Rainy-Day Metasketching

11/3/14 Platinum Carbon ink, Van Gogh watercolors, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

When I saw that this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme is to sketch our sketch kits, it occurred to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve done any metasketching. (That’s the term I tried to coin a couple of years ago to mean sketching one’s sketch materials, but I discovered that it already means something. Gabi uses it to mean sketching another sketch or painting. It apparently also means something related to computer modeling.) The last time I metasketched was a year-and-a-half ago on a day similar to today – with pouring rain (though it’s not threatening to snow today as it was then).

If truth be told (and anyone who has seen a photo of my actual bag dump knows that this is the truth), the sketch above is only a portion of my everyday-carry; I didn’t include my “Stefano” sketchbook, mixing pan, spritzer, travel brush, Zig markers and additional multiples of various pens and other things I can’t seem to leave the house without. And of course I have more than one pair of glasses and watercolor kit, or I wouldn’t have been able to sketch and paint the glasses and watercolor kit, right? (Whoa, mind-boggling.)

The good news is that I now have a double-duty sketch for InkNaNoDrawMo as well as the weekly theme. 

The bad news is that the forecast for the rest of the week looks much the same as today:

The Mother of All Power Lines

7/15/14 Platinum Carbon, Diamine Grey and Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuyu-kusa inks, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Zig markers, Pitt Artist Pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Power lines and poles are by no means attractive, and they have certainly marred scenic photos for many a photographer. But if they are a prominent part of a cityscape, I like to include them in my sketches. Ugly as they may be, they add a certain rhythm of lines, both vertical and horizontal.

A few blocks south of my house in the otherwise charming Maple Leaf neighborhood is Seattle City Light’s North Substation at around Eighth Avenue Northeast and Northeast 79^th Street. Whenever I drive by (which I avoid if possible), I feel bad for the people who live right across the street and have to look at this eyesore through their windows every day.

This week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme is “So Ugly it’s Beautiful,” and the North Substation was my ideal candidate. This mother of all power lines, which looks like a giant Erector Set, is unattractive, to say the least. Yet as I stood uphill from it to sketch its vast, regular rhythm of lines and transformers, I had to acknowledge a certain beauty. I even thought about how all those lines and transformers are hard at work bringing me electricity so that I can scan and blog about my sketches each day.

Thus acknowledged, I finished my sketch and was happy to turn my back on all that ugly beauty.

Foreshortening Lesson on the Patio

7/8/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown and Grey and Pilot Iroshizuku Ku-jaku inks,
water-soluble pencil, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Technically, it’s a deck, not a patio, because it’s slightly elevated from the ground. But for the sake of this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Patios,” I decided it was close enough. Here’s a sketch of Greg trying to get a tan. I stood a few steps down on the stairway that leads to our backyard to sketch this, which gave me one of the strangest, most foreshortened life drawing views I’ve ever attempted. (He complained that one foot is larger than the other. Baby, you have no idea how much worse it could have been.)

Vacant Northgate Playground

5/13/14 Platinum Carbon ink, brown ink mix, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Only one thing makes an annoying errand tolerable: squeezing in a sketch opportunity along the way.

Before going to Northgate Mall for the annoying part, I stopped at the Northgate Community Center, which I thought would give me another chance to sketch a lively playground for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme. It was about the same time of day as yesterday – early afternoon – and today was even warmer, so I expected it to be mobbed with kids. To my surprise, it was completely vacant – not a single soul of any age was on the playground (except me, of course).

Despite the beautiful, sunny day, it felt strange, even slightly eerie, to see all the swings hanging completely still on this breezeless day, the merry-go-round and jungle gym empty. I decided to do an odd take on a sketch to match the mood: I focused mainly on the shadows cast by the twisty slide.

Maple Leaf Park Playground

5/12/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, Pitt Artists Brush Pen, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Early afternoon on a sunny Monday, the under-5 set was in full force at the Maple Leaf Park playground. Strollers parked everywhere, moms and toddlers enjoying shade trees, nearly every swing was in use. It was an ideal opportunity to make a sketch for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Playgrounds.”

Value Sketch at the Park

4/13/14 Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

We seem to be skipping over spring and going straight to summer! The temperature was up to the mid-60s this afternoon, and wherever I looked at Maple Leaf Park, people were dressed in shorts and flip-flops. (Although I wasn’t quite ready for shorts, I regretted the socks I was wearing.)

As I settled down on a bench and pulled out my usual pen and watercolors, something about the playground scene reminded me that I still hadn’t done a sketch for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, Value Drawing – “Don’t draw lines, only tones.” And then I remembered that I had done a monochrome ink sketch of the same scene about a year ago. The busy-ness of the playground and the two trees and their shadows must lend themselves to tonal sketching.

When I’m using watercolors, I feel compelled to create hues that match reality as much as possible. I know I don’t have to, but I can’t seem to help myself. When I’m focusing on value, though, I feel liberated to use any color. And so it was today when I pulled out the only two pencils in my bag: Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone colored pencils, one with shades of green and a second with an odd mix of reds and pale blue. The fact that they were both somewhat unsharp also saved me from the temptation to draw in details. I don’t use graphite pencils much, but these multi-hued pencils are a fun kick in the pants!

Lots of Action, Not Much to Sketch

3/22/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Zig markers, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

There’s a lot going on in the Roosevelt neighborhood where the new Sound Transit light rail station is being built, but it’s difficult to see any of the action. You can certainly hear it, and traffic around there is being disrupted enough that you certainly experience it, but you can only see the tops of the huge cranes and other heavy equipment moving around in the distance. Nearly a year ago, I sketched the very beginning of construction, intending to continue sketching as progress was made, but they’ve since blocked the site off with fencing. I’ve been driving around that area for the past couple weeks trying to figure out a place from which to sketch, but it’s not easy.

Since it’s Saturday, I parked at Roosevelt High School and found a good angle on several pieces of equipment* that were quiet today (although something smaller was definitely moving around behind the fencing, making noise). I wish I knew someone who lived in one of the tall apartment buildings nearby – I would get up on the roof for a better view.

Still, I can’t complain. Despite the overcast sky, it was warm enough to get out of my car for this sketch, the sounds of RHS cheerleaders and the soccer team practicing behind me. Outdoor urban sketching at last: I could be happy drawing a potato bug.

* And since I can’t intelligently speak of what any of these pieces of equipment do, this sketch qualifies for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr theme, "What is this thing?"

First Snow

2/9/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

It’s not the first snowfall of the season, but the first that piled up and stuck. A half-inch of accumulation was predicted in my neck of the Pacific Northwest, but we actually got a couple of inches overnight. Waking to flocked trees and the thick kind of quiet that comes with snowfall is always a bit magical (especially on Sunday when there’s nowhere to commute to).

It’s also the first snow I attempted to sketch – ever. Although it has snowed at least once a year since I started sketching in 2011, I remember feeling completely technically unprepared each time: How do I paint the white? Do I draw it, or just try to paint around it? It was overwhelming.

I wasn’t much better prepared this morning. But I have been admiring the many beautiful snow sketches of Shari Blaukopf, Nina Johansson and Joan T., so I had been looking forward to an opportunity to give it a shot. Since I don’t drive in snow (not in my little convertible hockey puck!), and I felt no compelling reason to put on my boots, I simply opened the front door and stood on our dry porch to sketch the scene across the street. (The temperature was in the low 30s, so I didn’t even have to put gloves on.)

Maybe snow should become my latest sketching nemesis. But given that it snows here only a couple of times per season, I won’t get many opportunities to try to slay it. I’ll just be happy that I got this sketch done in the nick of time to post it to this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Weather.”

(Speaking of sketching nemeses, I just noticed that this sketch includes three of mine: architecture, trees and cars. Battling three nemeses in a single sketch on a Sunday morning! Time to go in for hot chocolate.)

A Recipe for Hot Cereal

1/5/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, water-soluble colored pencil,
Canson Montval 140 lb. paper

Our favorite hot cereal is Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal. Since I don’t like most gluten-free products, and Greg can’t eat gluten, Mighty Tasty is one of the few cereals we both eat. This hearty, high-fiber, multi-grain cereal is especially good on cold winter mornings. We usually eat it with low-fat soy milk, but during the holiday season, we indulge by pouring lots of eggnog on it. Today we used up the last of the eggnog.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I don’t ever fall back on using recipes as a “filler” for blog posts. Today is an exception because this sketch was made for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Recipes,” which I almost forgot about. I sketched the line work during the 10 minutes it took to cook the cereal (including stopping to stir several times), and I painted after breakfast. (The dark vertical line in the center of the pot is my reflection. Does this count as a self-portrait?) Here’s the recipe (serves two):

2 cups water

2/3 cup cereal

½ teaspoon salt

Boil water with salt. Pour in cereal, reduce heat to low, and cook for 10 minutes (stirring occasionally). Eat with raisins and eggnog. (By the way, using this recipe is about the extent of my cooking skills. That’s why you will never see another recipe published on my blog.)

Who Clued Them In?

12/3/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Sailor pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Whenever I visit Zoka Coffee, I see numerous people texting or otherwise using their mobile phones, some of whom I’ve sketched previously. So even though I had several old sketches I could post on this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group thread on the theme “People with Mobile Phones,” I knew it would be easy to find a fresh victim. Ha!

12/3/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Sketchbook Project Sketchbook

At 10:30 a.m., Zoka’s peak morning time, the place was packed, and yet, for the nearly two hours that I sat there, I could not spot a single person using a phone. You’d think someone had gotten there ahead of me to warn them that I would sketch them if they had their phones out. Nonetheless, the laptop-engrossed crowd was an easy target, so I had my fill of sketching.

Just as I was putting away my pens and sketchbook to leave, the guy wearing headphones whom I had spent the last hour sketching received a text! OK, fine – I would sketch him again. (Notice that during that hour, his face had completely transformed, and he looked like a different person. Amazing what a few cups of caffeine will do to a guy.)

12/3/13 Diamine Macassar ink, Sailor pen, Sketchbook Project sketchbook

In the Kitchen, Thankfully

11/27/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

I’ve heard it said that the things most familiar to us are often the most difficult to draw accurately. The brain “knows” too much about these familiar things, preventing the eye from seeing them as they really are. Although I replace as much cooking time as possible with sketching time (admit it – you do, too!), so I probably spend less time cooking than most people, I’d have to say that this room in my home is quite familiar to me, and I found it extremely challenging to sketch.

When I saw that this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme was “Kitchens,” I groaned and put it off for a few days. Other than fruits and vegetables I take from the counter for still lifes, nothing in my kitchen inspires me to sketch it. Even over breakfast today, I grumbled to Greg that the kitchen is full of hard, straight lines, difficult perspective challenges and mostly nonexistent or uninteresting shadows. “All the more reason to sketch it,” he replied. Tomorrow the kitchen will be a huge mess of cooking activity, so if I was going to do something for the theme, it would have to be today. Grumble.

The one thing our kitchen has going for it is that our stairway runs along one wall of it, so when I stand in the stairway, I have an unusually high vantage point that makes it slightly more interesting to sketch.

It took me well over an hour to sketch this – way longer than I usually take for any one sketch. As familiar as the kitchen is to me, before this morning, I’m not sure I could have told you that the burners over our gas range have eight spider-like “legs” on them. (Sketching any object makes me learn something about it.)

As I sat on the comfy, carpeted stairs to paint this, the refrigerator full of food for tomorrow’s feast, the furnace circulating warm air all around me, I realized that if the only thing I have to grumble about is the subject of a sketch, I am, indeed, very fortunate, and I’m grateful for everything I have.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last Chance for Color and Bonus Utility Lines

11/13/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Fabriano hot-press paper

Driving through the Greenwood neighborhood, I was looking for an interesting church that I had seen on a previous visit, but I never made it there: This little maple growing in a traffic circle stopped me in my tracks. Every time I think all the trees have given up their color, I spot one that insists there’s still plenty of time to shine.

When I finished the tree, I still had about 15 minutes before I had to leave for an appointment, and then I remembered this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme: utility lines. Power poles and lines are so ubiquitous in Seattle that I barely had to turn my gaze from the tree to make my next sketch.

11/13/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Fabriano

Two Trees (Paper Testing Continues)

10/7/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

This time last year, the trees were blazing with color. Conditions must not be ideal this Fall, because the leaves on many trees seem to be going straight to brown. Still, I’ve been seeing enough red maples and yellow aspen (now that I’ve identified them, I see aspens everywhere) that I’ve been eager to sketch as many as I can before all their leaves fall off (which may be soon, given how much rain and wind we’ve had lately).

As I was driving through the Green Lake neighborhood today, I slammed on my brakes when I saw this gold aspen (with a car parked nearby, giving me a new sketch to post in the Urban Sketchers Flickr group weekly theme thread, “Cars,” my faithful nemesis). I finished the sketch, rounded the corner, and wham! A bright red maple practically jumped in my path (thankfully, not literally). They must have heard me mumbling about how the weather conditions aren’t right and wanted to prove me wrong.

10/7/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, brush pen,
Strathmore 400 140 lb. paper

The sketch of the aspen above fills the last page of the Canson XL 140-pound paper signature I have been testing the past couple weeks. I filled the Canson Montval signature (the second paper I’m testing) a few days ago. The test so far has been inconclusive. I like the smoother textures of both Canson papers better than the Strathmore 400’s rough surface. But I found myself using pen and ink a lot more often than watercolor the past couple weeks, so I didn’t give either Canson paper enough of a workout with watercolor washes to compare them fairly with the Strathmore, which did get a good watercolor workout at Yellowstone.

So in the interest of gathering more data, I stitched up four more test signatures. This time, instead of binding one type of paper per signature, I put in one folded sheet of each of the three paper types into each signature. Since I often sketch across the gutter, using the full spread, having multiple types of paper in one signature means that I’ll be sketching half of a sketch on one type of paper and half on another, which could make interesting – and easily compared – test results, I figure. Which brings me to a couple of observations I’ve made during testing and as I was making the signatures:

• Strathmore 400 has the roughest texture, and it’s also the most difficult of the three papers to fold, which must mean it’s somewhat heavier. It reinforces what I’ve observed previously, which is that even though a paper is labeled “140 pound,” it doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same weight as another paper labeled “140 pound.” 

• All three papers I’m testing have a slightly different texture on one side compared to the other. I’ve heard other artists note and sometimes complain about this, and one watercolor instructor insisted that we use only the rougher side, which she considered the “right” side. I don’t think I’m sophisticated enough as a watercolor painter to know how I can take advantage of the “right” side versus the “wrong” side, but it’s fun to experiment with both sides. As far as I’m concerned, the “right” side of a piece of paper is the one with a sketch on it!

Stay tuned for more conclusive results in a few weeks.

Walking

10/2/13 various inks, 100 lb. paper

This week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme is “People Walking,” which was suggested by me. As weekly theme host debora000 says, “Miatagrrl has challenged us to sketch people walking. Not an easy subject, but a very common element in urban scenes. Who will accept the challenge?” Many have – quite well! I posted a few sketches from the past year of pedestrians I’ve captured at Green Lake, but since it’s a theme I suggested, I shamed myself into sketching something new today.

Instead of looking for a complete scene to sketch, I decided to make several gestural sketches just trying to get the position and the shading of the legs right. Sketching people from the side is difficult enough; they always seem to have a keep-on-truckin’ stride. But what’s even more difficult is sketching them from the front or back and capturing enough angle or shading on the bent leg to indicate that the person is, indeed, walking rather than standing. 

Sri Chinmoy

8/28/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Stillman & Birn

A while back when I was walking along the Ship Canal in the Fremont neighborhood, I came upon a memorial to Sri Chinmoy, an Indian spiritual master and founder of the World Harmony Run. A plaque at the foot of the memorial, called “Dreamer of World Peace,” includes a poem by Chinmoy and the words “Fremont – Center of the Universe for World Harmony.”

 

I didn’t have time to sketch the memorial then, but I made note of it. This week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme is “Dreams of a Better Society,” so I thought it was the appropriate time to go back to the Ship Canal and sketch the statue. It was dedicated on Nov. 7, 2010, three years after his death.

Lake City Farmers Market

8/22/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

Despite all the fruit I buy at farmers markets during the summer, when I saw that this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme is “Fruit” (a theme, in fact, that was suggested by me) I was chagrined to find that I did not have a single sketch of a fruit vendor! I made it my goal to correct that omission this week at the Lake City Farmers Market.

 

It probably looks like this sketch-genic vendor was posing for me, but I was actually a distance away, and I’m not sure he was aware of my sketching. He just always seemed to have a ready smile for his customers.

 

8/22/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink

With only a few minutes left before I had to go, I noticed a couple of buskers I hadn’t seen before. One was a poet sitting at a small table, apparently selling poems. But this sax player named Michal won my sketchbook’s attention. Maybe I’ll catch the poet next time.

Sloth Bear Cubs and Elephant

8/8/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Stillman & Birn

Two sloth bear cubs were born at the Woodland Park Zoo last December, but until recently they had been out for public viewing only sporadically, so I’d gotten only brief glimpses of them, if any. They are finally old enough to be out all day with their mom, so today I got to spend a half-hour watching them play, sketching when I could (they like to dodge behind the trees and tree-like structures in their exhibit).

On my way out of the zoo, I stopped to watch an elephant being fed. Or more precisely, I mostly saw the back end of an elephant while the front end got fed.



8/8/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink

8/8/13 Chocolate Brown ink

In the Nick of Time

6/24/13 Sailor pen, Private Reserve Black Magic Blue, Diamine Grey and
Diamine Chocolate Brown inks, Zig markers, 100 lb. paper

Frustrated by the ongoing rain (weather.com’s headline today: “Rare June Atmospheric River Heading for West Coast”), I pretended it was winter and headed out for Zoka Coffee to sketch. But when I got there, I realized that, despite the rain, the outdoor temperature was pleasant. After getting my coffee, I sat on one of the benches outside, where an overhang protected my sketch from the drizzle.

In the back of my mind was this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Dogs,” and when I looked across the street, a tiny Pomeranian was barely visible at its human’s feet (you might have to enlarge the sketch just to see it). Although I knew it was dangerous to start a composition with such a small part of it, I also knew that the dog wouldn’t be there long, so I quickly framed the composition in my mind, and sketched the dog. Sure enough, as soon as I finished drawing it and its human, they both got up and left. (Whew.)

Not much else across the street interested me, but I hadn’t sketched any cars, my wintertime sketching arch-nemesis, in a while, so I decided to fill in all that space around the tiny dog with a few. Again, I finished one car in the nick of time before it pulled away. The one closest to me changed several times, but the way I draw cars, they all look the same anyway.

Technical notes: Stefano Bramato, maker of my new leather sketchbook cover, is also the author of an inspiring and entertaining blog. He recently blogged about his bare-essentials sketch kit, which includes a waterbrush filled with undiluted Diamine Grey ink. Although I’ve found Diamine Grey to be a little too pale for drawing, its an ideal mid-gray tone for shading, so I filled up a waterbrush and gave it a try with this sketch. I like the way it can be layered like watercolors (similar to my favorite Zig markers).

In hindsight, I wish I’d used black water-soluble ink instead of blue for this drawing, which might have coordinated better with the gray washes. But in my most recent bag weight-reduction attempt, I took the pen with black ink out! It's the Murphy’s Law of sketching: The thing I want is always the thing I most recently took out. Well, very soon I’m going to strip out all non-essentials again for traveling, so we’ll see what makes the final final cut.

Pedestrian Bridge Over Aurora

5/14/13 Diamine Grey ink, watercolor, Zig marker, Uniball pen, Stillman & Birn sketchbook

Northbound on Aurora Avenue North, I passed under a pedestrian bridge at around 157^th, and a light bulb turned on: “Bridges” is this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme. I didn’t think I would be near any bridges over water this week, but I was thinking too narrowly.

 

I quickly pulled into Sears’ upper-level parking lot, hoping to see what I saw: a good view of the bridge’s blue span. While I sketched, I kept hoping some pedestrians would cross over so that I could put them in for scale, but none did.

 

In the meantime, some ominously black clouds gathered on the horizon behind tall firs, even as the sun shone brilliantly in another part of the sky. Our weather has been crazy-fickle lately.

Small Lot, Big Equipment

5/4/13 Platinum Sepia ink, watercolor, Zig markers, pencil, Stillman & Birn sketchbook

On our way to the Sand Point Metropolitan Market this morning, we saw a disproportional number of heavy machinery moving slowly around a small lot on the corner of 25^th Northeast and Northeast 75^th in Wedgwood. I think the lot has been empty for a while – perhaps a gas station stood there at some point. It didn’t look like anything was being built, nor being torn down, and there were so many pieces of equipment in such a small space that it seemed to me that they could hardly maneuver.

Curious, and with this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme “People on the Job” on my mind, I went back this afternoon to find out what was going on. It turned out to be environmental cleanup activity, according to the worker I asked.

Technical note: I’m constantly switching out various art materials in my daily bag to minimize its weight and bulk while maximizing my sketching options. Since I had rarely used it, I recently replaced an orange Zig marker with something else. As I stood on a noisy, dusty, highly trafficked street corner, I regretted not having that bright orange marker, which would have enabled me to add the important color to this sketch quickly without having to get out my watercolors to mix the orange. Given that “construction orange” is always a prominent color in the urban landscape, I guess I’d better put that marker back into my bag.