Lunchtime Companions

 

8/25/25

Although I haven’t been sketching them as much as I did in previous years, I am still enjoying visits from Steller’s jays when I have lunch out on the back deck. When I open the kitchen door and start prepping my lunch, often a jay will stand on the deck railing in anticipation of what they know I’ll bring out: Peanuts.

After they’ve had their fill, they sometimes return to the railing to preen. As one jay took a particularly leisurely time, I kicked myself for not having any sketch materials with me (me – the one who is always lecturing to newbie sketchers about the importance of having sketch materials at all times because one never knows when a sketch opportunity will arise!). I knew that if I went into the house to get something, the moment would be lost, so I just enjoyed the moment.

The next day, a jay had barely grabbed a few peanuts when an opportunistic raccoon showed up. I had no intention of feeding trash pandas, but this one was so used to humans that it would not scare away!

I did what any equally opportunistic sketcher would do: I dashed into the house to grab my bag. A short time later, four adorable kits showed up to dine with mama (all sketches in this post are from life except the last one).

8/20/25

By this time, I had learned my lesson. The next time a jay came to preen, I had a pencil ready. A day later, the same jay (I think) came back for lunch and another leisurely preen fest.

8/25/25

8/26/25

8/26/25

8/26/25

Finally, I wanted to try a jay with a brush pen. I used a reference photo for this.

8/26/25 photo reference

I sometimes put the nut bin out on the railing while I'm prepping my lunch. A jay will tap on the bin to let me know it's lunchtime!

Opportunistic trash panda mom . . . 

. . . and three of her four kits!

Symposium FOMO

 

7/13/13 Arc de Triomf, Barcelona

Last week when my social media feeds were filled with sketches and photos of the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznań, I admit I was feeling some FOMO. Oh, not a lot of FOMO; after all, I’ve been very fortunate to attend more than my share of symposiums, and I’m happy for everyone who got to enjoy the same fun this year. But I couldn’t help feeling a tiny twinge.

Instead of having a pity party, I decided to go through my image files and pick out one from each symposium I’ve attended and post them here. As I went through the sketches, I was flooded with delightful memories of people I met, amazing cities I experienced, and all that I learned.

8/30/14 Santa Teresa, Paraty

I had intended to assemble and publish this post last weekend while the symposium was going on, but I was so busy attending and blogging about two USk Seattle sketch outings that week that this post got pushed back. That made me recall the many people I met at symposiums who had expressed envy when I told them I was from Seattle and was part of its huge USk community. Some told me that they had never sketched with others until they came to the symposium because they had no local group to meet with. Even with symposium FOMO, I can’t help but be grateful for my own USk group that keeps me busy and happy year-round. Indeed, how fortunate I am.

7/27/16 Castlefield, Manchester

Alas, no new tin.

Speaking of FOMO, you may recall my disappointment last year when I discovered that no symposium-logo Cretacolor pencil tin had been made for the Buenos Aires symposium. Hoping that may have been a fluke, I optimistically entreated a friend who was planning to go to Poznań to look for the Cretacolor tin and save it for me. Zooming in on goodie bag dump images on Instagram, I repeatedly saw no Cretacolor tins, and my friend confirmed my suspicion. Alas, Auckland may have been the last to add to my symposium tin collection. At least I can’t have FOMO over something that doesn’t exist!

Custom Moleskine sketchbook from the very first
USk Symposium in 2010, Portland

In other news, if there’s such a thing as the opposite of FOMO, it’s this: Receiving something that I didn’t know I was coveting until I had it! A friend who was visiting from another state to attend Sketcher Fest presented me with a surprising gift: The custom-made Moleskine sketchbook that came in the goodie bag of the very first USk symposium in Portland, Oregon, in 2010! I had seen photos of it, of course, but thinking that one could ever be mine was beyond my imagination. It had never even occurred to me to try to get one – and suddenly, one was mine, from a generous and thoughtful friend who had a feeling I might want it.

Indeed, how fortunate I am.

7/29/17 Grant's Park, Chicago

7/18/18 Porto

7/25/19 Amsterdam

Once More With More Color

 

8/19/25 sunset, Maple Leaf neighborhood

I happened to catch sunset last week. In fact, I sketched it a second time as the colors deepened.

When I opened the white Uglybook I use for skyscapitos, I saw that the last one I had made was in January! Where have I been?! I do tend to slack off in the summer months when sunrise is way too early. On the other end of the day, the sun goes down so late that I’m already hunkered down in my reading chair by sunset. But now that the day is already noticeably shorter, I’ll soon have no excuse in the morning, and I hope to catch more sunsets, too.

That River in Africa

8/20/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

 It’s the beginning of that season I know well, named after the river in Africa: Denial.

It started a couple of weeks ago when some of the neighborhood’s Japanese maples showed a blush of orange against their mostly green foliage. I averted my gaze. Plenty of summer left.

Last week during a walk, I passed one of my favorite maples. No, no, say it ain’t so!

Tight Squeeze at Wedgwood Car Show

 

8/24/25 '56 Thunderbird convertible at the Wedgwood Car Show

New on my summer events radar this year was the Wedgwood Car Show, which has apparently been going on for 18 years, but I hadn’t heard about it until a couple of months ago. Just one neighborhood east of Maple Leaf, Wedgwood is practically “my” ‘hood – I was stoked that it was so close!

Packed in tight!

Tiny compared to the massive Greenwood Car Show, which I catch every year, the Wedgwood show is crammed into one strip mall parking lot. Sponsored by the Wedgwood Broiler, a neighborhood institution since 1965, the show had some beautiful classic cars, but they were difficult to sketch if you wanted to get the whole car. Unlike Greenwood, where all the cars are neatly angle-parked so that visitors can walk through the center of the street and see cars on both sides, the Wedgwood cars were parked every which way to cram in as many as possible.

Another challenge was that the temperature was already in the mid-70s and climbing by 10 a.m. when the show opened, so my main goal was to look for views I could sketch from the shade, which was mostly behind the cars.

I stood behind a lovely ’56 Thunderbird convertible (one of my long-time fantasy cars; sketch above and photo below) and had hoped to include the owner, who was dressed in a turquoise outfit and wide-brimmed hat to match the trim on her car, but she kept wandering around chatting with friends.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to see any one car without being blocked by another, I had fun with my composition by layering and skipping the parts I couldn’t see.

Frustrating as it was to sketch there, I probably won’t attend again, but I enjoyed the show for what it was. I always enjoy observing the friendly community and camaraderie of small, neighborhood events.

Technical note: Hoping to make some color car portraits, I had brought along an A5 Hahnemühle sketchbook instead of a large Uglybook. Realizing quickly that it wasn’t the kind of show where I could make car portraits easily, I switched to marker line drawings of the type that I make in Uglybooks. How strange and foreign to use white paper!

Look at this gorgeous T-Bird convertible!

Yes, I tend to favor red cars, but purple's not bad, either!

Bruun Idun at Lincoln Park

 

8/23/25 Thomas Dambo's troll Bruun Idun at Lincoln Park, West Seattle

Lincoln Park in West Seattle is one I rarely get to: It’s an inconvenient drive, especially with this summer’s highway construction projects, and parking there is an ongoing challenge. But I knew that one of the Thomas Dambo trolls is in residence at beachfront Lincoln Park, and I’d been wanting to sketch Bruun Idun for a long time, so I was happy when co-admin Kim initiated leading a USk outing there.

According to the legend:

"In the night, there was a storm, there at the beach where she was born
And Idun felt a feeling wrong, and so she walked there in the dawn
And in a flute, the magic horn, a tune so passionate and strong
She played for them an orca song to ask them where they all had gone"

Naturally, most of the sketchers that day were attracted to Bruun, and for more than the obvious reason: Although temps on Saturday morning were already in the mid-80s and trending upward, the dense shade around the troll made the beach nearly chilly. We all had a comfortable time even as the rest of the city sweltered.

After finishing my main color sketch, I had to waste some time moving my car from one time-restricted spot to another. That left time for only a smaller sketch of the troll with a sketcher and the serene and shady “fairy ring” of trees near the parking area where we did our throwdown.

After the outing ended, I needed to use the facilities down at the beach, so I used the opportunity for a couple more quick sketches: Cars boarding the Vashon ferry and one of many beach fishermen we saw bringing in an abundance of salmon.

Mandatory selfie with troll

Pet Portraits for PAWS

 

I’ve been alluding to an opportunity to sketch animals using a less intensive method than colored pencils, and that opportunity came last Thursday: a benefit for PAWS. Tracy Felix and her daughter Bryn, co-owners of ArtSpot in Edmonds, sponsor the benefit one evening each year during the town’s art walk. I was one of several other artists invited to draw pets on the sidewalk. Although I hadn’t heard of the event before I was invited, I was instantly excited to participate! Draw animals to support other animals? I’m in!

When I arrived at 4 p.m., a line of dogs and their humans had already begun on Main Street outside ArtSpot. My hope and intention was to sketch the dogs live, which I was able to do a couple of times, but as the line got longer and the pressure was on, I decided to snap photos to draw from (which is what the other artists were doing). Although quite a few dogs showed up in person, even more were requested only as photos on the donors phones.

I was both disappointed and relieved to work from photos. As has been my experience from all the commissioned pet portraits I’ve done, some of the reference photos that donors brought along were less than ideal – poorly lighted or not quite in focus. In addition, while drawing from a photo is easier than drawing from life, snapping a good reference photo of an excited, distracted dog in fading light isn’t easy, either!

Tracy's dog Bodie was one of my favorite expressions to capture!

On the other hand, drawing from life as I had hoped turned out to be more difficult than other experiences I’ve had. Usually when I’ve drawn dogs from life, they have been calmly lying at their human’s feet at an outdoor café table or while their human was occupied nearby. At the ArtSpot benefit, the dogs were distracted and sometimes agitated by all the other dogs nearby, so they were more fidgety than they might normally be. The experience would have been more challenging but also more fun for me if I had continued trying, but I knew the results would not have been as good.

In any case, I had a ball sketching while chatting with the donors and learning about their pets. I used exactly the method and materials I had practiced earlier – a brush pen for the main lines and a gray marker for shading. Each took about five to 10 minutes. Although I missed a few, I snapped photos of most of my clients.

Tracy said she intends to call on me again next year, and I certainly hope she does!

Thanks to Janet Wang for snapping these photos of me in action!

Very calm Magnolia was one of the pups I was able to sketch from life.