Amtrak to Centralia

 

We completed three Haiku Exquisite Corpses on the train ride to Centralia. The haiku read as follows (from left): "The universe flows on/Farms and rivers, trees and houses swim past./What gift awaits me?"
"We rock and roll southward/Shakes and bumps the train ride goes/Rolling through time and space."
"Autumn trees pass by/Universe of many faces/Our destination is clear; our future is not."

About 90 miles south of Seattle, Centralia is a charming town with historic buildings and quirky shops. Years ago, a small group of sketchers made an excursion out of it by taking the Amtrak down. I felt like doing that again, and this time I invited Roy and Mary Jean to join me. Neither had ever been to Centralia, let alone taken the train there; that made the excursion seem fresh again.

Our day began at King Street Station in Seattle, where we all arrived early enough to sketch inside the station before our train. Ever since we turned the clocks back, and the days suddenly got drastically shorter, I’ve been thinking about sketching nocturnes – one of very few benefits of the Big Dark. (The workshop I took last month using white pencil on black paper also helped put me in the mood.) I wasn’t quite ready for black during the day, so I chose a dark maroon-colored Uglybook to get into the nocturne mood. It turned out to be just right for sketching a capital at the top of a column and some globe lights inside the elegant station (below, left). 

Left: King Street Station details; right: light fixtures at McMenamins Olympic Club

I also sketched a few people in the waiting area (below, right).

(All day, I hopped back and forth between the maroon book and my daily-carry green one, which means the pages are out of sequence in relation to my story. I’ll try to tell my story in chronological order, but you’ll have to look back and forth to see the corresponding sketches. This is a drawback of using multiple sketchbooks that I’ve learned to live with, though it’s inconvenient at times like this.)

Hand of a light rail rider on my way downtown and King Street Station passengers.

With a nearly two-hour train ride to Centralia, we had plenty of time to sketch on board. Sitting in the lounge area where we could face each other over a table, we played our favorite art game: Exquisite Corpse! Roy has been interested in writing/drawing haiku comics lately, which gave me an idea for adding a twist to our game: After drawing each portion of a corpse, we wrote one line of haiku that did or did not have to relate to whatever we drew. If you recall the rules of exquisite corpse, each participant continues drawing a figure without seeing what the previous artist has started. Similarly, we couldn’t see the line(s) of the haiku that came before, so we had to trust the stream of consciousness that would surely result, both visually and poetically.

The reveals were amazing (top of post)! We were stunned by how beautifully the words, ideas and images flowed, despite being made without seeing what came before. Making our corpses was probably the part of the day I enjoyed most with my creative friends!

The first thing we did once we reached Centralia was head for lunch at McMenamins Olympic Club restaurant (part of the hotel of the same name). I knew from previous visits that the restaurant is full of fun décor to sketch. I liked the way the page of lamp fixtures looked next to the page I had sketched at King Street Station.

After lunch, we walked around sketching in town, which is quite small. I focused on the cool, old sign at the Fox Theatre first, then found a lamp post to sketch in my nocturne book (both below).

Fox Theatre, Centralia

Centralia street lamp

To finish off our afternoon in Centralia, we went looking for dessert. When I asked the server at Dawn’s Delectable Desserts if they offered affogato, he didn’t know what it was. I saw that they offered both ice cream and espresso, so I described it. After receiving manager approval and learning how to ring up my unconventional request, all three of us were happily served affogatos (and the whole staff learned how to make them). My job there was done!

A sleepy train passenger and Dawn's Delectable Desserts (out of sequence in this spread because I thought I would have more to sketch at the cafe to fill the left page, but we didn't have much time before it closed).

After closing down Dawn’s at 3, we waited for our train at the historic Centralia Station (built in 1912), where I found another lamp and an architectural detail to sketch in my nocturne book (below).    

Centralia Station details

An entirely fun day with good friends!

The excursion was a birthday celebration for me, and Roy and MJ both surprised me with sketches they had made! Thanks for making my birthday special!

Inside and Outside King Street Station

 

12/12/21 King Street Station from 4th S. & S. Jackson St. (another primary triad/color temperature study)

It was bitterly windy, 38 degrees and likely to rain. Although staying home and having a second cup of coffee seemed like a better idea, I put on my warmest, waterproof down parka, boots and fingerless gloves before I headed out for King Street Station to meet with USk Seattle yesterday. My initial reluctance faded, however, when I saw that we had another great turnout, despite the cold. USk Seattle members are nothing if not hardy!

Surprisingly, the sun came out briefly, so I went outside to see if I could stand the cold. Although I’ve sketched the station many times, I tend to choose a head-on view from directly across the street. With morning light on one side, it made more sense to cross kitty-corner and catch that light.

By the time I finished, the sun had disappeared, and all my fingers unprotected by fingerless gloves were getting numb, so I retreated to the station’s ornate upper level. In the past, I’ve attempted ambitious compositions from up there (especially as a newbie who didn’t know better), but this time I kept them small and full of sketchers.

Station upper level

With only a half-hour left before the throwdown, I was planning to head downstairs to sketch more people on the main station level, but a window at one end caught my eye. It gave me an ideal view of several tents across the street – only a few of the many, many tents surrounding the station area. By “ideal,” I mean that I was warm, safe and comfortable, none of which these residents were. Feeling voyeuristic and even opportunistic, I nonetheless couldn’t resist a sketch. Having rushed inside earlier after standing on the sidewalk for only 30 minutes, I felt guilty and wondered what it was like to spend a night on the sidewalk sheltered only by flimsy tents intended for casual camping. Night after night.

The individual on the left may look like he was checking his phone, but he was actually sweeping the area around his home.

Hardy sketchers!

Ten Years of Community

11/11/17 King Street Station's tower sketched over my
Global 24-Hour Sketchwalk badge

Urban sketching – the act of going out to sketch in my neighborhood or wherever I travel – tends to be a solo activity for me. It’s become such an integral part of my day-to-day life that, more often than not, I sketch whenever I’m out on an errand or commuting. It’s like writing in my diary – a reminder of my day with a sketch instead of words. But Urban Sketchers, the worldwide community, is about much more than that. Yesterday afternoon at King Street Station and online during the prior 20+ hours, I was once again reminded of what it means to me to be part of that community.

Ten years ago this month, Gabi Campanario tapped an icon on Flickr to create a new image group and started inviting sketchers around the globe to add their sketches to the group. That was how Urban Sketchers began – an online community. Very soon it evolved into local groups meeting in person to sketch together, and eventually sketchers began gathering annually in one place for an international symposium. But the heart and soul of Urban Sketchers has always been local groups and individuals sharing in person and online. The 24 hours of Nov. 11 were a visual representation of that worldwide heart and soul, and I was thrilled to be part of it.

11/11/17 One of King Street Station's globe lamps and Smith Tower.

Beginning in New Zealand and ending in Hawaii, local groups in each time zone began posting photos of their part of the Urban Sketchers Global 24-Hour Sketchwalk on Instagram. Volunteer social media organizers in each time zone uploaded those images to the global Urban Sketchers Instagram account, and anyone following the account or searching the event’s hashtag saw a continual stream of sketchers and their work throughout the day.

I started viewing Instagram on Friday around the time New Zealand began posting, and then Asia, and it really felt like I was attending a worldwide party! In fact, I was restless to get the party started in Seattle – but I’d have to wait until Saturday afternoon for that!

It was worth the wait. We all agreed that Seattle USk had a record-breaking turnout, including some new members and several members who hadn’t attended in quite a while but wanted to be part of this special event. With sketchers sitting quietly on the benches of King Street Station’s waiting area, looking down on the waiting area from the upper level, or braving the cold drizzle outdoors, it didn’t look like a party, but it felt like one in the best possible way: people with a common passion coming together to enjoy their favorite activity.

11/11/17 Passengers waiting for their train.

When I first joined Urban Sketchers in May 2012, I was a nervous introvert who had feelings of doubt and unease as I left the house for my first outing to Magnuson Park. The group I found there was so friendly and happy that I got over my doubts immediately. I had found my community, my tribe.

Happy 10^th anniversary, Urban Sketchers! I’m honored and proud to be a member.

To see images from around the globe, search the hashtag #USkGlobal24hrSketchwalk. USk Seattle’s images can be found with the hashtag #uskseattle.

Initial meet-up: Blank sketchbook pages ready!

Thank you, Gabi, for clicking that Flickr icon!

I got a sore neck sketching the tower!

Halfway through the sketchwalk, we took a group photo to catch as many participants as possible.

Gabi

Suzanne

Sue in a precarious position.

Michele

April, our Instagram manager, finally gets to sit for a sketch!

Swagatika

Michele, Gabi, Tina and Kate

Final end-of-sketchwalk photo

11/11/17 Post-sketchwalk drink & draw at Elysian Fields brew pub

Ujjwal and her husband, Mel and Gabi

Drizzly King Street Station

5/15/16 brush pen, inks, colored pencils, Zig marker

I was hoping the spectacular summer weather we had Friday at the Sculpture Park would hold out until this morning, when Urban Sketchers Seattle met at King Street Station. I’ve sketched inside the station at least a couple of times, but I wanted another crack at the outside, which I hadn’t sketched in nearly three years. Alas, the day dawned cool and drizzly with no hope of sunshine.

As a warm-up, I climbed the stairs to the station’s upper level to capture some of the amazing details all over the ceiling, on the walls and on the columns (below). The building has been so beautifully restored that you could close your eyes and turn in any direction, and when you opened your eyes again, you’d have something amazing to sketch.

I still had hopes for an outdoor view, though, so I pulled on my hood and walked across the street. Using a brush pen kept the sketch fast and loose, and sitting under trees kept my page mostly dry through the ongoing drizzle.

5/15/16 brush pen, inks

This weekend was Stephanie Bower’s “Good Bones” workshop, the same one I took a couple of years ago, so her students joined us today, including sketchers from Portland, Vancouver, B.C., and even as far as the Midwest. During the sketchbook sharing, it was impressive to see the results of Stephanie’s instruction and influence. Several sketchers I chatted with were ecstatic that they finally “got” perspective. I remembered fondly feeling the same way when I gave myself a “final exam” at the very same station two years ago.

Sharing sketches inside King St. Station

Stephanie Puts Everything Into Perspective

4/7/18 Stephanie demo'ing for her workshop students.

I poked my head into Stephanie Bower’s 10x10 USk workshop yesterday at King Street Station. Called “Good Bones” for its emphasis on building a strong support for a sketch with confident perspective, it’s a workshop I fondly recall taking myself a few years ago and which was immensely useful and instructive. Her students watched with rapt attention as she demonstrated her principles.

After that, I wandered around King Street Station’s upper level. A window view I hadn’t noticed before caught my eye – a small slice of skyline dominated by Columbia Tower (left) and the Seattle Municipal Tower. For this sketch, I recalled – and used the principles from – another terrific 10x10 workshop I took a year ago: Sue Heston’s “Simple Shapes, Stronger Sketches.” Whenever I’m potentially intimidated by a skyline of buildings, I remember Sue’s “sky shapes” – simply drawing the line that separates the sky from the “not-sky.” It seems like it should be the same as drawing the building contours, but somehow the sky-shape concept makes it easier.

4/7/18 A bit of skyline as seen from King Street Station.

Tina’s Top 10 Memorable Sketches of 2017

1/21/17 Women's March

Per my annual tradition, shown here are my top 10 most memorable sketches of the year. As before, these are not necessarily my “best” or “favorite” sketches; they are ones that evoke the strongest memories. Although 99 percent of the fun of sketching is in the act of sketching (and not the sketch that results from it), I also derive much pleasure from thumbing through my sketchbooks and remembering the events and circumstances surrounding the sketch. (Click the title of the sketch to go to the original post and full-size images.)

Here are links to my most memorable sketches of 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.

Jan. 21, Seattle’s Women’s March (above): Typically, I am not a politically active person. But Trump’s election stirred me as has no other political event in recent history. Despite much trepidation about joining what was expected to be a crowd of more than 100,000, I participated in Seattle’s Women’s March. And while I never felt unsafe during our peaceful event, sketching as I walked made me feel “normal” while doing something that was 100 percent outside my comfort zone.

4/8/17 San Jose Taiko

April 8, San Jose Taiko concert (left): When I heard that San Jose Taiko, a highly acclaimed professional taiko group, would be performing in the Seattle area, I was thrilled! My niece Alix is a member, and I hadn’t seen her perform in many years.

5/10/17 Manarola

May 10, Manarola, Italy (left): Of the Cinque Terre’s “five lands,” Manarola is one of the most picturesque. The scene I sketched is one that appears on many postcards and in guidebooks of Italy. Although I had first seen it in 2006, I wasn’t sketching yet then. It felt both intimidating and fulfilling to finally sketch it.

5/12/17 Lake Como

May 12, Lake Como, Italy (left): Two days after that memorable sketch in Manarola, I had a personal breakthrough when I sketched Lake Como from Varenna using colored pencils. This landscape sketch is of the type that I thought wasn’t possible on location with colored pencils because of their time-consuming nature. I was ecstatic to have found a way to do it in an hour.

July 26, Cloud Gate, Chicago (below): Although it wasn’t a scheduled symposium event at that point, many sketchers ended up wandering over to Millennium Park on the first day of the symposium to sketch “the Bean” (officially named Cloud Gate). I was happily reunited at the park with many sketchers I had met at previous symposiums. The most memorable meeting was with Joan Tavolott, whom I have known for years through our blogs but had not met in person until that day at the Bean.

7/26/17 "The Bean"

8/1/17 Michigan Avenue

Aug. 1, Michigan Avenue, Chicago (left): By the time I sketched this view from Michigan Avenue of my favorite Chicago building, the metallic blue Two Prudential, the symposium was over, and I was getting ready to leave town that afternoon. When I look at this sketch now, it seems to hold all my wonderful memories of the symposium as well as the excitement of a beautiful city that I want to return to again and again.

8/21/17 Total solar eclipse

Aug. 21, total solar eclipse, Oregon (right): Two years of planning culminated in about 10 seconds of solar eclipse totality for my family!

9/5/17 Smokey sky

Sept. 5, sun behind smoke-filled sky: A record number of wildfires have taken and endangered lives up and down the Pacific Coast this year. Smoke and ash from Central Washington filled the air around the Puget Sound area for many days. It was eerie to sketch an orange sun at 8:21 a.m. as if it were sunset – and to be able to look at it directly with my naked eyes, just as I did during the eclipse totality only weeks before.

10/28/17 Maples at Northgate

Oct. 28, maple trees at Northgate (right): Although some regions can count on gorgeous fall color each year, the Pacific Northwest is not one of them. All the conditions must have been right this year, though, because we had a particularly phenomenal autumn for color. I sketched trees whenever I could. This afternoon at Northgate was especially fun because Greg came with me, and he walked up and down the street with his camera as I sketched.

11/11/17 King Street Station

Nov. 11, King Street Station: Urban Sketchers celebrated its 10^th anniversary this year, culminating in a worldwide, 24-hour sketchcrawl Nov. 11. USk Seattle had record-breaking attendance, including our founder, Gabi Campanario, at King Street Station.

Hardy at Hing Hay Park

3/25/23 Hing Hay Park and King Street Station

I know I say this after nearly every outing, but USk Seattle is made of hardy stuff! The temperature was 35 F on cloudy Saturday morning at the International District’s Hing Hay Park, yet more than 30 turned out for it. By the throwdown, we were rewarded with full sunshine.

Although I’ve sketched the distinctive, modern Gateway many times, it’s hard to resist the bright red sculpture at the park’s entrance. This time, I walked (backward, as sketchers will do) up the street a ways so that I could put the iconic King Street Station tower behind it (at left).

That small sketch didn’t take too long, but after chatting a while with friends, I was thoroughly chilled. Across the street, I looked for a café with windows facing the park, and Go Poke fit the bill. Although I’ve had better poke, I can’t complain: A long row of window seats gave me a view of a park shelter with traditional Chinese tiled rooftops (below).

Hing Hay Park shelter from Go Poke

(In both sketches, I was a little annoyed that I had only my CMY-based primary triad. It’s a vibrant mix that I usually like, but I can’t get a good vermilion with this particular magenta/yellow combo. Although I’ve lately been getting into less realistic hues, especially when I use a secondary triad, some colors are important traditionally. I wished that I had remembered the park’s icons – it would have been easy enough to grab a vermilion pencil on my way out.)

3/25/23 Light rail riders

Violinist Vicki Ault

On my light rail rides to and from the International District, I sketched a few fellow riders. The best light rail sketch, though, was the surprise when I got off: A violinist and a pianist were performing at Roosevelt Station. I thought they were buskers, but their sign said they were with Bach in the Subways, which I learned is a worldwide program from March 21 – 31. The violinist I sketched was Vicki Ault (with Karin McCullough, pianist). How lucky Seattle is to take part in the delightful program – and serendipitous that I happened to be there at the right time.

Hardy as ever!