15 Years of Sketching with My Tribe

 

7/17/24 Fishermen's Terminal for our 15th anniversary outing

Dave at Fishermen's Terminal

Although I slept in my own bed each night, I felt like I had been traveling last week – in fact, it felt like I had traveled to an Urban Sketchers Symposium! It was Sketcher Fest, which was all the exhilaration and intensity of a symposium but none of the jetlag – and we had perfect weather, to boot.

Before things got underway in Edmonds, though, we had an unrelated event that was timed perfectly as a lead-up to Sketcher Fest: USk Seattle’s 15^th anniversary celebration! We chose Fishermen’s Terminal, the site of the very first Urban Sketchers outing ever (in Seattle or the world) on July 19, 2009. The late-afternoon outing was followed immediately by a drink & draw across the street at Figurehead Brewery. Both were well attended; in fact, the Terminal turnout of 50+ may have broken previous attendance records. Included were four of the original attendees from 2009: Frank Ching, Dave Morris, Mark Ryan and Gail Wong. (Sadly, Gabi couldn’t join us because he was too busy getting ready for Sketcher Fest!)

Figurehead Brewery drink & draw, where I did more chatting than drawing. Featured in my sketch are Mario Linhares' family (Portugal) and Suhita Shirodkar (Bay Area), all in town for Sketcher Fest.

15th anniversary commemorative sticker
(top, featuring the Fremont troll) 
designed by David Hingtgen

Laurie Wigham, visiting from the Bay Area for Sketcher
Fest, joined us at our celebrations. That's me in the middle of her sketch!

To commemorate our milestone year, we published a retrospective collection of sketches from members arranged chronologically year by year. It’s amazing to see how some parts of Seattle have changed significantly during the last 15 years, while others have not – all recorded by our sketches.

I’m republishing below the introduction I wrote for the book (co-edited by Jane Wingfield and myself and designed by Ellie Doughty). The book is still available for purchase (suggested donation $20).

Building Community One Sketch at a Time

Drawing and painting what we see on location has occupied artists for centuries. The activity we call “urban sketching,” however, began in 2007 when Gabriel Campanario first created a Flickr image-sharing group. Gabi, a journalist and illustrator who had recently transplanted to Seattle, named the group Urban Sketches. He primarily intended the online group as a common place for sketchers around the globe to share their work. He didn’t know then that a major benefit of that initiative would be a way for sketchers to connect in person.

Like many of the best ideas, that connection began spontaneously. Frank Ching, well-known University of Washington professor of architecture and acclaimed author of books on architectural drawing, contacted Gabi. Seeing Gabi’s then-new Seattle Sketcher column in The Seattle Times, Frank had mentioned his own passion for drawing on location. After getting together at Fremont Coffee Company (a meeting that became a Seattle Sketcher blog post), they agreed to sketch together the following month at Fishermen’s Terminal.

Encouraged by some World Wide Sketch Crawl events he had attended, Gabi wanted to invite others to join them. He used the Urban Sketchers Seattle blog he had recently launched to announce a gathering at Fishermen’s Terminal on July 19, 2009. Thirteen sketchers showed up that day. That was USk Seattle’s first outing, and we’ve been meeting regularly ever since.

Initially gathering monthly, we now meet as often as weekly during the best weather months. Even cold, wet winter gatherings can bring out a hardy dozen or more, and beautiful summer days can attract upwards of 30 sketchers. The USk Seattle Facebook group, now 1,700 strong, has been growing steadily. (Meanwhile, the worldwide Urban Sketchers community has grown to tens of thousands.)

“Urban Sketchers came out of my love for drawing and wanting to discover Seattle,” Gabi says, who had moved to the Seattle area with his family in 2006. Although his initial intentions weren’t necessarily focused on the social benefits of urban sketching, “To put together an idea that inspires people all over the world is humbling,” he says. “Making connections through drawing is a privilege.”

Indeed, it is. And all of us who form this community are both honored and proud to show the world what Seattle looks like, one sketch at a time. This publication is a small collection of the many sketches Urban Sketchers Seattle members have made during the past 15 years.

July 17, 2024

Snow Gum Eucalyptus

 

7/15/24 snow gum eucalyptus trees, Maple Leaf neighborhood

When I first tracked down these eucalyptus trees from Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle, I was delighted to realize I already knew these trees. Admiring them for years on one of my walking routes (almost daily during the pandemic), I had always wanted to sketch them, but the light was never quite right in the mornings when I tend to take my walks. Learning that these were special street trees, however, motivated me to look for the right light and finally give them a draw.

The best light turned out to be in the late afternoon when I’m least likely to walk, especially as the days grew hotter, and that time of day is the hottest. One day before our recent heatwave set in, I made a gestural sketch to learn more about their form and try to capture as much as I could of their height (yet I lost most of their crowns; on the right in the page spread below).

Gestural sketch on the right

A couple of weeks later it finally cooled enough to go back and spend more time focusing on their trunks (top of post). From this angle, it’s hard to tell that these are two trees and not one, but when I move so that both trees should be distinctly visible, that parked car is always in the way (of course, that’s a Murphy’s Law of urban sketching). This angle does have the best light, though, so I went with it. They seem to lean so precariously from relatively slender trunks.

6/13/24 My first thumbnail sketch

According to Taha’s book, these are Seattle’s first recorded eucalyptus street trees. They were registered on July 25, 1978, the same day that downtown Seattle’s Rainier Club first admitted a Black member. That type of historical note gives amazing context to the life of these street trees. That was only the year after I graduated from high school – not that long ago, from a historical perspective – yet it’s shocking to think that Blacks were not admitted to a social club in liberal Seattle before then.

Southern Catalpa

 

7/11/24 southern catalpa, Green Lake neighborhood

6/17/24

As I’ve made small sketches of street trees, I’ve been noting ones that I want to go back to for larger portraits. One was a southern catalpa near Green Lake, which author Taha Ebrahimi notes in her book, Street Trees of Seattle, as being the eighth largest-diameter street catalpa in the city.

When I had made the small sketch (at right), its trunk had caught my attention, but I saw that its crown kept it in continual shade, which made drawing it difficult. I wasn’t sure yet how I would approach the portrait when I returned several weeks later, but I walked around the tree several times looking for the right composition. From a distance, I finally saw the full crown – and that’s when I realized that a good half of it had been lopped off to accommodate utility lines. While its trunk was beautiful (and entertaining to the family that had hung a swing and a rope ladder from it), its crown told the full story of its ongoing sacrifice in the service of humans.

Fresh Flours as Reward

7/15/24 Fresh Flours, Greenwood/Phinney Ridge neighborhood

If you’ve ever lived in the same house for several decades (36 years, actually), you know that “stuff” accumulates. It’s a lot of work to un-accumulate all that stuff, but I’m on it.

Fortuitously, just as I was gearing up for the task, the Maple Leaf neighborhood held it’s annual FREE Yard Sale event: Nothing could have a price, and anything was up for grabs if you put it out on the sidewalk in front of your house. Putting your address in an online map of participants helped people find you, especially if you had any specialty items that you wanted to note in your listing. I had never participated in the event before, either as a giver or a taker, but it motivated me to put some stuff in boxes.

I never had so much fun getting rid of our old junk, which, it turns out, other people want! Except for one drawer that I didn’t get to, I cleared out my kitchen of much excess that had ceased to spark joy years ago, if it ever did (how do all those plastic containers reproduce?). I had noted LPs, CDs and analog audio equipment in my listing, and several happy “shoppers” picked through our huge entertainment center filled with cases of music. I enjoyed meeting neighbors, and it felt rewarding to see others delight in things I no longer needed or wanted. (A young woman exclaimed that my Star Wars soundtrack album would thrill her husband, and it gave me great joy knowing that he would receive it.)

By day’s end, very little was left of the dozen or so boxes of stuff I brought out that day. I put what remained into my car and drove it over to Goodwill the next day, where the line of cars wrapped around the block (likely all from Maple Leaf).

Feeling so satisfied that I was actually smug, I went to nearby Fresh Flours to celebrate. It was an exhausting weekend, but it felt so good that I’m now motivated to keep putting things in boxes and moving them out.

A note about Fresh Flours: This bakery’s plentiful sidewalk tables are on busy Phinney Avenue within visual distance of the Woodland Park Zoo. Three times just while I was sketching, a neighbor would pass the café on their walk and see friends seated at the café, pull up a chair, and join the party. It was fun and heartwarming to see a community interact this way. 

Ravenna Street Trees

 

7/13 - 7/14/24 Ravenna neighborhood street trees

Now that I’ve finished sketching the trees in both the Maple Leaf and Green Lake neighborhoods, I’ve moved on to Ravenna’s trees documented in Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle. Ravenna starts on the southern edge of Maple Leaf and goes all the way to the U-District, which is  a long walk for me. I might drive partway to the ones on the southern half, but these two near the eastern edge of Maple Leaf are easy to get to – a western hemlock and an orchard apple.

Sketching in neighborhoods often results in interesting conversations (or overhearing them). As I sketched the hemlock, I eavesdropped on two neighbors discussing a questionable man who had been seen carrying a case of beer, littering cans as he went and sometimes sleeping in people’s yards. One of those neighbors also told me that several flicker families have made their homes in the hemlock over the years. When he had first noticed me sketching, he thought I was an arborist taking census.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood 

The next day, another neighbor who had spotted me sketching the apple tree was concerned that I was from the city and planning to cut the tree down if it was diseased. She loves the apple tree, she said, especially since she had recently lost her own old dogwood to disease.

I enjoy that these street trees give my daily walks a destination and focus.

Material note: I’ve noticed that this particular Uglybooks color is very difficult to photograph accurately, either with my camera or with my scanner. You wouldn’t know it from this image, but the color is much closer to a warm cyan than the cool light cobalt you see here.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood

Brown Bear Grizzly

 

7/12/24 Brown Bear Car Wash, Lake City

When my Miata was in the repair shop for a ding it received while parked, it came back washed, polished and gleaming – looking better than it had in years (certainly since before the pandemic). Our poor Subaru looked worse than ever by comparison – however long it had been since the Miata got cleaned, I think it’s been even longer for the Outback. Unlike the Miata, which is lucky enough to fit in our tiny garage, the Outback is parked outside all day, every day, and the north side’s windows have moss growing on them. It was time for heavy-duty cleaning.

Although Brown Bear Car Wash, “Washington’s Favorite and Best Car Wash for 65 years,” has locations all over town, I had another errand in Lake City, so I decided to take the Subaru there. After an exhilarating ride through the “tunnel” (Remember how thrilling that was as a kid? It still is), I parked at Starbucks next door, got a chocolate cream cold brew, and walked back to Brown Bear. Beautiful as it is, a rather formidable bronze grizzly sculpture greets customers as they drive in. Elsewhere are smaller sculptures of cubs, but they are too close to the car washing mechanism to sketch. I’ve always liked these realistic sculptures, which were originally designed by Lorenzo Ghiglieri in 2009. (I find it amusing that the grizzly is so incongruous with the car wash’s logo, a cute, Japanese-looking teddy bear.)

As I sketched, I was trying to remember how long ago it was that I had sketched a different Brown Bear sculpture. I found the answer on my blog – 11 years ago! (I hope that wasn’t the last time we got a car washed.) Incidentally, running the Outback through the tunnel was hardly sufficient in removing the moss; I guess I’m going to have to give it some elbow grease.

Hey, good-lookin'. . . you still got what it takes!

My Colorful Ugly Process

 

The color process always begins with Uglybooks!

After talking about my favorite materials for my on-location comics, I had more to say about my overall color process, which is one of the most fun parts of this format:

It all begins with Uglybooks – or specifically, the strong, bold paper colors that these unique books offer. When I first discovered them, the first thing I realized was that they force me to choose between colored paper and color media – because trying to use both isn’t easy (or often even desirable). When they first see my sketches on Uglybooks, other sketchers often ask whether the paper will hold up to watercolor and other wet media. With a weight of 80 pounds and decent sizing, it can take a very light wash better than most pocket notebooks. But that’s sort of missing the point, because watercolors will not show up well against most of Uglybooks’ aggressive colors, and any transparent medium will allow the paper color to show through (with interesting but not necessarily desired results).

When using Uglybooks I’ve found that the best results for my approach come from tonal values and vibrant, contrasting, opaque colors. (I first learned about this approach during my Field Notes Sweet Tooth days, which actually lasted several years.) That means the paper color usually serves as the midtone with black and white as the darkest and lightest tones. I usually also use a dark, cool gray Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pen for a fourth tone. Although my eye loves some of the lighter pastel tints that Uglybooks come in, they are much harder to work with as a tone.

Although I love lighter-tinted colors, pale blue,
yellow and other pastels are harder to use as midtones.

The benefit of this tonal approach is that I must think about a hue’s relative value from the get-go, which makes me think about values in a way that I would not think about them when using white paper.

Once the paper color is selected, the fun part is choosing a few acrylic markers and a few Caran d’Ache Luminance colored pencils or other pencils, the more opaque, the better, and in colors that contrast the paper vividly. Although black is still my favorite, I sometimes choose another dark Faber-Castell Pitt Dual Tip Marker as the darkest value.

A mix of acrylic markers and colored pencils pop against this perfect midtone green paper.

Instead of black, this very warm brown Pitt marker
makes an unusual dark tone on green paper.

So far, I have been filling a 48-page Uglybook about every three weeks, and I really enjoy the turnover process of choosing the paper color and coordinating media colors. Without having a full palette in my daily-carry arsenal anymore, this process gives me a good color fix!

I mentioned in the post about favorite comics media that I’ve been experimenting with techniques to use colored pencils more. Although Luminance are among the most opaque colored pencils I’ve tried, enough of that aggressive paper color still comes through light layers of pencil. Sometimes the result is an interesting optical mix that I enjoy (below).

I used a light layer of orange pencil so that the green paper would show through, resulting in an interesting optical mix.

Other times, I want to avoid the color mixing, and the trick I use is to apply a fairly heavy layer of white colored pencil first. That’s what I did for the raspberry croissant below, and both the yellow and red popped against the blue paper better than they would have if I hadn’t applied white first. Incidentally, the shadow color here is a Dusky Purple Derwent Inktense pencil, which looks nearly black here. Part of my daily-carry watercolor pencil secondary triad, it’s a versatile color because of its opacity.

White colored pencil applied first to make other colors pop better.

And speaking of white, my cumulative disasters and dissatisfactions with white acrylic markers have forced me to boycott them (at least until I forget why and start drifting back to those bad boys). Quietly faithful even as I regularly stray, colored pencils have never let me down. I can use them as the lightest tone, and now they also double as a white “underpainting” (how’s that for paradoxical – a white underpainting on colored paper!). Perhaps I should have stayed with them all along.

And speaking of commitment, I’ve kept my vow of using only one Uglybook at a time, that applies to my A6-ish daily-carry only. When I think I have a larger story to tell or know that I will have a table to work on, I like using A5-ish landscape Uglybooks. That gives me an opportunity to change-up the colors without breaking the chronological continuity of using one daily-carry book at a time.

Some of my larger landscape Uglybooks that I like to use occasionally for variety.