and the Viarco ArtGraf water-soluble graphite pencil both hit the spot in terms of darkness and softness, but unfortunately, they both smudge badly and reflect light. Activating with water, however, takes care of both the ArtGraf’s smudging and shininess. That might be the best solution.

11/4/24 (ArtGraf, Inktense, white Derwent Drawing pencil)

11/4/24 (ArtGraf, Museum Aquarelle and 
Inktense)

11/4/24 (Hi-Uni Super DX 8B, Museum Aquarelle)

I’m also regretting that I chose the tan Uglybook . . . perhaps I should have gone with a white one, as was my first inclination. With white, it’s very easy and fast to get the high contrast I want, and I can probably use harder graphite grades if I want to.

(Fussing about media sure is fun! I’ve missed it!)

I'm having fun mixing in some color with the graphite! Ahhh, pencils -- how I've missed you!

Wedgwood and Greenwood Street Trees

 

9/2/24 Wedgwood neighborhood (I've enjoyed sketching a variety of oaks in Wedgwood. I always had a certain shape of leaf in mind when I thought of "oak trees," but I've discovered that the shapes can vary widely.)

My street trees project is winding down for the season (until the weather forces me to sketch from my car, which I’m not sure will always be possible with street trees, but I’ll try). Here are a few more from the Wedgwood and Greenwood neighborhoods.

9/10/24 Wedgwood neighborhood

9/13/24 Greenwood neighborhood

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.

Four Kitties and a Pup

 

5/11/24 Cooper (reference photos for Cooper, CJ
and Zoey by Ana Reinert)

5/10/24 CJ

5/8/24 Zoey

Although I’m taking a break from my fundraising project for Dog Gone Seattle, I still look for opportunities to keep up my pet-sketching chops (and obviously because I enjoy drawing animals so much). If you read the Well-Appointed Desk, you may have seen my review of some fine-point pens I’ve used for whiskers and other fine details. The test sketches were three of Ana Reinert’s seven (at last count) cats, Zoey, CJ and Cooper, who look identical (to me . . . I’m sure mama has no problem telling those tabbies apart).

5/20/24 Luigi (reference photo by Bob Lazzari)

A fourth kitty, Luigi, was a pet recently lost by a Facebook friend. Luigi’s photos captured my heart, so I drew from one on a Field Notes notebook to surprise my friend with.

The lone pup who made it into this bunch is aging but still adorable Fritzie, whom I sketched while his human and I chatted in their apartment one afternoon. Patient and polite, Fritzie mostly napped on the carpet – until I started sketching, and then he wandered all over the room. (Another Murphy’s Law of urban sketching: Pets sleep until you pull out your sketchbook.) Nonetheless, this sketch was the most fun of these because I got to do it from life.

5/15/24 Fritzie, sketched in his livingroom

Shannon (and Gage Nostalgia)

 

3/16/24 Shannon, 20-min. pose (all sketches, except as noted below, made with Derwent Inktense Blocks and Prismacolor pencil in Strathmore toned mixed media sketchbook)

20-minute pose (ArtGraf water-soluble graphite in 
Canson XL 98 lb. mixed media sketchbook)

Since Gage Academy reopened for studio life drawing after the pandemic pause, the school has been using a regular and predictable format for each Saturday’s session. The first Saturday of the month is a lightning-fast session with poses ranging from 30 seconds to no more than five minutes each. The second Saturday is the standard short-pose format I was familiar with pre-pandemic: A variety of lengths ranging from three minutes to 20. Last Saturday’s session was all 20-minute poses, which is about as long as I ever need to work on a single sketch. Longer than that and I start to overwork the piece until it loses its freshness. Either that, or I get restless.

The 20-minute poses gave me plenty of time to observe the form through shading and light. In fact, I started to notice that while the artificial lamp over the model (coming from the left) cast a very warm light, the natural light from the windows on Shannon’s right was cooler. Whenever I observe something subtle like that, I like to reward myself by putting it into the sketch. It may not be important to show the two temperatures of white, but it does serve one other purpose: clarifying the potentially confusing two light sources (ideally in studio life-drawing practice, only one light source should be used).

Unfortunately, I had only one neutral white colored pencil for highlights. I tried to tint the white with a little blue from another colored pencil, but it doesn’t show my intention. As soon as I got home, I picked out a cool white Prismacolor for next time. (I used to wonder why Prismacolor – or any large set of colored pencils – includes so many different tints of white and near-white. Well, duh.)

3/16/24 The old Gage Academy building on Capitol Hill

After parking across the street, I took a few minutes to sketch Gage’s building before going in. Gage is moving to a brand-new, modern building (owned and supported by Amazon) this summer. Like the faculty, staff and other students, I’m really excited about the move, as the very old building has many issues (including accessibility and terrible plumbing, heating and roof leaks). Despite all of that, I felt a bit nostalgic as I sketched. Except for the pandemic, I’ve been going to that old building regularly for many inspiring classes and life-drawing practice for 10 year now (my very first experience there was Steve Reddy’s “Illustrative Drawing” workshop). I look forward to lots more in the new building.

Pink is the New White

 

3/1/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood (Uni Pin and Pentel brush markers,
Posca paint marker)

The mossy green paper in my current Uglybooks sketchbook has taken some getting used to compared to the bright orange one I recently filled. The latter’s hue and value were just the right midtone between white and black, enabling both to pop. On the green, however, white just doesn’t seem to pop as well. Looking at my supply of Posca paint markers, I found a pale pink that I thought might work better than white as the lightest value. This sketch was my first experiment to see how the pink “reads.”

I’ve tried a few other Uglybooks colors that I found to be difficult to use as the midtone. With my past habit, I would simply switch to a different color Uglybook. Now that I’m committed to using only one book until it’s filled (and using it daily), I’m challenged to move beyond white and look at Posca marker colors for new possibilities. Restricting myself in one way frees me in other ways.

A Choice, Not a Default

 

9/26/23 Derwent Drawing pencil in Stillman & Birn
Nova sketchbook (reference photo by Rick Clark)

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that one of my ongoing struggles is learning to grow into “looseness.” We probably all have some idea about what “looseness” is – or at least we know it when we see it. A loose drawing has the illusion of being an easy and casual gesture, but I’m willing to bet that any artist who makes a drawing look easy and casual has many, many years of experience during which that “easy” look has been earned.

Last week when I made the carefully rendered still life for my watercolor class, I called it “competent” – the thing I do that has become my default – but I said it somewhat self-disparagingly because, you know, who wants to make “competent” art? Besides, if I wanted to make a carefully rendered still life, I would much rather use colored pencils, which are so much easier to control (if control is important).

10/23/23 ArtGraf watercolors in Hahnemuhle sketchbook (photo reference)

Then when I tried the version without an underdrawing, I liked the result much better, but it’s clumsier than I would have liked. I guess what I’m looking for is somewhere in between – more expressive than competent but with enough accuracy that the forms are clear. I’m happy, though, that I know it’s there to reach for (and it has become obvious that I have an easier time reaching for it with a brush than a pencil).

Perhaps one reason for my ongoing struggle is that it represents a direct conflict in what I love about sketching. My InkTober noses and now my Pencilvember ears affirm for me how much I enjoy making closely observed and carefully rendered drawings. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent years investing in classes at Gage Academy to develop classical rendering skills. At the same time, I am thrilled when I am able to pull off a still life or urban scene with direct watercolor that conveys more liveliness and energy (if not accuracy). I want to be able to do both, and I want the result to be my choice – not a default setting.

Maybe that’s a tall order, but going into my 12^th year since I began this journey, I’m ready for that challenge.

More Light on Dark

 

5/14/23 photo reference

Back in May when I was somewhat obsessed with working light-on-dark with colored pencils and colored papers, I had been saving sketches in a folder with the good intention of gathering the many thoughts I was having at the time into a coherent post. Then the whole month of June was taken over by direct watercolor, and then July was too warm and sunny to think about dark papers. And then instead of becoming coherent, the thoughts I was having at the time disintegrated into muddle. Well, you know what they say about good intentions and where they lead to.

In any case, I didn’t want to forget about posting the rest of these light-on-dark studies, the process of which I’m still intrigued by. I’ll probably return to making them in the dark of winter when I can use more of my golden hour reference photos to work from.

5/9/23 photo reference

5/8/23 Earthsworld reference photo

5/6/23 Earthsworld reference photo

5/11/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood (on location)

5/11/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood (on location)

Knotty and Nervous

7/10/23 Tree on Roosevelt Way NE

Macrina Bakery recently shared a customer’s image of a knotty old tree visible from a window seat. I love drawing those trees (which the PlantNet app tells me are either Tilia Europaea, the common lime, or Tilia Cordata, the linden), many of which line both sides of Roosevelt Way Northeast for several blocks. On a cool, cloudy morning, I grabbed that seat inside the café so that I could sketch it.

I’ve sketched quite a few of those trees over the years, like this one in 2015 and another in 2018. The one at right was more challenging (and therefore more fun) to render than it had first appeared. The light through the overcast sky was coming from the left, so it had to be brighter on that side. But the tops of the burls and bumps on the opposite side were also slightly illuminated. It was an ideal subject for a toned-paper study (that happens to be bright pink).

7/10/23 Pups outside Macrina Bakery

On my way out of the bakery, I found two pups nervously waiting for their human to return from the door they had disappeared into. It must be hard on dogs, who are probably never completely certain if they’ll ever see their human again.

Peony Petal on Black

 

5/24/23 Pinks appear too cool

One morning I came into the kitchen to find that the palest pink peony in my bouquet had fallen apart in an explosion of petals. Before sweeping up the counter, I picked out a few petals to sketch.

It would have been relatively easy to sketch a nearly white petal on white paper, but to make it stand out would require some kind of tedious background. Since my mind is lately fixated on light-on-dark drawings, I wondered what it would be like to sketch it on black paper. I’ve seen works by colored pencil artists who use black or other dark papers, and one trick they use is to apply white or a very pale tint first to make the later colors show more easily. (I showed how I had used that technique a few days ago.)

In my black Uglybook, I first put down a few layers of a white Derwent Drawing Pencil, which wasn’t opaque enough to completely cover the black, but I thought it was good enough to start. The peony is a relatively cool, pale pink, so I dug through all my Prismacolors, Faber-Castell Polychromos and even Caran d’Ache Pablos (which I rarely use) to find suitable candidates. I started with five. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the black paper cooled the pinks significantly, so although test swatches looked right on white paper and even on black, by the time I had applied several layers, I could see that the hue was still too cool (above). It might have helped if I had put down several more initial layers of white to obscure more of the black.

Warmer pinks applied later -- but still not warm enough.

I then went back through my pencils to find warmer tints of pink. Interestingly, at least among pinks, the Pablos seemed slightly more opaque than either the Prismacolors or Polychromos. That surprised me, as I’ve never used Pablos seriously enough to notice their opacity. (Worth testing further to see if that’s generally true of the range.) Even with those later layers of warmer, more opaque pinks, I didn’t capture the right petal hue (at left). I was at the point where the paper probably couldn’t take more layers, so I stopped.

But here’s something that I only noticed when I took the photo below: The petal lying on the sketchbook is so translucent that the black paper shows through, cooling down its actual pink hue (compare with the other petals on white paper). So my sketch looks closer to the actual petal – if I lay it on black!

I find drawing on dark papers challenging and intriguing in unexpected ways!