Cookie’s Face Painting

8/9/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Zig markers, Stillman & Birn sketchbook

Although I sometimes visit playgrounds to practice sketching children, those perpetual motion machines are usually the most difficult of all sketching models (even more difficult than meerkats!). That’s why I was delighted to see a face painter at work at Phinney Farmer’s Market yesterday. Cookie the Face Painter has a way with kids: She gets them to sit still – at least for the few minutes it takes her to create a fanciful design on their faces. She’s so fast, in fact, that she had finished three clients in the time that it took me to make this sketch. One girl was my face model, another was the body model, and the third allowed me to sketch Cookie.

Last summer I sketched a different face painter, Alethea.

Olympic Sculpture Park



8/9/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

“Wispy clouds, soft breeze, sunshine, 68 degrees. . . home, sweet home.”

That’s the note I scribbled at the bottom of my sketch of Alexander Calder’s “The Eagle,” arguably the most prominent piece in the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. Having traveled last month to climates hotter and more humid than I am accustomed to, melting in the blistering sun every time I sketched, I am savoring the (all-too-brief) sweetness of Seattle summertime sketching at its best: Comfortable in a T-shirt but not sweating. The sculpture park was a choice location for an ad hoc Seattle Urban Sketchers gathering.



8/9/13 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey inks, watercolor

After sketching the Calder, feeling particularly patriotic to my birth city today, I moved to the other side of the bold red sculpture and faced it squarely between the legs to sketch the Space Needle.

In the remaining time before the sketchbook sharing, I did a quick sketch from a distance of the ampersand of Roy McMakin’s “Love & Loss.”

It was fun meeting and sketching with Paul and Ann Lusch, visiting from Michigan, who looked up today’s sketch location on the Seattle USK blog. Whether I’m in Barcelona or at home, I feel part of the worldwide urban sketching network every day!

8/9/13 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey inks, Zig marker

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

Coupeville



8/7/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

The weather forecast promised sunshine in Seattle yesterday, but on north Whidbey Island, a marine layer – which normally burns off by late morning – stubbornly hung on far into the afternoon, making for chilly sketching (and unreliable shadows). Nilda and I were happy we both brought our jackets along even as we grumbled that to wear polar fleece in August is wrong.

I missed out on the recent Seattle Urban Sketchers gathering at the Mukilteo lighthouse, so it was especially fun to sketch the Admiralty Head Lighthouse at Fort Casey.

8/7/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor

After stopping for lunch at Ciao Bistro on Ebey’s Landing (the sun finally came out, so we could dine al fresco, which I got so spoiled by in Barcelona and Germany!), we spotted a stately ship moored at the pier. It turned out to be the Hawaiian Chieftain. Although it was built in 1988, it has the look of old romance. Like cars and trees, ships are on my list of challenging things to sketch, but who could resist this beauty? Not us.

From Hiroshima to Hope

8/6/13 Diamine Eclipse and Chocolate Brown inks, Zig marker, Stillman & Birn

In August 2001, I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I would imagine that it’s a difficult museum to experience no matter what nationality you are; as a Japanese American, I found it to be emotionally wrenching. I didn’t lose any relatives in the bombings, but I know survivors who – although they have shown no signs of radiation disease – still live in a vague shadow of fear every time they get a medical exam.

After the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most believed that it was a necessary end to World War II, which had certainly taken many, many lives. Seeing photos of the horrifyingly burned children and adults and those who died slowly in the weeks and months that followed, there is no slightest doubt that Japan paid heavily for Pearl Harbor. Twelve years later as I write this, my eyes still fill when I recall those images.


8/6/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Zig marker

These were some of my thoughts last night at Green Lake as I listened to blessings sung by Gurudwara Singh Sabha community members, koto and taiko performances, and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” played by the Andean musical group Quichua Mashis (whom I sketched in April). Their performances were part of From Hiroshima to Hope, a program on Aug. 6 each year on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing to honor the Japanese victims as well as all victims of violence worldwide.

The program culminates with a Buddhist ritual and toro nagashi lantern floating ceremony on the lake. In Japan and other countries, the same type of ceremony is performed. The lanterns, hand-inscribed with prayers and the Japanese kanji character for peace, symbolize the souls of the dead released to the sea to find rest.
 

8/6/13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Zig markers

 

During the stage performances and speaker presentations, I had plenty of light to sketch under the cloudless sky. But at dusk I could barely see my sketchbook or much of anything other than the softly flickering light of hundreds and hundreds of lanterns floating on Green Lake.





8/6/13 Chocolate Brown ink, Zig marker

 

8/6/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink

It Can’t Be!

8/5/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

Walking around Green Lake this morning, I saw – no, it can’t be! – tiny touches of color at the very tops of the maple trees I have been sketching each season. It was only two months ago that I was finally able to sketch them in full leaf. . . how could they be getting ready for fall already?

Today is the first day of the season that comes between summer and fall: Denial.

(To see all of my sketches marking the seasonal changes in this stand of maples, scroll down to the labels at right and choose “seasonal maples.” I enjoy sketching these trees so much that I decided the series deserves its own label.)

Roadster

8/3/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

We were waiting in line to board the ferry in Mukilteo behind this candy-apple red MG roadster. The driver must have forgotten about his scalp when he applied sunscreen on this top-down day.