Not Yet Prime Time on Sunset Hill, Either

3/22/26 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Sunset Hill is my all-time favorite petal-peeping spot. Although certainly the University of Washington Quad is the city’s biggest, grandest Sakura show, and I enjoy the spectacular hanami experience of the throngs, this single block in the Sunset Hill neighborhood is more my vibe. Even at peak, these blossoms seem known only to residents who jog or walk their dogs there. It’s such a quiet residential street that I always walk slowly down the middle of it, hardly needing to step aside for cars.

Look at that shape!

Each tree’s unique shape is as familiar as a friend. As we both admired one tree in particular (which I’ve drawn many times), another woman and I declared in unison, “It’s my favorite,” then beamed at each other.

Like their sisters on Crown Hill and Capitol Hill, these beauties hadn’t yet hit their peak, but they were close. I’m planning to be back again next week with USk Seattle when it’s full-on party time, so I chose a smaller tree this time that I hadn’t sketched before. It’s just a warm-up for the main event.

Not yet prime time, but close.

Dibble on Crown Hill

3/22/26 Crown Hill neighborhood

When Sunday afternoon turned out dry and even partly sunny, it was a good opportunity to check out a couple more of my favorite pink streets. Although Dibble Northwest on Crown Hill is a narrow, quiet and somewhat messy residential street (a broken-down basketball hoop has had a prominent spot on the block for years), every spring it turns into a pink fairyland. Not the grand fairyland of Sunset Hill (see tomorrow’s post), but more like the fairy who insists on wearing dirty jeans with her tiara. No matter – the trees are still lovely.

Like the cherries on Capitol Hill, these were not yet at their peak, but they were lazily working up to it. I think the party begins this weekend.

The Nutcracker House

 

12/23/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Each holiday season for more than a decade, a family has been displaying stage design props from Maurice Sendak’s Nutcracker ballet in front of their Sunset Hill neighborhood house. This Seattle Times article explains how the owners started acquiring the pieces, one of which is 15 feet tall, after the ballet production retired in 2014. A team of neighbors and friends helps out each year.

Although I’ve known about “the Nutcracker house” for a long time, it was the Times’ recent article and learning about how much work it takes to put up the display that gave me the nudge to finally go and sketch it.

Meeting Mary Jean there around 4 p.m., I had just enough daylight to sketch a few characters with the house behind it (top of post). The 1936 house looks like a fairytale year-round!

MJ and I talked about how some characters are kind of creepy, like this nutcracker with the maniacal grin. I wonder if some kids found this ballet scary?

By 4:30, it was dark, and that’s when the illuminated characters really came to life (see my Instagram post for a short video of the scene). Although it got more and more difficult to see, we both kept going until, as MJ said, she couldn’t tell which colors were which anymore. It pushed my nocturne sketching to a new level of darkness! It was also the most fun sketching I did this holiday season. 

Merry Christmas!

Scowling Mouse King (the one on the left)

15-foot-tall Nutcracker

Daffies and Cherries on Dibble

 

4/4/25 Crown Hill neighborhood

Although the cherry trees on Dibble Avenue Northwest are on my regular petal-peeping route, it’s not a destination that I would consider for an Urban Sketchers outing. A narrow street full of parked cars, trash cans, basketball hoops, utility poles and other street stuff that I enjoy sketching, it’s probably not the kind of view most sketchers like. I did, however, encourage everyone who attended the Sunset Hill outing to at least peep the petals, if not sketch them, since Dibble in Crown Hill is only a mile or so east of Sunset Hill.

Dibble Ave. NW

With the top down, I cruised slowly down the block, looking straight up at the blossoms arching over the street from both sides. Then I turned around and came back to sketch from a spot I had sketched a few years ago that has become one of my favorite cherry blossom sketches: The pink blossoms as a backdrop to the daffodil-fringed traffic circle.

With bittersweetness, I must concede that our all-too-brief petal-peeping and -sketching season is coming to a close. But if this is its finale, I’m good with that. As a resident of the Sunset Hill street and I had just concurred, if we could have cherry blossoms all year round, they would no longer be precious and special.

Technical note: After all the trees I’d been sketching, my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen ran dry when I started this sketch, so I had to bring in a gray Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen for an assist. I like the way the gray ink made the cars and utility pole fade out more than compared to drawing and shading with the same Pentel ink. I’m going to try to remember that in the future.

Trunk Appreciation Day at Sunset Hill

 

4/4/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Peg & Awl Petra palette in action

For Day 2 of USk Seattle’s pink marathon, we headed west to Sunset Hill and my favorite street of cherries. Since I had already sketched them earlier in the week, I used this second opportunity to try – ta-da! – gouache again. (I even brought along my Peg & Awl Petra palette, still full of the gouache and watercolors I had filled it with last spring.) I was disappointed when I tried it last year, but this time I limited the paint to the blossom areas only (with a bit of Caran d'Ache Neocolor II for texture), and stayed with my tried-and-true Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for the trunks and shadows. I like this approach better.

That one done, I declared it Trunk Appreciation Day and spent the rest of the outing making small vignettes of some of the most amazing trunks. Many trees on this block are nearly a century old, and I always feel the need to honor and revere their beauty, whether or not they are in blossom.

As I sketched, I chatted with a resident who told me a bit of the trees’ history: About a hundred years ago, one of the block’s residents went around to her neighbors and encouraged all of them to plant cherries in front of their homes. They did, and that’s why we have these trees to enjoy now, a century later. Thank you, forward-thinking home owners!

It’s a good thing we went when we did, as the leaves were starting to sprout, and I could tell that the blossoms were past their prime. Although I had started out in my down parka and gloves, by the time we left at noon, I was ready to take the top down for the drive home!

Sunny sketching!

Blossom-Sketching Marathon on Capitol Hill

 

4/3/25 Capitol Hill neighborhood

Time’s a wastin’! With so many pink blossoms and so little time, USk Seattle offered a marathon of cherry tree-sketching opportunities on Thursday. First, in the morning, we met on a quiet residential block near Holy Names Academy. Petal peepers and sketchers alike could walk slowly down the middle of the street, where trees arched over from both sides. Although not as mature, these trees are of the pink (not near-white) variety similar to my favorites on Sunset Hill (above and below).

Near Holy Names Academy

Immediately following the throwdown outside Holy Names, some of us continued on to nearby Volunteer Park, where more sketchers met for the afternoon session. A few of us opted to walk just outside the park boundary to Lake View Cemetery (below), where we had heard about a large grove of cherry trees. None of us had sketched these gorgeous, mature trees before! Actually, I think I did when I sketched there years ago, but it was fall then, so I didn’t know they were cherries. You can bet I put this location on my perennial petal-peeping list!

4/3/25 Lake View Cemetery

It was a long, beautiful day of pink!

Just before the throwdown, I made a quick sketch of one of the two
dromedaries outside the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

4/3/25 A few more bits from my fun day on Capitol Hill!

Sunset Hill Before it Rains

3/31/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Pink pompoms!

I had heard that my favorite cherry trees on Sunset Hill were nearing peak, but several days of rain were in the forecast. Right after I got home from a play date with Roy and Mary Jean, it was still dry, so I dashed out to the west side.

Indeed, the blossoms were at 99 percent, I’d say – just a few visible buds within the huge, pompom clusters of pink blossoms! In addition to those huge, old, gnarly trunks, what I love about this block of cherries is that the blossoms are truly pink, not white, as many cherry blossoms are, including the ones at the UW Quad. I adore walking slowly through this fairyland, admiring each tree one at a time, then choosing one to sketch.

This is the tree whose trunk I sketched in my March 22 post when it was still in tight buds.

No Blossoms Yet

 

3/18/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

My Facebook “memories” reminded me that one year ago, I was already sketching pink blossoms on both sides of town. Our cold winter and ongoing cold spring have kept the buds tightly closed a lot longer this year. I didn’t have high hopes, but the sun was out, so I took a drive over to Sunset Hill (with pink pencils in my bag, just in case).

As expected, the buds were still tight but showing their color. I’ll keep checking on them periodically, but I’m going to guess they still have at least a couple of weeks yet to go.

With or without blossoms, this cherry is my favorite on the block. I’ve sketched it several times, and I also made a graphite portrait from a photo in Kathleen Moore’s class four years ago.

Bits and Pieces of My Days

 

1/7/25 Caffe Fiore, Sunset Hill neighborhood

As mentioned in a previous post, one reason I think my sketch journaling process has finally “stuck” is that I am not trying to stay within a specific format or approach. Drawing from life, from photos, from memory – it’s all good. By far, my favorite approach is the multi-panel, on-location comics format (like the one above). It always feels loose and liberating while paradoxically having a small element of tension: I have chosen a location (a café table), but I never know if I’ll have enough scenes to fill several panels from that spot. Meanwhile, I might be documenting something I want to remember that day (often a record of my downsizing activities).

On another day recently (below), I had gotten together with a couple of sketcher friends, all of us intending to sketch, but our conversation became so interesting that I never got past my pastry. (I wasn’t disappointed, though – it was a great discussion!)

1/3/25 still lives; photo reference

That evening, I didn’t want a page spread with nothing but my Macrina morning roll on it, so I added a couple of unrelated sketches (though related to what I was doing or thinking about that day). I didn’t leave myself space to write much, but the sketches are enough to prompt the memories. I also enjoyed putting a bit of thought into making the page look cohesive and “finished” with the broken borders around some elements. I don’t always care about finishing a page, but sometimes it’s a fun challenge.

Below is another example of an assembled page spread that documents my day in bits and pieces instead of one location. Before the USk sketch outing at US Bank Centre, I had enough time to make a quick stop at Pike Place Market. After I finished my errand, it was still early enough in the morning that I had a clear view of Rachel the Pig, a Market mascot, near the famous salmon-throwing fishmongers. (By the time I was finishing the sketch, the mongers started tossing and shouting, and suddenly my view was obstructed with excited tourists. It was nice to enjoy a rare deserted moment for as long as it lasted.) The rest of the spread includes my dessert with sketcher friends after the outing and my Market shopping. This spread was more satisfying to make than the previous one because I could sketch all of the elements live and not from photos.

1/11/25 Pike Place Market; Kastoori Grill; still life

Most of these types of pages are “rewards” for downsizing and home-improvement tasks accomplished. Other times, the reward is simply sharing a meal and sketching with a friend – that’s always reward enough.

1/8/25 Samurai Ramen and Jolli Daze, Chinatown International District

12/27/25 Swansons Nursery Cafe

1/10/25 ProShred in Tukwila

The last sketch shown at right is not in the comics format, but it’s the culmination of the focus of my most recent arduous tasks: I finally hauled all the paper and hard drives to a shredding/data destruction company. Making this sketch of the facility was visually brushing the dust from my hands – DONE!

Maples on Northwest 80th

 

10/9/24 Maples, Ballard neighborhood

Driving home from Sunset Hill a few days ago, I passed several blocks lined with maple trees on Northwest 80^th that were almost past their peak already. I knew Mary Jean lived near them, so I made a proposal she couldn’t refuse: Croissants first at Rosellini’s, then sketch those glorious maples.

We had set a date for only a few days later, yet many of the leaves were already down. Although it means the trees are on the downside, I like seeing and sketching all that orange on the ground. These blocks will now be part of my annual leaf-peeping tour!

Paper note: I’m using the handmade sketchbook containing Hahnemühle paper. Making this sketch across a page spread made me see that the two sides of the paper are very different in texture: The left side (in my sketch) is much toothier than the right. The effect was amplified by inadvertently flooding the right side with too much water, which also took away some of the texture. When I looked back at the previous sketch I’d made across the gutter, I could see the different sides there, too – they didn’t show quite as much that time, though, so I hadn’t noticed. If I do decide to start hand-binding more sketchbooks with this paper, I will take care to reverse alternating pages in the signature so that facing pages in a spread will always have the same texture.

Sunset Hill Cherries in October

 

10/7/24 cherry trees, Sunset Hill neighborhood

You’ve seen my sketches of the Sunset Hill cherry trees many times. I visit every spring, and sometimes I bring along USk Seattle to sketch with me. After sketching the site of the Loyal Heights tree that had been taken down, I realized that Sunset Hill was only a short walk away. It also occurred to me that I had never seen those trees except when they were blossoming, even though I know that cherries turn in the fall. (Although it’s not quite as popular as springtime hanami, the Japanese do revere cherries even in autumn. I took part in their joy in Kyoto years ago.) On a gorgeous afternoon, it was high time to make a fall visit.

Unlike the blooming time, which seems to happen on the whole street at once, the foliage follow their own drumbeat. Most of the trees on the block were still mostly green, but I found one leading the way. While pink blossoms take all the glory, leaves have a quieter time to shine.

Pink on Capitol Hill

 

3/24/24 Capitol Hill neighborhood

Until I had learned about it from my yoga instructor last year, I didn’t know that this usually quiet street on Capitol Hill needed to be a permanent addition to my petal-peeping tour. I sketched there with a few friends then, but this year I felt greedy if I didn’t share it with USk Seattle. I even ordered up some sunshine that was delivered just in time for our outing on Sunday afternoon. The rain and wind the past few days had already sprinkled pink snow on the pavement, but we caught the blossoms just in time before they passed their peak.

To give gouache another try, I found a typical Capitol Hill bungalow framed by pink on this residential street (at left). Then I followed my ears to the other end of the block, where a teenage violinist was busking for all the petal peepers (below). From the looks of the cash in his violin case, he seemed to be doing a brisk business, and he certainly gave a pleasant soundtrack to our pink fairyland.

When I turned around, I spotted a sketcher dwarfed by an enormous cherry behind him (top of post). Frustrated (as usual) by the gouache and watercolor I had used previously, I resorted to my tried-and-true brush pen and watercolor pencils. (I’m not sure why I keep trying paints when I like the results of my “usuals” so much more.)

Although sketching the cherries at the UW Quad will always be a mainstay, I have to admit that I prefer neighborhood streets like this one and my favorite in the Sunset Hill neighborhood. There’s something special about walking slowly down the middle of a residential street (moving to the sidewalk when occasional cars come through, always slowly as their drivers and passengers take in the splendor) lined with these majestic trees on both sides. I imagine it must be especially magical for the residents who wait for their block to transform each spring.

Note: My sketch of these trees last year is dated April 13 – three full weeks later than this year. A recent article in the Seattle Times talks about how the dates of cherry blossom peaks are giving researchers data about climate change.

Magical!

Sunset Hill Cherries Redux (Abstraction Homework)

 

3/21/24 cherry trees, Sunset Hill neighborhood (Inktense Blocks)

3/21/24 Inktense Block and Inktense pencil

After sketching them last week, I had two reasons to go back to the Sunset Hill cherry trees: One was that they were not quite at peak then, and I wanted to see them when they were (and boy, were they ever!). The second was that I wasn’t too happy with my gouache sketch that time, and I wanted another try.

Freshly inspired by the previous day’s class on abstracting landscapes, I combined that idea with the minimalism practice from the previous week’s class. With wet media like gouache, I’m always tempted to paint roundish blobs to evoke the shape of blossom clusters, but it never looks good to me. Using only Derwent Inktense Blocks (black and magenta) and a pink Inktense pencil, I squinted my eyes at those fairyland trees to minimize details and drew only the main trunk lines and the haze of blossoms. I like these attempts much better.

Peak blossoms!

Fairyland comes alive!

My favorite tree on this block... more for its amazing roots than its blossoms.