Graphite at Green Lake

 

7/16/22 Green Lake (Faber-Castell 9000 graphite pencils on Lenox Cotton)

When I took Kristin Frost’s class last year, of course one of my favorite locations was Green Lake. In addition to being an easy commute for me, the park has many beautiful trees along the water’s edge – which I hardly ever take the time to focus on when I sketch there on my own. Last week’s class was an opportunity to renew my appreciation for “my” home park.

On another sunny but not-too-hot afternoon, we found a shady lakeside spot with many lovely trees to draw. I chose this dynamic V-shaped grove of willows (I think), their long, draping branches nearly sweeping the water. The monochrome challenge here was making a distinction between the waves and the dappled ground (I put a few blades of grass in the foreground as a hint). 

I was able to finish the most important parts of this drawing on location. I took reference photos just in case, but I ended up not needing to use them because the work at home was just to darken all the values that I had already put in place.

With more strong contrasts, this composition was easier to draw than last week’s at the Arboretum, which was predominantly dark (and my results murky). I still wasn’t happy with that one, so I asked Kristin for feedback. She suggested using an extremely sharp pencil to draw a subtle outline around the branches that I wanted to come forward. I tried it, and perhaps the difference is too subtle to see in the scanned image below (the first image), but I think her suggestion did help pull some branches out of the murk. The second image shows the work before I added the outlines.

Outlines added in some areas

Before outlines added

Pencil notes: Last week I brought Faber-Castell “Castell” 9000 pencils to class. Several grades harder than Japanese pencils, they contain decent graphite but have never been my favorite. Like the previous class with Caran d’Ache Grafwoods, however, I had a much better experience with the 9000s than I usually do because of the slightly toothy Lenox Cotton paper.

Faber-Castell 9000 pencils

A Few Thoughts on Challenges

10/26/16 The inception of Weather Bunny made InkTober 2016 more than worthwhile.

 It’s been a few weeks since I completed my 30-day compositional challenge based on Ian Roberts’ principles. I’ve been chewing on the process of how that challenge went, and that led to some thoughts on creative challenges in general:

I think creative challenges can be productive and useful if they get us to explore something new. But simply doing something for a duration in the same way as we always have, though fun, is unlikely to lead to learning. If we want to integrate whatever we learn and make it “stick,” we must have a targeted, mindful objective. It might still be beneficial, however, if the challenge leads to creating a new habit or changing an old one.

The annual InkTober challenge is an example that comes to mind. I have participated every year since 2015, but not all years led to creative breakthroughs for me. Because I couldn’t think of anything else better to do, last year I ended up making blind contours with ink each day. It was fun, but I don’t think I learned anything from the month. Nor did I learn anything new in 2020. That year, I was already drawing my hand daily and didn’t want another thing to do every day, so I simply used ink to make the drawings of my hand. Fair enough, but again, I didn’t learn anything new.

In 2016, however, one specific goal I had was to draw more from my imagination. As a result, Weather Bunny was born. Developing the character over the course of a month was a creative breakthrough that I don’t think I would have made without focusing on the task daily. In 2018, I gave ballpoint a solid chance, and it led to slight improvements in my hatching skills and greater appreciation for the Bic pen as a drawing medium.

4/24/22 Although it was grueling and I sometimes wanted to quit, ultimately the 100 Day Project was rewarding.

When I was focusing on drawing from memory and imagination during my 100 Day Project, I had the insight that even though I had read it 10 years prior, I wasn’t able to learn anything from the book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. I wasn’t ready. I had similar thoughts toward the end of my composition challenge: Although nearly every art book I’ve read and every instructor I’ve studied with has talked about the importance of using thumbnails, and although I studiously made them whenever I was instructed to, I don’t think I really understood their full value or purpose. Without that understanding, I wasn’t motivated to keep using them beyond whatever class or book exercise I was doing. To learn something and fully integrate it into one’s knowledge (and, with practice, eventually skills), I think we have to be in the right place within one’s timeline of experience. After 10 years of drawing, maybe I was finally ready to learn composition. The purpose of a thumbnail and how it could help my compositions finally clicked.

I’ve also been thinking about the duration of challenges. For things I learned during InkTober and the composition challenge, 30 consecutive days seemed about right – long enough to hit a certain stride and then keep going for a potential breakthrough. It’s also long enough to establish a new habit (if that’s the goal).

10/20/21 It was fun making daily blind contours during InkTober last year, but 
I don't think I learned much.

However, a month might not be long enough to integrate some learnings or for creative breakthroughs to occur. Though I moaned and groaned during my grueling 100 Day Project and felt like quitting many times, I’m not sure I would have reached my goal if I had stopped after only 30 days (or quit after 44). My breakthrough did not happen until Day 45. So the duration of the challenge is important. The difficulty is that we don’t know how long is long enough. It would be a shame if I had quit on Day 44.

I’m always interested in the creative learning process. If you’ve had experiences from challenges you’ve participated in, please share them.

7/13/22 In my composition thumbnail, I gave the tree more space on the left, but then I realized I wanted to give the figures more space on the right. This is an example in which an initial thumbnail gave my final sketch a direct assist -- quite an accomplishment for a practice I have known about but have mostly ignored for 10 years! Also, by the time I got to the larger sketch, the little boy had gotten down from the chair and was no longer visible. I was happy that I had scaled him in my thumbnail!

Catching Up on Walk-Sketches

 

7/11/22 Mt. Rainier from the 5th NE Interstate 5 overpass (my reward
for making this unpleasant crossing is the occasional stunning view of 
Her Majesty)

Although I walk around Green Lake regularly, I typically haven’t walked within the Green Lake neighborhood much. Although it takes less than 20 minutes, getting there on foot requires an unpleasant walk across the noisy Interstate 5 overpass, so I tend to drive there.

This summer, though, I’ve changed my habits and have been walking to and from Green Lake more often. I’m walking more within the neighborhood to mix up the scenery. With gas prices as they are, I’m also simply trying to avoid using my car whenever possible.

5/14/22 Maple Leaf

5/28/22 Maple Leaf

6/19/22 Maple Leaf

The shake-up has given me fresh views for making small, quick sketches along the way. Many of the composition studies I made during my 30-day challenge were done around Green Lake. Here are others I’ve made on my nearly daily walks (some are from Maple Leaf, where I still walk occasionally).

6/20/22 Green Lake (the architectural styles are a wider mix of traditional and modern in this neighborhood compared to Maple Leaf)

6/23/22 Maple Leaf

6/25/22 One morning Greg and I decided to take our fitness
walk at Carkeek Park, where we spotted a windsurfer!

Most of these sketches don’t have “stories” as such; they are just momentary records of my walks. When the morning air is still cool and fresh, it’s hard to think of a cheaper, healthier, more enjoyable way to observe and capture my walkable world.

6/27/22 Green Lake

7/1/22 Green Lake

7/8/22 Green Lake

7/11/22 Green Lake

Sketchbook note: The sketches on mossy green paper are the first sighting of new sketchbooks I’ve been trying – made by Ugly Books! I’m excited about these for a number of reasons. . . review coming up soon!

Lots of Umbrellas

 

7/13/22 University Village

University Village used to be one of my favorite places to sketch when I was first starting out. Easy to get to and with plentiful free parking, it was a convenient location to practice sketching people, trees, hanging floral baskets and especially tables with colorful umbrellas. USk Seattle has met there several times, too. In more recent years, though, parking got competitive, and then U Village underwent a huge, lengthy renovation that made going there difficult and messy. It fell off my list of go-to spots.

Part of that big re-do was adding lots of ramp parking, and now it’s easy to go there again. I don’t know if it was part of the renovation or a general pandemic response or both, but the retail center seems to have added even more umbrella’d tables! A sketcher’s paradise!

U Village is back on my list, and when USk Seattle met there last Wednesday, I think the other sketchers enjoyed it, too. In both of my color sketches, I took advantage of all those elements I mentioned enjoying there – people, trees, hanging floral baskets and especially all those umbrellas. (The woman at the table is sketcher Michiko and her 2 ½-year-old son standing on a chair. I was so impressed by how unbelievably patient he was the whole time his mom sketched!)

I made two quick thumbnails right before the throwdown to include more of the retail buildings and cars all around. Whatever you like to sketch, U Village seems to have it.

I remembered to take a process photo while waiting for the spritzed area to dry.

Two Sisters

 

7/6/22 Green Lake neighborhood

Thumbnail for above sketch

Walking around the Green Lake neighborhood, I stopped on this sidewalk. Initially I was going to include other trees, cars and sidewalk shadows (see the thumbnail) in the composition as I often do. But the tree-drawing class I’ve been taking and reading the book Spotlight on Nature put me in a different frame of mind. What interested me most was the tree’s muscled trunk and the curves of its branches and stumps. I also wanted to include the adjacent utility pole, which used to be a tree, straight and tall while her sister shows years of pruning. Which one says, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

Arboretum From Life and Photos (Plus Grafwood Revelations)

 

7/11/22 Arboretum

On another perfect afternoon for drawing outdoors, Kristin Frost’s graphite class met at the Washington Park Arboretum. During her demo, Kristin talked about the importance of choosing a composition orientation. Tall trees seem to demand vertical compositions, but when viewing a tree close-up and possibly not even seeing the top, a horizontal composition might be more dynamic.

In addition, she pointed out that even when the entire tree can be seen, a composition may be less static if parts of the tree disappear past the boundaries. The latter was an especially good reminder for me. Although my recent composition studies have made me more conscious of the edges of my rectangles, and I have been trying to push objects past the boundaries, I do tend to include “the whole thing” in compositions, and I often regret it afterwards.

Outdoor studio . . .

A couple of other students and I were all attracted to this tree, which had the white bark of a birch, but its trunk was much heftier and its growth pattern different from tall, skinny birches. On the one hand, the light-colored bark surface made it easier to see dappled shadows as well as form shadows. On the other hand, the sun moving in and out of clouds kept us all guessing.

After a couple of hours of work, I had barely begun, so I had to finish the drawing at home using several reference photos. I simplified the tree by ignoring leaves growing on the trunk and some of the distant branches that were, in reality, a tangled mass of confusion.

. . . and indoor studio.

As usual, I greatly preferred drawing the tree at the park to using photos. Although the changing light could be confusing and frustrating at times, it also gave me permission to fudge. The temptation with using photo references is trying to draw each leaf shadow or spot of light on the ground. In the end, I fudged, just like I would do at the park, and tried to capture the essence of the tree and the light that afternoon without simply copying a photo. It feels murky to me – dark foliage in the background, mostly dark foreground, mostly shaded tree – I think I lost the little available light, and I don’t know how I could have retained it. But I’m pleased with the composition, especially the challenge of letting the tree grow beyond my rectangular edges.

Pencil notes: For the first class, I brought my favorite graphite pencils, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni. But I have (surprise, surprise) lots of graphite drawing pencils, many of which I rarely use because I don’t care for them, and others that I love nearly as much as Hi-Uni but also rarely seem to use. Instead of going on autopilot, I have decided to bring different pencils to each of the five weekly classes with a special attention to ones I don’t use much.

As much as I love Caran d’Ache colored pencils, I have not been a fan of the Swiss company’s graphite pencils, even the high-end Grafwood line. In addition to being much harder than Hi-Unis (though that could be said of all European-made graphite pencils), they have a slip-slidey feeling on paper that doesn’t appeal to me. For Week 2, I decided to focus on Caran d’Ache to see if I was missing something. I didn’t have all the needed grades in Grafwood and Technograph, so I tossed in a Derwent and a Staedtler to fill the holes based on my perception of relative grades.

Eclectic European mix for Week 2.

Newsflash: Although I still don’t care for Caran d’Ache Technograph, I adore the Grafwoods! What changed? The paper! In the past, I have always tried Grafwood with Bristol Smooth or other smooth drawing papers, which tend to amplify the slip-slidiness that annoys me. This time I used Lenox Cotton, a Stonehenge paper that pairs beautifully with colored pencils. The very slight tooth, which grabs both pigment and graphite in just the right way without revealing a strong texture, made all the difference: No more slippiness, and the graphite layered as beautifully as I’d expect from a premium Cd’A pencil.

I’ve mentioned this before, and it’s worth stating again: A pencil cannot be thoroughly or fairly evaluated without considering the paper it is used with. I fully admit that I am guilty of evaluating most colored pencils after using them only in my favorite sketchbooks because that’s how I plan to use them most often. But this experience with Grafwoods has reinforced the importance of the paper/pencil relationship.

Addendum: I said that I didn’t have all the Grafwood grades I needed for class. I’ve since corrected that problem. In fact, I now have the complete set, even all those hard-as-nails H grades that I’ll likely never use – because look at this stunning gradation! Visually, Grafwoods are the colored pencils of graphite pencils! Or should be. . . but what’s wrong with this picture? I think HB and F got their lovely lacquered finishes mixed up. Other Grafwood users have confirmed that this is not an anomaly: They have seen the same hiccup in the gradation. Graphite-wise, the relative grades seem true to their letters, despite the shade of their barrels. Still, for a top-of-the-line pencil at a premium price, that’s certainly disappointing.

Doesn't the HB look out of place in this otherwise gorgeous gradation?

Backyard Visitors

6/16/22

 Other than the Steller’s jays we fed regularly last summer and the usual small birds, we don’t see much wildlife in our backyard (and we’ve been disappointed that “our” jays haven’t been visiting as often this year). Two recent visitors, however, were unexpected delights.

The first was a small brown bunny, who sat for quite a while in the middle of the yard. Although we have seen this type of rabbit fairly often on our neighborhood walks the past couple of years, they rarely visit our yard: We don’t grow anything good to eat. I’m sure they have better pickins’ in our neighbors’ gardens. Maybe this bunny knew we didn’t have pets, so it could take an easy break.

7/6/22

More entertaining was the trio of raccoons that showed up one evening at dusk. Two of them noisily got it on, wrestling and rolling around the yard. The weird noise they made was familiar, but I didn’t realize until then that it came from raccoons. The third lazily lounged nearby the amorous couple but discreetly faced away from them as it scratched itself long enough for me to sketch. They all seemed aware of our quiet presence on the back deck but paid us no mind.