Last Peep of the Season?

11/2/20 Crown Hill neighborhood

11/2/20 Maple Leaf alley

We’d been lucky: Several crisp days of sunshine had brought out the peak of color here. But three wet, windy, cold weather systems were headed our way. If all the leaves blew down, it could be my last chance for leaf peeping. I had work to do.

On my morning walk through the ‘hood, I looked down an alley and spotted a tree already past its prime – golden in the low sun but missing quite a few leaves (at right). I sketched the same tree fully leafed back in June when it was easier to see and draw its form.

Right after lunch, I headed out again – this time in my car for Crown Hill. I was disappointed that a long row of trees growing in the divider strip of an arterial weren’t showing much color yet (I just checked my blog, and I had last sketched them on Oct. 22, 2015, when their color was already brilliant). Instead, I found these lovely yellow trees (above; possibly aspens?) a few blocks away. Although I couldn’t stop for all of it, I saw plenty more color in the neighborhood.

A good day of peeping – I hope not my last of the season, but I’m happy to get any at all in November.

Halloween Taiko

 

10/31/20 Mark and Kristen perform from their front yard (live video)

To my delight, I had two opportunities to sketch taiko on Halloween. As they did on both Labor Day and Fourth of July, my niece Kristen and her husband Mark performed for their neighbors from their front yard. It was already evening on the east coast where they live, so I had the challenge of sketching from live video that was mostly dark except where the drummers were spotlit.

That was challenging enough, but my afternoon of sketching taiko wasn’t over. On the west coast, my other niece, Alix (yes, I have two nieces who are taiko performers, and they aren’t even sisters) and San Jose Taiko (whom I was thrilled to sketch live a few years ago) also gave a performance – virtually. Each performer was videotaped while playing their part at home, then the pieces were put together into what must have been quite a synchronizing and editing challenge. (Performing music in the age of COVID is not for the faint of heart.) The result was an entertaining montage of video images that kept moving around on the screen. Every time I started to sketch a player, the image would suddenly jump to another part of the screen or be replaced by a different player! Challenging to say the least, but all the performers were costumed, which made it fun.

Alix is dressed as a s’more (thankfully, her graham cracker costume was easy to draw). My favorite was the hotdog, whose sign insisted he was a sandwich.

10/31/20 A hotdog and Alix (recorded video)

10/31/20 junior San Jose Taiko members (recorded video)

Street of Color

10/31/20 Maple Leaf neighborhood

I walk up this street nearly every morning. Now that the sun rises so late, it’s still fairly low in the sky when I walk, and the week had been cloudy every morning. I had a feeling, though, that when lighted directly, the trees at the end of the block would be dazzling.

Halloween was one of those fall days (rare in these parts) that appear in calendar and Thanksgiving card images: Clear, crisp, sunny and altogether golden. Hoping that the light would be just right, I went out in the early afternoon. I started the sketch in the car, but after someone parked right in front of me and blocked most of my view, I stood in the middle of the street to finish (thankfully, I had already blocked in the main elements, so my perspective didn’t shift). Unlike the other morning, which was much quieter, I had to move out of the street a couple of times to let cars go by. But on a chilly but beautiful day like that, I certainly didn’t mind.

Bonus: As I sketched, a couple of blue sharks walked by. When you’re sketching on Halloween, anything can happen.

More Memory Life Drawing

10/30/20 Shawna (20-min. pose from observation)

My memory life-drawing practice continued last Friday on Zoom. As I did previously, I used the five-minute poses for the practice, but I changed my method a bit. This time, I used a brush pen, which is much faster than pencil. I still studied each pose for about two minutes before drawing, but after I covered the screen, I sketched first from memory, probably for about a minute or so. Then I uncovered the screen and sketched again for the time that remained, this time from observation as usual. In each pair shown below (using red brush pen), the drawing on the right was from memory, followed by one from observation on the left.

I thought this process would be informative in showing me the ways in which I have difficulty drawing from memory. Even though I made a conscious effort to study Shawna’s proportions while I viewed her, it’s clear in each case that my proportions were way off in the memory drawings but better in the observed drawings. I also found it amusing that in at least one case, if I couldn’t remember a detail, I made it up! So I guess that would be drawing from imagination! It was another grueling but extremely useful workout.

The remaining five-to-20 minutes poses were done from observation only (watercolor pencil). Shawna’s brightly colored outfit was fun and festive for the day before Halloween.

5-min. pose (right: from memory; left: from observation after the memory sketch)

I forgot the position of Shawna's legs, so I made it up!

5-min. poses from observation

10-min. poses from observation

10-min. poses from observation

Acer Ginnala

 

10/29/20 Amur maple (Acer ginnala) leaves

Despite its name, the Maple Leaf neighborhood doesn’t have as many maple trees as I would like at this time of year. (According to local folklore, our neighborhood got its name for being the farthest north in the city, hence, closest to Canada. But Northgate is farther north, so that doesn’t make sense. Sounds like urban legend to me.) I’ve been peeping as many as I can on my daily walks, and if I can get close enough to examine their leaves, I can see differences in varieties. Most are the kind with palmate leaves (shaped like hands), but I’ve spotted a few with a very different kind of leaf. I have so many plant-knowledgeable friends on social media that all it took was a post of images to get a quick ID: These leaves belong to the Acer ginnala variety, or Amur maple. The serrated leaf is more elongated than the classic icon on the Canadian flag.

I picked up a few last week to sketch on a rainy day, but they were already getting dried and curled by that afternoon, so I decided I’d better sketch them ASAP. With all that Inktobering last month, I had been jonesin’ for colored pencils!

I recently sprang for the newly released Caran d'Ache Luminance "portrait" colors! 

Autumn's eye candy

Mid-Street, Big Scene, Small Beta

 

10/29/20 Maple Leaf neighborhood

The sky was overcast; the air damp. Walking in the middle of the street where the view is better, I spotted downtown Seattle looming grayish-blue on the horizon. Halfway through this sketch, I got a phone call that I had been waiting for. The call took longer than I expected (at least five minutes), but I remained in the street, not wanting to lose my perspective. The conversation done, I finished the sketch – and not a single car had come by the whole time. This is one of many reasons I love living in Maple Leaf.

Big and little Betas: My favorite in any size.

Technical note: This sketch and the one of the urban couch a few days ago were both made in my pocket-size Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook. Less than half the size of my usual 5½-by-8½-inch Beta, it doesn’t give me nearly the real estate I’ve grown most comfortable with. A major upside, though, of a small page is that I can finish a color sketch with a composition of this complexity in about 15 minutes. The same sketch filling a larger-size Beta page might have taken 30 to 40 minutes (I probably would have had to step aside for a car or two if I’d used the larger book). I can’t do much detail, but maybe that’s just as well, especially in the fall and winter when it could start raining at any minute. The second major benefit is that it is an ideal daily-carry size on my fitness walks.

Nothing According to Plan

 

InkTober is over, and that usually means a feeling of both relief and accomplishment for finishing another annual challenge of using ink as my primary medium for 31 consecutive days (this was my sixth year of participation). This year was a bit anticlimactic, however, as my ongoing hand-drawing series continues. But since InkTober began in the spirit of fostering a daily art practice and challenging oneself to explore, I embraced the challenge as much as ever.

As has happened in the past, nothing went quite according to plan. Since pencils took over my life several years ago, I haven’t been using my beloved fountain pens much, so I thought October would be an opportunity to become reacquainted with them. I thought I’d give dip pens another try, too. A week in, however, I became seduced by brush pens (another beloved sketching tool) and, more surprisingly, sumi ink. Used in conjunction with a white Posca paint pen for highlights, Boku-Undo sumi inks blew my head open by making me think in an entirely different way. A Facebook follower even accused me of painting! Painting – who, me? Whatever it’s called, my brain got a good workout in a way that it never has before, so I’d say my month of ink was a success.

After devoting Week 3 to a new brush pen that I am, indeed, taken with, I ended the month with another solid week of Boku-Undo fun. I’ve heard an adage attributed to a traditional sumi painter (paraphrased here) that while learning basic sumi techniques doesn’t take long, mastering them takes a lifetime. I haven’t committed to mastering sumi, but I had enough fun this month that I’ll certainly be returning to it from time to time.

How did your inky October go?