New SFR, ADU and DADU in the ‘Hood

 

10/4/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood

For the past year, I’ve been watching several residential construction projects on my walking routes. A few months ago I sketched an enormous SFR with AADU (architectural jargon for single-family residence and its attached accessory dwelling unit). Around the corner from those are the ones shown here, which confused me for much of their progress.

The original 750-square-foot house on the left, which is about a hundred years old, had been completely gutted and redesigned. Then the 3,500 square foot SFR on the right, which is set back slightly from the smaller house, was built and attached to it, making the small house an ADU (accessory dwelling unit). What confused me was the dark connecting bit (literally painted black) between them. Was it a hallway with doors between the two houses? A primary house with a mother-in-law unit? An Airbnb type of thing?

I continued to ponder the possibilities as I sketched, when the developer/builder happened to come by. Delighted to see me sketching the houses, he offered to take me inside all three (a detached accessory dwelling unit behind the other two is hidden from the street view) and answer my questions that way.

It turns out that the connecting bit does not include access to either dwelling; the “hallway” is actually a walk-in closet for one of the homes. Structurally, the two buildings are connected that way so that they could be built so close together. With four bedrooms plus three “bonus” rooms, the big house has three full stories. One of the top floor bonus rooms, which is set up to be a “media room” with a wet bar, opens to a deck with a magnificent west view of the Olympics. The price will be about $2 million (in case you were wondering).

Although I’m still not a fan of this type of modern architecture (for one thing, there’s no space for large trees, which I have only recently become more aware of in terms of benefits to residences), the floor plans seem well designed for the types of families that might live there. Learning about anything always increases my appreciation for the planning and details involved, even if I don’t necessarily care for the results.

Even Sketchwaiting Needs Practice

9/8/23 Safeway pharmacy line

9/2/23 Cloud City Coffee

A sketcher had lamented online about not having enough time to sketch. She was asking for advice from other sketchers who seemed prolific, especially those who filled brief, idle moments with what I call “sketchwaiting.” The experienced sketchers chimed in about the fun of filling otherwise dead time with sketching. Much of the advice was about having simple sketch materials with you at all times so that you can take advantage of any sketching opportunity. Wherever you are and with whatever time you have, sketch whatever you see  – that was the common advice. Just jump in and do it.

9/5/23 Cloud City Coffee

9/7/23 Green Lake neighborhood

10/3/23 Green Lake neighborhood

I can easily “just jump in and do it” now, but sketchwaiting did not always come as easily. It takes quite a bit of time of regular, on-location practice before sketchwaiting comes as second nature. If you have very little sketching experience, or even if you have some but most of your practice has come from using photo references, sketchwaiting is much harder. The “whatever you see” is huge and overwhelming (even in a place like a doctor’s waiting room) – how do you choose what to draw? By the time the subject is selected, likely your name has been called for your appointment, and the opportunity is lost.

9/19/23 Green Lake Village

9/20/23 Thornton Place Plaza

I have talked a lot on this blog about the importance of learning to draw from life, not just practicing from photos, and I think this is one more reason. People who sketch from life are already used to distilling the huge “whatever” they see into a sketch, which makes them better prepared even if they have only a few minutes. And the more one practices regularly, the easier it becomes to practice regularly.

9/19/23 Russian Veterans Monument, Orthodox Brotherly Cemetery, Seattle
(I typically wouldn't use color while sketchwaiting, but in this case,
I knew I had an hour to happily kill. Most sketchwaiting opportunities are much shorter.)

Showing Promise

 

9/28/23 Green Lake

Although some trees this year have had disappointing color, others are showing promise. On a cloudy morning at Green Lake last week, I thought it was time to see how the sweet gums were doing (above). When I sketched them about a month ago, the color was just beginning. Now they are all moving toward the warmer hues; they’ll peak in a few more weeks. (By the way, I had to rush through this sketch when it started drizzling an hour earlier than my weather app said it would: Murphy’s Laws of Urban Sketching No. 2.)

9/30/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A couple of days later, the weather was the lovely kind that I always hope we’ll have in September but rarely do: cool, crisp and sunny. Taking my walk in the afternoon when it was warmer, I spotted these traffic circle maples with touches of color. The best view was from the middle of the street (Law No. 1), so I walked a block south and stood on another traffic circle to sketch them.

I was quite pleased at the restraint I showed in capturing the degree of color I actually saw; as we all know, it’s easy to get carried away with bright orange and red.

Incidentally, I’d like to point out the sky: That’s the kind of part blue, part cloudy watercolor pencil (“licked” method) sky I have tried to achieve for years, but it rarely came out the way I thought it should. Why is it so easy now? The paper! All the years I used it, I thought Stillman & Birn Beta was “good enough” for watercolor pencil because I wasn’t making big, wet washes or charging in color wet-in-wet the way watercolor painters like to do. But the longer I use this Hahnemühle sketchbook, the more I realize how much I’d been missing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Paper matters.

It’s Optical Mixing Season

 

9/27/23 Optical color-mixing: Luminance and Lightfast colored pencils in Field Notes Streetscapes sketchbook (photo reference)

There must be something about autumn that puts me in an optical color-mixing mood. Maybe it’s because it was in the fall two years ago that I took Sarah Bixler’s color temperature workshop, which reignited my fascination with the concept. Or maybe it’s because I often use secondary triads in the fall, and they can be especially beautiful when mixed optically. In any case, I’m back in the mood.

For my most thorough discussion of optical color mixing, see this post from last year. In a nutshell, optical mixing occurs when transparent colors are applied in a way that allows individual hues to be visible if you look closely enough (like Pointillism or pixels). The eye does the work of mixing the colors together. Alternatively, when liquid paints are mixed first on a tray or palette, the pigments are physically blended together.

As further discussion of optical mixing, I thought I’d show examples of the opposite –  colors that were not optically mixed. Since water-soluble colored pencils are, by nature, mostly transparent pigments, some examples are not clear cut, but I dug through my files to see what I could find.

Interestingly, I found very few examples of fully blended colors using activated watercolor pencils, and that’s because I tend to favor the optically mixed look, even when more thorough blending is easily possible. In the case of the still life below (full sketch in this post), I used activated watercolor pencils, blending them more thoroughly than I usually do. (Compare the water-activated produce with their cast shadow, which I left dry – purple and green optically mixed.)

9/26/22 still life detail; Museum Aquarelle watercolor pencils on Canson XL 140 lb. watercolor paper

6/11/23 Kuretake Gansai watercolors in
Hahnemuhle sketchbook (photo reference)

I also found a few examples of watercolor sketches made during the 30 x 30 Direct Watercolor challenge, when I pushed myself to mix colors directly on the paper instead of on the tray as much as possible. For the foliage at left, I applied a good wet wash of yellow, then charged in the blue, which blended almost completely as if I had mixed the green in the tray.

In dry colored pencils, I found this recent example of a portrait of my grand-niece (below). For her skin, I applied many colors in multiple, light layers. My goal in this case was to blend all the pencils as smoothly as possible so that the individual hues would not be apparent.

8/19/23 Detail (Polychromos pencils on Derwent Lightfast paper; photo reference)

Finally, I have an example of what might be the most opposite of optical mixing: This small sketch was made with Haiya oil pastels on purple construction paper (below). Granted, I don’t know what I’m doing with oil pastels, but I find them to be so opaque that whatever colors are underneath do not show through successive layers at all – perhaps similar to gouache or oil paints. They do blend when pushed and smudged together, but then they are acting more like a liquid medium than dry. (What a weird medium oil pastels are! They are not liquid, but they are so greasy that it’s hard to think of them as dry! You’ll notice I didn’t scan the image – I couldn’t bear to get my scan bed greasy!)

9/24/23 Haiya oil pastels on construction paper (photo reference)

As for optical mixing, the topic of this post, I was all set up to experiment on location from my mobile studio, but last week it rained so much that I knew my windshield wipers wouldn’t be able to keep up. Instead, I spent some rainy time indoors with photo references. Using the same primary triad in both sketches (Derwent Lightfast Yellow and Mid-Blue and Caran d’Ache Luminance Purplish Red), my goal was to allow individual colors to show through so that the viewer’s eyes would do the work of mixing (top of post and below). These were simple experiments using only three basic colors as a warm-up, but I plan to eventually try more complex mixes, too.

9/27/23 Optical color-mixing: Luminance and Lightfast colored pencils in Field Notes Streetscapes sketchbook (photo reference). Enlarged like this, it's easier to see the "pixels" of individual colors, but at actual size, your vision does the work of blending them together.

Both about A6 in size, these two sketches each took about 20 to 30 minutes, which is also the range of time I typically spend on A6-size sketches in the field. I’m tickled about that, because it means it is possible to achieve the look I want (the degree of color intensity and contrast) with dry pencils without taking more time.

(By the way, as I like to do in the field, I am deliberately using a cross-denominational mix of Caran d’Ache and Derwent pencils with these non-soluble experiments. Why? Unlike my full loyalty to Caran d’Ache when it comes to watercolor pencils, I’m not as enamored with Luminance. In fact, I’m almost ready to declare Lightfast my favorite. Not yet, though.)

What do you think about this optical color mixing concept? If you’ve tried it, what media did you use?

Mini Review: Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 Colored Pencils

 

Set of 18 Stabilo Wood 3 in 1 water-soluble colored pencils

My purchase of the full set of Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 Colored Pencils is the direct result of Instagram “influencers.” Not that it’s the first time it has happened, but it’s convenient when I know exactly who to blame. It was Suhita Shirodkar and Nina Khashchina, who often sketch with Woodys and were talking about them on Suhita’s post. And then Virginia Hein jumped onto the thread, commenting about how much she loves Woodys, too. Of course, I had to add my two bits about the Woody Duo pencils I had recently discovered, and suddenly I started feeling like the few random colors I had of the non-Duo Woodys just weren’t enough.

A much better container than the flimsy box.

Made in the Czech Republic like the Duos, the set comes in a long, flat, flimsy cardboard box (above). Once opened, an equally flimsy plastic tray slides out, containing the pencils. I don’t tolerate pencil storage like that, so I immediately put them into a plastic food storage container that’s much easier to store and grab from.

Since these solid-colored Woodys are the same as the Duos I reviewed previously, I don’t have much to add to this review except to show color swatches for the 18 included in this set. Although this was the largest set I could find, smaller sets include some colors that are not included in this one (which makes me think a larger set with all colors must exist somewhere). To my surprise, they are also available open stock as singles and in threes. That’s unexpected for a kids’ pencil.

A sharpener that accommodates these ultra-chunky pencils is included.

Swatches made in Hahnemuhle Akademie sketchbook

My two Earthsworld portraits show the pencils both dry and activated. As all of us on Suhita’s thread agreed, the Woodys are so soft and thick that it’s impossible to get precious and picky with details and fine lines. In yoga, we talk about the “counterpose,” which stretches muscles in the opposite direction of the pose previously taken. Woodys are an ideal counter-pencil when I’ve been doing precious, picky drawings with traditional-size graphite or colored pencils.

9/17/23 Stabilo Woody in Hahnemuhle sketchbook
(activated; Earthsworld reference photo)

9/24/23 Stabilo Woody in Uglybook (dry;
Earthsworld reference photo)

Metro Market Maples (and My Dry Pencil A-Ha Moment)

 

9/25/23 Metro Market parking lot, Wedgwood neighborhood

The slender parking-lot maples at Metropolitan Market are on my annual leaf-peeping tour because they often turn a brilliant, fiery red or at least bright orange and yellow. But this year they seem to be dull brownish-orange, and some are half-bare already. Our dry summer took its toll on trees.

My pencil a-ha moment: Last year I went through a couple of phases when I wanted to use dry colored pencils to work on specific experiments, like optical color mixing and secondary triads. In the field, however, I always feel like they are slower and less efficient to use than watercolor pencils: Activating them with water is the fastest, most efficient way to intensify color. And yet I’d like to learn to be more efficient with dry colored pencils because I’m so intrigued by their optical-mixing potential (an effect that gets lost when colors blend fluidly).

So I’m in that phase again. Since we have begun moving head-on into the rainy season, I’ll be sketching more from my mobile studio and coffee shops, which is a good opportunity to bring along different media. I filled my larger Sendak pencil roll with a careful selection of 13 Caran d’Ache Luminance and Derwent Lightfast colored pencils. To select colors, I used the same strategy as for my daily-carry watercolor pencils (described in my recent sketch kit update post).

This is the way the sketch looked before
I intensified the colors later at home.

When I stopped working on the sketch at left (from my mobile studio in the rain), I was disappointed by the wimpy colors and contrasts. Using an A6-size Uglybook (in white! Shocking, right?), I worked for about as long as I usually do in an A6 Hahnemühle with watercolor pencils, but I couldn’t get the colors to be as intense without the extra umph of water that I’ve come to depend on.

Normally I don’t fuss with a sketch after I leave the location, but the pencils had put me in experimental mode: Using the same pencils at home, I hit the page hard with color (never recommended, by the way, by colored pencils artists) until I got the degree of intensity and contrast I wanted (top of post) – and it only took another minute or two! Why couldn’t I do that in the car?

The answer is that at home, I had a hard desk surface, which made it much easier to apply color with the pressure I needed. My Hahnemühle has a hardcover, which gives me the same support while standing. But the Uglybook has a softcover, and in the car I didn’t have a hard surface for support. Although I use Uglybooks constantly while standing, I almost always use markers, which don’t require pressure. A-ha – a light bulb moment!

I looked around and found a small clipboard of the right size – and like the Uglybook, it fits in the Sendak’s largest pockets. Now I have a firm surface like a desk to slam the color down hard. Let’s see if this is the trick I need to make dry pencils work for me on location. If it does, I’ll look forward to brightening the blah, wet weather ahead with optical color mixing experiments.

Sendak fully loaded in my mobile studio.

Another InkTober Begins!

 

9/13/23 Who nose where this will take me?
(Earthsworld reference photo)

It’s October, and we all know what that means: It’s InkTober time! For my ninth consecutive year of participation, it was hard to come up with a theme or goal that would beat or even match last year’s, which was to work on crosshatched portraiture. When I combined the daily challenge of InkTober with France Van Stone’s excellent online tutorials, I learned more in that month than during any other InkTober.

By the end of the month, I had gotten over my general skittishness about portraiture – so much so that a year later, I’m still practicing with all kinds of media, not just ink (though certainly not daily). To me, that’s an ideal outcome of a challenge like InkTober: The original simple impetus – make one drawing a day in ink – gave me the structure to work solidly on a single subject and technique that I might not otherwise have done.

I couldn’t think of a goal quite like that for this year, but maybe it’s a spin-off: I’ve found that one of the most interesting parts of the face to draw is the nose. Although the eyes and mouth are generally seen as the most expressive parts of the face, the nose is the feature that has the most form. When I was making the two portraits of my grand-niece Kaila (first with graphite and the second with colored pencils), I suddenly became aware of how babies have such tiny, almost formless noses that are therefore much harder to draw than the strong, geometrical shapes of adult noses.

9/6/23 Jetstream multi-ballpoint pen in Field Notes.
I prefer a Bic for ballpoint sketches, but I wanted to try
this Jetstream. Nice for writing but not for drawing.

When I drew the nose above from an Earthsworld reference photo a few weeks ago, I was fascinated with how abstract the nose becomes when taken out of the context of the rest of the face. Maybe if I focus on noses, it will turn into an interesting study of abstraction or even composition. I’m open to letting the series evolve (or not).

I’m not committing to sticking with noses all month, but to begin, I’m going to draw a nose a day. It meets my personal requirements for participating in a daily challenge: I can easily draw a single nose in less than 15 minutes (or take more time if I want to).

I briefly considered choosing only one pen for the whole month without a subject-matter theme, like a multi-ballpoint pen, so I made an urban sketch with one to see how I would like that (at left). But I decided one pen is too limiting, especially when I have so many pens I enjoy using, so the ink choice will be wide open.

Who nose where this will end up taking me?

(As usual, I’ll be consolidating InkTober drawings periodically on the blog, but if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see my daily sketches.)