More Action at the Burke Museum

6/18/19 New Burke Museum building

A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled upon demolition of the old Burke Museum when I was on the University of Washington campus to sketch cherry blossoms. Passing through campus earlier this week, I went to see what the site looked like now. Most traces of the old building are gone, but lots of excavators and other heavy equipment were everywhere, and the grounds (a new parking lot?) still looked rough and nowhere near completion.

In the background stands the new Burke getting ready for its grand reopening this fall. As excited as I am to visit the new, much larger natural history museum – the old one gave me many hours of sketching fun, and I’m sure the new one will, too – its new building is the type that I don’t enjoy drawing much. Clean and modern, the roofline is very subtly curved, so it ends up looking either like it was meant to be straight but my lines were crooked, or I curved it too much. In this case, it’s the latter – the roofline’s curve is more subtle than that. I hope to sketch the construction site again before it opens, so maybe I’ll do a more accurate job next time.

6/18/19 Construction worker taking a lunch break on a pile of debris.

Ban Roll-on Building Redux

6/21/19 Safeco Center

Officially named Safeco Center, one of my favorite downtown buildings is better known as the Ban Roll-on building or the R2-D2 building (and formerly named the Second & Seneca Building). I wish I knew someone who worked there so I could go up to the glassy dome on top. The last time I sketched it was nearly five years ago from an angle that didn’t show its roll-on ball much, so I’ve always wanted to try again. In the area yesterday with USk Seattle, I sat next to a spitting fountain to make this sketch.

Thoroughly chilled after that, I retreated to the inside of the building I had just sketched because I knew it had a Starbucks that faced the street. Luckily for me, a lot of work was going on across the street involving cherry pickers in blue and orange.

6/21/19 Goings-on at Second and Seneca

Although it’s officially summer now, I still wore the hood on my Polartec jacket all morning. As is often the case, the sun finally came out in time for the throwdown. (I suppose if we were smart, we would meet in the afternoon!)

Sketchers finally warming up!

Sunny or Overcast, Part 2

6/14/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood

As per normal, June is serving up a mix of clouds and sunshine, often in the same day (heck, often in the same hour). When I plan the sketching part of my day, my usual habit is to look out the window, check the outdoor thermometer, and finally scan the hourly forecast on weather.com. Usually I want the benefit of the full sun, but lately I’ve been in the mood to go out on overcast days just for the challenge.

6/16/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Last month I showed some values studies made on both sunny and cloudy days. Here are two more. The one above was on a thickly overcast afternoon – the kind that forces me to squint hard to distinguish the values. I couldn’t fake the shadows even if I wanted to because I could hardly see where the sun was. And yet values are always relative, so even in that flat gray light, some things appear darker than others.

A couple of days later, the mid-afternoon sun was brilliant, and the temperature was 70 with a soft breeze . . . sketcher’s heaven. I went out to sketch the last (I think) of the alleys I’ve found on the same block of Eighth Northeast. The strong light made it easy to see the values, and using two colors to indicate them was a snap.

Although sketching in sunshine is almost always easier and more fun, I also enjoy practicing when the sun is hiding. Today is the solstice, and I’m looking forward to a summer of sketching, but I’m also arming myself for the vast majority of months when the sun is an elusive friend.

Another Alley on 8th

6/13/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood alley

After spotting the rare (in my ‘hood) alley on Eighth Northeast a few weeks ago, I’ve been looking for them more actively, and I found another. Walking in the early morning, I was immediately attracted to the backlighting that made the trees shimmer on top and around the edges. An admirer of Virginia Hein’s sketches of backlit objects (heck, I admire all of her sketches!), I have been studying the way she captures that luminosity, so I thought this alley would be a good subject for practicing this.

The first day I made a bicolor study (below) – using yellow/purple this time instead of vermilion/blue – to pay attention to the tonal contrasts. A couple of days later, I went back at about the same time so that the lighting would be the same (at right). This time I used natural colors, and if I started getting distracted by local hues (like those blue and green trash bins), I glanced back at my bicolor study to remind myself of the values. Initially I had made the trash bins much brighter, but the study reminded me that were still in shade, so I toned them down. I think I lost a bit of the luminosity that I had exaggerated with that bright yellow in the study, but overall, I like the way the sketch turned out. I think making the yellow/purple study first was very helpful. (I wish the garbage truck had appeared again, but it was the wrong day.)

6/11/19 

Chief Seattle

6/12/19 bust of Chief Seattle

It’s been several years since I sketched the bronze bust of Chief Seattle in Pioneer Square. His image appears in various forms and places in the city, including a modern one that simultaneously portrays George Washington’s image.

Wandering on the Seattle University campus last week, I came upon this bust of the Suquamish chief and city namesake that I didn’t know about. Fully in shade as I sketched, I still felt the heat creeping up on me on the day that would be the beginning of our mercifully brief heatwave.

Celebrating Summer at Gas Works

6/10/19 Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park is my go-to when warm weather finally arrives. Of course, I’ve sketched there in all seasons and weather, including rain and surprising sunshine, but in the summer, my favorite park represents the best of Seattle. It’s one of our favorite places to bring out-of-town visitors. Lake Union, a marina, the Space Needle-centered skyline, grassy Kite Hill, those steampunkish gas works – I never run out of things to sketch.

The afternoon that I sketched this, it was 73 degrees with a typical lake breeze, and the sky was nearly cloud-free. Hallelujah – at long last, summer is here!

Product Review: Pentel Pocket Brush Pens (and Weaning Myself of Grisaille)

Gray and brown Pentel Pocket Brush Pens

For more than a year now, I’ve been using various markers, most often Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens, to serve as a grisaille with colored pencils. (See my tutorial on this method.) The gray marker tones establish the values, and I then color over the grisaille with colored pencils. If the marker is waterproof (as Pitt pens are), I can then choose to activate watercolor pencils if I want to.

Recently I’ve been trying to wean myself of relying so heavily on the marker grisaille and instead learn to convey values directly with colored pencil hues. The biggest challenge is the darkest (near-black) value, which is difficult to achieve with colored pencils alone, especially on location (with limited time and other constraints). I consider myself still in transition: I use a marker grisaille now only for the darkest value until I figure out a better way to achieve this. A second issue is that I’ve never cared for the streaky, “marker-y” look I get with Pitt pens (or any hard-edged marker).

I got excited a couple of months ago when Roz Stendahl reviewed new colors in Pentel Pocket Brush Pens – gray and sepia. I’ve been using a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen with black ink for years (it was included in my review of seven “hairy” brush pens several years ago), and it’s one of my favorites. The synthetic bristles hold up well, even under my heavy hand, and the ink is easily refillable with cartridges or fountain pen ink. The brush pen containing dark gray ink that Roz showed seemed like an interesting alternative to a hard-edged marker, especially if it was waterproof. I decided to give the sepia a try, too. (I got mine from Wet Paint, which seems to be one of few stores carrying both new colors. I’ve just recently seen both on Amazon, too.)

The pens have the same fountain-pen-like body (above) as the original black. The only indication of the ink color is the end of the cap (which I appreciate when I store them cap end up in my bag) and the narrow center band.

Bristle brush tips

Like the original, the brush tips are very flexible bristle brushes (not formed felt or other fibrous materials) that can produce a wide range of line widths. (See Roz’s blog for beautiful drawings that take full advantage of the brush effects.)

 

A wide line variation

After waiting about five minutes, I put a waterbrush through the thickest part of my scribbles. The gray ink was nearly waterproof, but the sepia bled considerably. After another hour, the inks still bled the same. The gray is acceptably waterproof for my purposes because the little bleeding won’t alter colors substantially. I’ll still use the sepia when I want an ink that washes, but I probably won’t use it as a grisaille.

 

Washed with water after about 5 minutes. Scribbles made in Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook.

Shown below are several recent sketches (most of which you’ve seen previously) that include the gray Pentel. The ink stays wet on the paper’s surface just long enough for the edges to blend a little, which reduces the marker-y look that I want to avoid. I really like using the tiny brush tip to achieve fine lines and marks, which I’m not able to get with a Pitt brush marker (which starts out sharp when new but mushes down fairly quickly under my heavy handedness). Conversely, if I lay it down on its broad side, the brush can make a wide stroke. It takes a little practice to handle a bristle brush instead of a marker, but I’ve always preferred the versatility and organic line of an actual brush to the more graphic look of markers.

Until I wean myself completely of the grisaille method, the gray Pentel is my pen of choice.

6/2/19

5/31/19

5/22/19

5/30/19 I used the Pentel brush pen only on the darkest shadows. The shading on the yellow parts of the
excavator was done with a gray colored pencil acting as a grisaille under the yellow.

4/30/19 In this sketch, I used the Pentel brush pen both for shading and to draw the foreground tree branches.