Ever since I got back from the UK, I’ve been seeing trees
all over town that are starting to show hints of turning. They’re all still
mostly green, yet leaves near the top are definitely going yellow-orange. I
sketch this aspen a few blocks from my house every fall, and I know that in a few weeks it will be completely
gold. Today it’s still got a lot of green left, but I was surprised to see how
quickly it’s changing.
I daresay fall is coming.
Technical note: Normally I would start a sketch like this
with ink to give me some guidelines – the base of the traffic circle, the
caution sign, the tree trunk and the general shape of the tree. This morning, on
a whim, I decided to paint the tree first. Then I went in afterwards with
colored pencils to draw the trunk, lower plants and other details. I like the
effect of having fewer guidelines. What do you think?
It turns out that the saga wasn’t over. A day or two before
we left for the UK last month, workers returned yet again, this time to fully
extract the remains of the old pole from the ground. I saw how fast they worked
when they removed the pole standing in front of the house a few doors down, so
I knew I wouldn’t have much time. I was still sketching the crane operator when
the pole came out – yanked right up out of the ground like a rotten tooth! A
second worker filled the hole that the pole had left behind. By the time I got
to sketch “our” old pole, it was already lying in the truck’s bed right next to
the one they pulled from down the street.
That headline isn’t really metaphorical. We’re having a heatwave
this weekend in Northwest Washington that warrants an “excessive heat warning,” according to the National Weather
Service. But that didn’t stop well over a hundred sketchers from showing up for
the Fourth Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketch Crawl in Tacoma!
8/19/16 brush pen (Portrait Party)
Festivities began Friday night at the opening reception,
which included a portrait party (a few minutes to sketch someone you don’t
know, then move on to another person). The highlight of the evening was, of
course, the huge door prize giveaway of literally hundreds of dollars’ worth of
gifts from generous art supply stores and other vendors. Many thanks and kudos
to Frances Buckmaster and the Tacoma
team for procuring a gold mine of donations! I don’t know which city will be
hosting next year’s WC sketch crawl, but I’d say they have a pretty high bar to
meet!
The weekend’s main event was an all-day sketch crawl
Saturday and a half-day on Sunday around Tacoma’s highly sketchable museum
district. Although the event didn’t officially begin until 9 a.m. Saturday, I
was already on the sidewalk by 7:30 a.m. to get ahead of the heat. By mid-day,
I had captured two sketches in the still-comfortable shade – one of the majestically
domed Union Station building (which I sketched about a year ago from a different angle) and the second of the
University of Washington’s Tacoma campus stairway.
8/20/16 brush pen, watercolor (UW Tacoma campus)
I don’t know if anyone officially counted heads, but here’s the photo of the Saturday mid-day sketchbook sharing!
As a “cool down” from all the sketching of amazing
architecture and scenery I enjoyed in the UK, I’ve been taking casual sketch-abouts
in my own neighborhood since I returned. No matter how much I enjoy the
challenge of sketching exotic sites, I have just as much fun sketching the
mundane on my own block.
8/16/16 brush pen, ink, colored pencils
Like all the diggers that seem to be appearing suddenly! One
day I was walking on Northeast 80th, and I spotted two of them in
one yard, sitting near the piles of dirt they were apparently digging. A
couple days later on Northeast 84th I spotted another one
doing the same thing. In both cases, they were idle, waiting for the next thing
to do. As a prior “victim” of lengthy home-improvement projects, I sympathized
with the owners, who are probably eager to get on with their projects.
Although it’s been a week since I’ve returned from the UK
and had time to think about my experiences there, I still haven’t fully
processed what I’ve learned. I’m not sure I can articulate all my thoughts and
feelings, but I’ll just begin and see where this post lands me.
Some things I learned were about my own process, tools and
materials. While taking workshops at previous symposiums taught me specific
techniques and approaches that I could then apply to my sketching practice when
I returned home, my experience in Manchester was entirely different, of course.
As a correspondent, whatever I learned had to come from myself on the fly.
Because speed was so important, I had to abandon all temptation of detail, and
the best way I knew to do that was to rely
on brush pens. I brought several, and the two I used most were my favorite Kuretake (No. 13) hairy brush pen
filled with Platinum Carbon Black ink and a waterproof Deleter Neopiko Line 3 non-hairy brush pen. Both served me well in
different ways – the non-hairy Deleter providing a harder, marker-like line,
and the hairy Kuretake providing a more freeform, organic line. With these
types of brush pens in hand, I can’t really hesitate or waffle, and I finish
quickly, whether I’m ready to or not.
. . . added to my agility and confidence in using the same brush pen to make this sketch in Bath.
Other learnings were more about the symposium experience
itself. As was the case at previous symposiums, I learned that many attendees did
not have a local Urban Sketchers group at home. In many cases, participating in
the international symposium was their first
experience sketching with other people. Once again, I felt grateful for my own Urban Sketchers Seattle group and how
easy it is for me to sketch with like-minded friends whenever I want to; we
have outings nearly every week. If I drive a bit further south and include
opportunities with USk Tacoma, I can
sketch with a group more than weekly! Some attendees I talked to were amazed to hear
that, and I don’t take my USk friends and our outings for granted.
I am immensely grateful to Urban Sketchers for having given
me the opportunity to be a correspondent this year. While in Barcelona and
Paraty I had the benefit of my specific workshop exercises and the instructors’
particular approaches, this year I had a much greater appreciation for the
larger symposium experience. Every time I visited a workshop or other activity
to report on it, I saw so much energy and commitment – from the instructors as
well as the students. That level of passion is inspiring and invigorating to
witness. I felt a greater commitment to my own task because I wanted to share
what I saw.
The whole Urban Sketchers "tribe," 500+ strong, in Manchester!
Can you find me?
It was incredibly rewarding to “be among my tribe,” so to
speak, in Manchester. There’s something very special about walking down a
street and seeing sketchers literally everywhere you turn. In an international
setting, even when language might be a barrier in other circumstances, carrying
a sketchbook makes language mostly unnecessary. You just open your book and
share. Time and time again, I was moved by this experience.
Meeting sketchers whose work I have long admired online is
always special. So is becoming reacquainted with people I met at previous
symposiums. I can’t say this with enough emphasis: While workshops and
activities may be the attraction of symposiums, the real value is the
face-to-face experience with people.
In Paraty I participated in the annual silent auction at the
closing reception by placing a winning bid for Joao Catarino’s gorgeous watercolor sketch (you can see it in this post). I decided early on that I would give
back a little to Urban Sketchers this time by donating a sketch to the auction in
Manchester myself.
I was concerned that none of my necessarily hastily made
sketches would be worthy of the auction, and ultimately none of my results were
the kind of sketches anyone (not even I!) would frame and hang on a wall. But
as I flipped through my sketchbook looking for potential donation candidates, I
was surprised by how difficult it was to consider giving them away. Even
sketches that were not in any way beautiful still meant something to me – and I
knew they meant much more to me than they ever would to someone else.
My winning bid bought this fantastic sketch by Suhita
Shirodkar!
Ultimately I decided to donate a sketch I made of President
Elizabeth Alley addressing the crowd during the opening reception. But I admit
I influenced its purchase before making the commitment! I showed Elizabeth the
sketch, still in my sketchbook, and said, “If I donate this to the auction,
will you bid on it?” She said of course she would, so I finally tore it out!
What I’m leading up to is that at the silent auction, after
some rather competitive bidding, I made the successful bid for a sketch by Suhita Shirodkar. Because of my own
experience donating a sketch, I appreciate even more that I was able to take
home Suhita’s lively, beautiful work and that she was willing to part with it.
Even if I make a sketch with the full intention of selling or giving it away,
it’s not easy, because it’s so full of my energy and spirit of the moment.
Finally, this isn’t a learning, but I forgot to include it in my first post about the symposium. It’s
a link to Parka’s video in which he
interviews me about being a correspondent. (I love having my 90 seconds of
fame! ☺) In fact, if you want a glimpse of the symposium experience, Parka’s daily video coverage is a great way to get it!
I know this is the post you’ve been waiting for – the one in
which I review which things I used most in my sketch kit and which I could have
left at home and never missed. (My complete bag dump shows everything I brought.) It’s actually a favorite and
important post for me, too, because it helps me evaluate what I bring on future
trips (and what I keep in my bag day to day). Here are the results:
Of no surprise at all was the fact that the things I used
daily were the ones I also use most regularly when I’m not traveling: my Sailor fude fountain pens; a Kuretake brush pen;
a waterbrush filled with gray ink; and about eight basic colored pencils.
As usual, I brought a few ink refill cartridges just in case
I ran out of ink – but I didn’t (one fountain pen and the brush pen came close
to running dry, though). However, they take up little space in my bag and weigh
nothing, so I suppose there’s no harm in packing them for peace of mind.
The bag dump photo shows four fountain pens; I actually took
one out at the last minute, but even that third one never got used (at least
for sketching; I did use it for journal writing, however, so it still earned
its keep). Two are all I ever need – one with waterproof ink; one with
water-soluble ink.
Although I didn’t use Zig markers often, when I did, they
were super-handy for making bright spots of color very quickly. They earned
their keep in my bag several times.
Watercolors: Not used much,
but still essential.
The thing I hardly ever used surprised me somewhat: my
watercolor box. While sketching at the symposium, I learned immediately that I
had to keep things as simple as possible. Most of my sketches were done while standing
on drizzly and sometimes very windy sidewalks under tight time constraints.
Although I know many sketchers use watercolors under these conditions (check
out Kumi Matsukawa’ssymposium posts in which she uses
watercolors beautifully with the same constraints), I just find it easier and
simpler to grab pencils or markers for spots of color. Even when I had more
time after the symposium, I still tended to use the same simple materials. I
guess that’s not really a surprise – I’ve been leaning away from watercolors
for a while now. But. . .
Despite the little I used watercolors, I still can’t leave
them out entirely. A few times in Walesand Bath, I had the time and stable
conditions to make more leisurely sketches that deserved watercolors, and I was
very happy I had them. Again, my Trader Joe’s mint tin of paints takes up very little space; I may as well have it.
One of many brews captured in my Field Notes. The blue
paper is pale enough that I could even use colored pencils on it.
A few other daily users were the pens I like to use
specifically in colored Field Notes notebooks (more on that shortly) – a non-hairy
brush pen and a white gel pen. Since I brought a light blue notebook instead of
my usual red, I was even able to use colored pencils occasionally (when I
wanted to enhance the brew effect ☺).
Several colored pencils that I had chosen specifically for
the trip (based on Google images of the places I would visit) turned out to be
less than useful. The particularly warm tan of all the buildings in Bath eluded
me – I didn’t have that pencil with me at all! But my shortage forced me to mix
a close color with what I had, so it wasn’t really a problem. Ultimately I
brought too many colored pencils – or not the right ones.
My sketch of Elizabeth Alley that
I donated to the USk auction.
I relied on the waterbrush filled with sky-blue Iroshizuku Tsuyu-kusa ink frequently
when I wanted a streak to simply represent the (rarely) clear sky. The one with
Chiku-rin, which I use for splashes
of foliage, will probably be taken out of my bag permanently. More and more, a lower-maintenance
colored pencil does the same job.
The Stillman & Birn spiral-bound hardcover Beta sketchbook in the 10-by-7 size that I had gotten
specifically for the symposium worked perfectly as intended. The hardcover back
gave me a stable base for sketching while standing, and the size was ideal,
too. I sketched on only one side of each page until I filled the book, then I
started working on the back sides of a few. My intention was to donate at least
one sketch to the auction, which I did, and the spiral binding made it easy to remove.
The book was an excellent solution for that specific need.
As for the rest of my sketches? I was as happy as I always
am with my hand-stitched signatures, and I look forward to binding them into a
cohesive single volume from the trip. I filled only five of the seven
signatures I’d prepared, however (I forgot to account for all the sketches that
would go into the S&B during the symposium).
Left: Rhodia Rhodiarama notebook nearly full of journaling, photos, ephemera.
Right: Field Notes showing a little wear-and-tear from daily use but also
full of UK memories.
But the past several months I’ve been having so much fun filling red Field
Notes notebooks with exactly the kind of sketches I’m likely to put into the
Rhodia that at the last minute I decided to take a blue one along to the UK (I
still prefer red for the way it makes highlights pop, but it was fun having a
different color while traveling). I feared the two notebooks would be
redundant, and I’d waste time waffling over which notebook to sketch in. As it
turned out, I hardly sketched in the Rhodia at all because I’ve grown so fond
of the brush-pen-and-white-gel-pen combo that goes so well with colored paper.
I completely filled the Field Notes with random chimney pots in Wales, heads in
trains and planes, and all the brews I sampled throughout the UK.
As for the Rhodia journal, it wasn’t wasted or redundant, either. Although I
didn’t sketch in it, each evening as I relaxed in our hotel room, I’d pick out
just two or three of my favorite photos of the day and print them with my Polaroid Zip printer. The self-adhesive
ZINK paper made it easy to put them into the journal, and the sheets are
exactly the right size. Filled with those photos as well as ticket stubs and
other ephemera to accompany my notes and thoughts, the 192-page book came home
with only a dozen or so empty pages. Although I would have preferred to keep doodly
sketches in the same book as the writing, I’m happy that each book filled
different needs without redundancy or waste.
I’ve decided to make a colored Field Notes a regular part of my travel bag –
just as it is now a regular part of my day-to-day bag.
Images from my camera go directly into my journal with
the Zip printer.
I know I’ve said this before, but each time I come back from
traveling, I learn the same lesson:
The things I take with me when I travel should be the same things I use every
day here at home. The bag I carry to Wales can contain exactly the same things
it contains when I walk to Maple Leaf Park. Whenever I think I need something “special” or additional, I end up
bringing it home unused. (Future self, please take note and remember this!) Overall, however, I’m pleased that my kit served me well with no serious regrets.
Finally, here’s a photo of the swag bag I received at the
Manchester symposium! I appreciate the months of work the symposium team went
through to acquire all the goodies from sponsors. (The photo also includes some
cards I exchanged with other participants.) I’ve already enjoyed trying some of
the Cretacolor pencils, especially a water-soluble graphite that I used on my first sketches back home in Seattle last week. The Leuchtturm 1917 sketchbook also looks interesting. (They come in a
variety of colors, and I managed to snag a bright pink one!) As a keepsake,
though, nothing makes me happier than the symposium-logo tote bag that all the
swag came in. I’ve used and abused my Barcelona and Paraty symposium totes for
years, and I look forward to doing the same to my Manchester bag.
8/9/16 River Avon from the Bridge Coffee Shop on the Pulteney Bridge
8/10/16 River Avon and Pulteney Bridge
Certainly the Manchester symposium and the substantial demands of being a correspondent gave
me the greatest opportunity to grow as an urban sketcher. And the castles of Wales were impossible to
beat in terms of sheer visual spectacle – and therefore challenging sketching!
But if I had to choose, I’d say that the most sketching fun I had during our
whole trip to the UK was in Bath.
With none of the rain frustrations of Manchester and Wales,
and without London’s oppressive noise and crowds, Bath was a wonderland of sketchable ancient structures and beautiful architecture. Although it turned out that I
hadn’t brought the right tones of warm tan colored pencils for the amazingly
consistent buildings (the photos I studied online made them look cooler and
darker), I was challenged to come up with the right mix myself. A bonus was
being able to fill a waterbrush with ancient Roman spring water (after taking a
sample sip, of course – yuck!) and then sketch with it afterwards! I love
imbedding the “DNA” of a place in a sketch that way.
It was a pleasure to meet Ian Hedley and his family!
Two highlights of our visit to Bath were meeting up with other
sketchers. The first was Ian Hedley, whose blog, Pens! Paper! Pencils!, has been one of my favorites for a long
time. (I was thrilled when he invited me to write a guest post about urban sketching a few months ago.) When he heard
we were going to be in Bath, he and his family, who live in a nearby town, came
over on the train to meet us. It’s always a joy to finally meet people in
person after conversing with them online.
The next day we met up with Ed Harker, another sketcher I’ve
gotten to know through his blog the past few years. Keeping up with Mostly Drawing, I learned that Ed has
been sketching about as long as I have, and what’s more, he has made it his
practice to sketch every day. I admire his commitment to drawing, and I
appreciate his sense of humor. It was a pleasure to finally meet him at the
symposium, where he gave a lively presentation and a demo.
Long-time Bath resident Ed Harker shows us the best (and backside) of Bath!
A long-time resident of Bath, he showed us around his
charming town in a way that only a local could. I specifically asked him to
show us the Bath that we wouldn’t see from one of the tour buses lumbering
through the narrow streets, and he certainly came through – by taking us to the
Carter’s Steam Fair! A delightful collection
of vintage steam-operated rides and old-time attractions, Carter’s comes to
town only for a week or so each year, and we happened to be there at just the
right time. Greg and I loved it so much that we went back again the next day
(and rode the “gallopers”)! Ed took us around to see the quirky backsides of old
buildings (as well as the beautiful fronts). We also thoroughly enjoyed having local
bitters with Ed at his favorite pub and strolling through the streets I’ve seen
him sketch.
Bath must be a pleasant place to live because that’s where
we encountered some of the friendliest and most helpful people. If we stood on
a street corner, map in hand, looking perplexed, within moments someone would
come to our aid and offer directions or answer our questions.
Every way I turned in Bath was a visual delight – stunning architecture,
narrow, curved streets, strange faces carved into stone walls – that was
challenging to sketch but not daunting. Our days in Bath were the only time on
this trip that I felt I could sketch in the way that I enjoy most: Meandering
through a place without an itinerary and being able to stop and sketch whatever
I discover.
8/11/16 Bath Abbey
Now that Greg and I have done some traveling, I’ve come to learn
that I’m happiest when we can build in time – especially toward the end of a
trip – for that kind of agenda-free meandering. When travel planning, we always
start out with a (probably common) compulsion to consult with the Rick Steves checklist, talk to friends
who have visited the same places and try to see and do as much as possible. But
when I read through my journals afterwards and thumb through my sketchbooks, I
know that we’re both happiest when we ignore the checklist and simply explore.
We couldn’t have picked a better location for that kind of exploration than
Bath. Filled with charm around every corner, very walkable Bath made me feel safe and
comfortable on my own (Greg likes to go off by himself with his camera just as
I like to go off for a sketch).
After traveling 19 days and looking forward to sleeping in our own bed,
we said fond farewells to both Bath and all of the UK, certain that we would
return someday. The United Kingdom is full of sketchable pleasures, and I’ve
only barely skimmed the surface.
