Northwest Seaport’s 60th Anniversary (Plus Bi-Bim-Bap)

 

6/15/24 Lake Union Park historic ships

Although the weather gods teased us with dire forecasts of rain, hail, lightning and thunder, they took mercy on USk Seattle last Saturday – windy but dry to the end! A good turnout of brave sketchers showed up for the 60^th anniversary celebration of Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center, which preserves and restores historic work ships on Lake Union.

To capture a survey of ships, I made small sketches of the historic tug Comanche, the Fremont Tugboat’s Dixie, and the lightship Swiftsure. Painted red, the 120-year-old Swiftsure is always popular among sketchers. In fact, I’ve sketched it myself several times, but this time I wanted a tall, narrow view to fit the space on my page spread, so I focused on the mast. (My current comics-like approach helped me see a composition I might not have chosen otherwise.)

6/15/24 Stone Korean Restaurant

After the outing, I joined a few sketchers for lunch at nearby Stone Korean Restaurant. Although I’ve had traditional bi-bim-bap, in general, I don’t eat Korean food often, so many dishes were new to me, like the delicious veggie pancake that the table shared. For my entrée, I chose a hot pot-style bi-bim-bap with crispy, toasted rice on the bottom – very different from regular bi-bim-bap and so delicious! Served in a dangerously hot cast iron pot, the food stayed hot for the duration of my sketch – an ideal sketch-meal!

I was so ignorant of Korean foods that another sketcher accused me of not being Asian, but now that she has educated me, I’m looking forward to enjoying more Korean meals.

Maple Leaf’s Street Trees

6/13/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

When I learned about the very special bigleaf maple in the Ravenna neighborhood from Taha Ebrahimi, I also learned that she had recently published a book devoted to many special trees in Seattle – specifically urban trees growing on public rights of way. Street Trees of Seattle is organized by neighborhood, and each tree is described and shown on hand-drawn maps. In addition, the author’s drawings of many of the featured trees, their leaves and other features are also included in the 288-page book. What a gem of a tree guide for someone like me who knows very little about trees but loves drawing them!

I bought a copy right away and was delighted to find that all eight of the trees documented in the Maple Leaf section are right on my various walking routes! In just two days, I sketched seven (I skipped one that was mostly behind a fence). My summer project will be to choose at least a few to make larger, more detailed portraits.

Although Green Lake is technically not my neighborhood, it’s within walking distance, so I plan to sketch as many as possible of the 10 trees documented in that neighborhood, too.

6/14/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Street Trees of Seattle, by Taha Ebrahimi

Summer is On at Pike Place Market

 

6/12/24 Pike Place Market

Although the Juneuary morning had called for multiple layers, you would certainly have believed it was full-on summer at the Pike Place Market. The fish were noisily flying among the fishmongers, the sun umbrellas were up, and the line outside the “original” Starbucks was a block long. By noon, the welcome sunshine appeared, layers were unlayered, and Roy and I met for sandwiches at Three Girls Bakery (the oldest continuously operating business at the Market and the first business licensed to women in Seattle). I was too hungry to sketch my lox and bagels, but I managed to catch the remains.

Adequately nourished, we sketched the Market “as if there’s no tomorrow,” according to Roy, and because “summer is short,” according to me.

Technical note: In a couple of these sketches, the white I used is a Tempera Paint Stick made by Shuttle Art. I learned about it from a sketcher friend a few weeks ago, and it’s an intriguing opaque medium. Made for kids, it applies like a wax pastel, but instead of being sticky and smudgy, it dries instantly and doesn’t smear or transfer at all! The blunt tip is a bit too chunky for these tiny sketches, but I’m going to try tapering it.

LINK light rail commuters

North Fremont

 

6/9/24 North Fremont

When most people think of Fremont, the troll, Lenin, and the monument to JP and Gertrude probably come to mind. That’s what I think of, anyway, and that southern end of Fremont is the only part I’ve spent any time sketching. On Fremont’s northern edge, though, where the neighborhood butts up against Phinney Ridge, it’s a little less “Center of the Universe-y” and more working class or maybe just more neighborhood-y.

To celebrate a friend’s birthday, we decided to meet at Uneeda Burger, which is housed in a building that must have been a garage at some point. The sunny deck in front was an ideal spot to devour messy, drippy burgers (both animal- and plant-based and taller than they were wide) on a lovely Sunday.

Arriving a little early to make time to sketch (and finished after lunch and a fun visit to the Fremont Sunday Market), I captured a few other buildings visible from the intersection of North 44^th and Fremont Avenue North. The oldest was probably the Fremont Abbey Arts Center, a 1914 brick building that was originally St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

Process notes: Like my old apartment building, none of these buildings struck me as particularly sketchworthy. The lighting wasn’t great on any of them, and let’s face it, I’m generally not a fan of sketching buildings just for the sake of sketching buildings (unless I’m in Amsterdam, Coimbra or Kyoto, of course). I’ve noticed, though, an interesting change in my attitude about architecture since I began making on-location comics. Because each sketch tends to be no more than thumbnail size to fit several on a comic-style spread, it’s much easier and faster to draw any building, even if it doesn’t interest me much. I look at each as simply a part of the larger story – in this case, an intersection in north Fremont – and it has become much more enjoyable to sketch these sometimes ho-hum structures. I don’t worry about getting angles or perspective right; I just choose a building’s corner and simplify it enough to fit into 2 or 3 inches. And I end up liking these small sketches much more than building portraits that I might fuss over for much longer. That’s a huge, unexpected benefit of embracing comics!

Above Targy’s Tavern

 

6/7/24 Upper Queen Anne neighborhood

Besides a change in view, I had a second reason for choosing the Queen Anne Top Pot to observe National Doughnut Day: It’s located only a half-mile from my very first apartment as an independent adult. Since living there 40 years ago, I’ve driven by a few times when I was in the neighborhood, but it recently occurred to me that I had never sketched the building.

When I arrived, the entire front of the building was in shade, and I was surprised by how tall the street maples had grown (I guess that happens in 40 years!). My apartment near the center of the upper floor had one window that looked out on the street, and back then I could actually see the street. Now all the apartment windows are completely obscured by those maples, at least in summer (though the trees probably also keep the rooms cooler).

Not a single thing about the scene appealed to me in terms of a sketch subject: It was too dark, too blah, and frankly, the part I was interested in – the window to my apartment – wasn’t even visible. Only nostalgia and a desire to document it made me put pencils to paper.

Incidentally, the corner of the main floor is still occupied by Targy’s Tavern, "Queen Anne's Favorite Watering Hole," which was founded in 1937. The building itself was built in 1902. (I didn’t know either of those facts when I lived there; I just Googled.) Whenever I used to tell people I lived above Targy’s Tavern, they expressed sympathy about the assumed noise. Actually, I never had much of a problem with that source of noise; the buses going by on 6^th Avenue West were a lot worse, day in and day out. And can you believe I never had a drink at Targy’s?

Queen Anne Top Pot

 

6/7/24 Top Pot Doughnuts, Queen Anne neighborhood

I typically observe National Doughnut Day at the Top Pot Doughnuts in Wedgwood, mainly because the twin palm trees and giant donut on the building are fun to draw. This year, for a different view, I went to the Top Pot in upper Queen Anne. Although there are no palm trees, big communication and microwave towers are all over the place. (The weird thing that I sketched that I couldn’t identify turned out to be part of an obsolete AT&T microwave system.)

It was such a lovely day last Friday that lots of families were enjoying the outdoor tables at Top Pot and Molly Moon’s Ice Cream next door. I had just as much fun observing and eavesdropping as I did sketching.

U Village Rewards

6/5/24 University Village

 

If you want to train a dog for good behavior, you have to reward it accordingly.

I had enough boxes and bags of household discards to fill up the Subaru hatchback, so I made a trip to Goodwill. My reward was a stop at U Village, where Molly Moon’s Ice Cream called to me. Although the ice cream hit the spot (and it had been ages since I’d had ice cream), the real reward was sitting under an umbrella on that warm and sunny afternoon, basking in the promise of summer.