Travel Bits and Pieces

 

5/29/22 Maytown rest area in Washington, where we stopped for a 
picnic lunch.

Although we didn’t travel far, and the locations were not new to us, this was only our second trip since the Before Times (our first was last September to Ocean Shores), so it felt special. It was a relaxing, rejuvenating week. The beach was familiar, but we had new experiences on either end of Cannon Beach: Staying in two McMenamins hotels in historic buildings, one in Portland and one in Centralia, Wash. Nicely appointed with original antiques and reproductions, they are fun buildings to visit, but the interiors are dark and sometimes difficult to sketch. I did sketch a lamp in each, however, since fanciful, ornate lighting seems to be a McMenamins thing.

This last post is a catch-all of bits and pieces that didn’t fit into the previous posts. I don’t have many stories here, but I put a few comments in the cutlines (including my hotel recommendations). I also included a few photos from the two McMenamins hotels (which I had to brighten digitally quite a bit to compensate for the dim lighting everywhere).

5/30/22 lamp in our room at McMenamins
Kennedy School, Portland

5/30/22 Cannon Beach sunset

5/31 and 6/1/22 Cannon Beach sunsets

A variety of Cannon Beach bits sketched during the week

6/3/22 lamp in our room at McMenamins Olympic Club
Hotel, Centralia

6/4/22 view from our room at the Olympic Club

A haiku painted on the wall was part of the lovely decor in our Kennedy School Hotel room. We loved this hotel and highly recommend it!

Hallway art at Kennedy School

An original blackboard in our Kennedy School room
invites guests to write and doodle. How could I resist?

The chifferobe in our Kennedy School room.

Other McMenamins hotels offer basic Bic pens as room giveaways. The Kennedy School has a more appropriate souvenir that I was thrilled to take home!

Some of the many lamps decorating the Kennedy
School's Courtyard Restaurant.

Guest rooms in McMenamins Olympic Club Hotel
do not have bathrooms. Instead, guests use "shared
private" baths and WCs down the hall. Imagining
a bank of stalls like a public restroom, I was skeptical
of the "shared private" oxymoron, but they 
were actually fine. Each bathroom was, indeed, private,
 and cleaned and attended to very regularly.

Hallway on the Olympic Club guest floor.

Lamp in our Olympic Club room.

Our room was dedicated to Joe Robinson, a local entrepreneur who "gave material expression to his faith in the future of Centralia" by building the Olympic Club Hotel in 1913. Although the shared baths and toilets were down the hall, each room had its own sink. The Olympic Club Hotel is fun to visit, but I do NOT recommend staying here. The Amtrak and freight trains visible from the hotel run all night long, whistling loudly as they approach the nearby station. Kitchen, bar and billiard room noises from downstairs went late into the night, too. I heard it all through the earplugs that were conveniently but uselessly provided.

Beach People

 

5/31/22

In addition to Haystack Rock, my favorite sketching subject at Cannon Beach is, of course, people. Even though things are more “open” now, and I’m around more people than I was during the pre-vaccine period, I still haven’t been sketching people as much as I used to – and I still miss it. I may have sketched more people during this beach visit than I have during any other.

5/31/22

Although I sketched a few people while I was on the beach myself, I had more fun making tiny stick figures (as well as a few dogs and gulls) from our third-floor hotel window. From high above, I couldn’t see details well, so it was easy to stick to the basic gestures. The high perspective also made it easier to catch a variety of activities in rapid succession.

5/31/22

5/31/22

6/1/22

6/1/22

6/1/22

6/2/22

6/2/22

6/3/22

The last sketch below was not made at the beach but at the Centralia Farmers Market. Sketching musicians and other performers at farmers markets used to be a regular summertime activity in the Before Times. This one made me feel the most rusty and again reminded me of how much I have missed sketching people.

6/3/22 Performer at Centralia Farmers Market

Beach Reportage

 

6/1/22 City of Cannon Beach's Haystack Rock Awareness Program staff offering info and a peek through a scope at common murres.

Given that most of my sketching takes place in uneventful locations like my neighborhood, I don’t have many opportunities for sketch reportage (though when I search my blog for the “reportage” label, I’m surprised that I have as many as 48 posts). I certainly don’t expect such opportunities at the beach! Interestingly, I had two such occasions on this trip.

Every day during low tide, red-vested City of Cannon Beach staff arrive at Haystack Rock in their red truck to provide information about the wildlife living on the rock, post “do not climb” signs, and rope off sensitive areas. After making the sketch above, I went to ask the naturalist about the puffins, whose return each year is highly anticipated by local birders. She told me that the puffin population has been dropping significantly in recent years as rising temperatures have negatively affected nesting. We didn’t see any puffins on this trip, but we saw lots of common murres. The naturalist had set up a spotting scope for visitors to view a murre nest. They look almost like small penguins! 

The next day during our afternoon beach walk, my reportage experience was more urgent. With sirens blaring and lights flashing, a variety of emergency vehicles (a total of eight eventually) raced past us (below). Two were equipped with jet-ski-like vehicles, and others carried surf boards. A man walking in the surf was pointing and gesturing toward the Needles: A surfer, trapped near the Needles, was in danger of being thrown against the rocks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see enough of what was going on to understand how the rescue was being executed. Thankfully, it was successful, and onlookers cheered. It was exciting to be in the right place at the right time to capture that moment.

6/2/22 Eight emergency vehicles arrive to rescue a trapped surfer.

Haystack, the Needles and the Beach

5/31/22 Haystack and the Needles from our hotel room

 

I have no shortage of sketches of Haystack Rock and its surrounding Needles; I’ve sketched them on every trip to Cannon Beach since I began sketching. Almost all have been the typical “postcard” view (like the ones above and below), which is easy to see from our hotel, so I can sketch in comfort and at my leisure at various times of day or in any weather.

5/31/22 Another "postcard" from our room, this time with a secondary triad palette and trying to be a bit looser.

5/30/22 My first few sketches of Haystack are 
just to become reacquainted with its shape and proportions. 

My current attention on composition, however, opened my eyes to wider exploration. You saw some of those ideas in yesterday’s post. I made fewer sketches from our comfy hotel room and instead made more thumbnails from other parts of the beach not visible from our windows. For example, from the south side of Haystack, the Needles look entirely different. I’m always surprised by how far apart they are; from our room’s view, all the rocks look clustered tightly together. In addition, the shapes of some rocks change when viewed from different perspectives.

5/30/22 The same "postcard" at different times of day: Morning, above... 

5/31/22 ... and early afternoon the next day.

6/1/22 This view of Haystack's base and the wet sand is unusual for me. It's one of my favorite sketches of the trip, and I credit the compositional studies I've been doing.

6/2/22 Three views (above and below) of the Needles from various perspectives.

With my back to Haystack, I also sketched the hillside view facing south toward Tolovana Beach. On a foggy morning, that view was especially ethereal.

5/31/22 

6/1/22 Foggy morning

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that one of my 30-Day Challenge composition studies prompted me to try it as a larger, color sketch. I’ve included that thumbnail below along with the color sketch. I’m happy that the challenge pushed me to try something new.

6/1/22 Haystack

Study for color sketch above

The 30-Day Challenge is On

6/1/22 Cannon Beach

I was away last week, mostly in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and I have plenty of sketches to share. To start off, though, I’m posting the daily composition studies I did since June 1 for Ian Roberts’ 30-Day Challenge. The first three days are all compositions of Haystack Rock and its surrounding Needles. I have sketched those rocks many times during the multiple visits we have made to Cannon Beach, but I typically sketch the entire rock formation – the “postcard” view. The composition challenge pushed me to look at that same view in different ways to get away from the postcard, crop more tightly, and think more about the “design” of the composition. I enjoyed being nudged in this way, and I liked one study enough to make a larger sketch in color (you’ll see it later this week). I might even make others later based on my own studies and photos. (Imagine that – me using studies and photos to make “finished” pieces the way painters do! What is the world coming to!)

6/2/22 Cannon Beach

On Day 4 before heading home, I sketched through a window at the McMenamins Olympic Club Hotel, where we had spent the night in Centralia. I had hoped to sketch more in the town (which I had last visited in 2018 on a fun sketch excursion), but it rained most of the time. At least I could see power lines through the window!

6/3/22 Cannon Beach

6/4/22 Centralia

Spring Skyscapitos

 

2/24/22 sunset and 2/26/22 sunrise

The last time I blogged about my skyscapitos, it was back in February when it was still easy to sketch sunrise colors. Since then, the sun has been coming up too early for me, but I’ve managed to catch a few sunsets. Timewise, it should be easier to catch sunsets than sunrises, but I guess I’m occupied with other things in the evening, and I don’t think about the sky as much.

It’s interesting to see how the peak color surrounding the dusk sun moves northward as we go from February to May. I wasn’t really aware of this until I started trying to capture that color, and I noticed that different landmarks show up in the foreground of my sketches at different times of year.

3/2 and 3/6/22 sunrises

4/21/22 sunset

5/19/22 sunset

5/15/22 lunar eclipse

Although not the prettiest sketch, my most exciting skyscapito occurred on May 15. It had been overcast and raining all evening, so I had given up trying to look for the lunar eclipse. At 10:40 p.m. as I was getting ready for bed, I looked out the livingroom window one last time, and there it was – an opening in the clouds that gave me a clear view, just for a moment: The tail-end shadow of the earth passing over the moon.

5/25/22 sunset

Oh, No – Not Another Challenge!

 

5/22/22 These distant houses were sketched from our deck.
I usually feel like I can't really see them well, but
I realized I could see them well enough for value studies.

As you’ve seen in recent posts, I’ve been making lots of compositional studies. They’ve been influenced by Ian Roberts’ videos and especially the 30-day challenge he recently gave his oil painting students. Working alongside them, he made a compositional study daily for 30 consecutive days (shown on Instagram). Much more than thumbnails, they are all lovely graphite drawings. If I had made them, I would have no need to take the next step to oil paintings; the drawings look fresh yet finished.

Still in recovery from my grueling 100-Day Project, I wasn’t sure I was ready to commit to yet another durational challenge, but I wanted to give the process an uncommitted try. The ones I’ve made the past couple of weeks have taken only a few minutes each. Compared to drawing from my head, these are a piece of cake! I love wandering about in the neighborhood with no particular destination in mind, just looking around to see what compositions attract my eye. It’s enjoyable and relaxing, especially on a temperate day. I’m learning to observe composition and values more closely. It’s definitely worth doing.

5/23/22

5/18/22

Masochist that I am, I have decided to try the 30-day challenge during the month of June, when I hope the weather will cooperate. The sketches don’t have to be done from life, so I can use photos if I want to (though you must know by now that I will likely do most of mine from life). He recommends using graphite so that tones can be modulated easily. I will try graphite sometimes, but I also love using a red Field Notes, which can show three values easily (red as the middle value with black and white).

Shown here are more “practice” sketches from the past couple of weeks. I’ll post my official 30-day challenge sketches in batches.

5/23/22

5/23/22

5/23/22

5/24/22 I love alleys... they are often full of trash cans!

5/25/22