Lightning Sketches

6/16/14 Pilot Iroshizuku Take-Sumi and Diamine Grey inks, Sailor pen, water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper (Arboretum)

We’re having fun playing tourist this week while a guest is visiting from out of town. This is when being able to sketch fast comes in especially handy. I let the others get a little ahead of me while I sketched, and then I caught up with them. Except the top sketch, which took about 15 minutes, all the rest took literally a few minutes each.

Yesterday morning was wet and cold, so we explored the Burke Museum’s many natural treasures (yesterday’s post has one more sketch from the Burke, which took about 10 minutes). We took advantage of the sun in the afternoon to visit the Washington Park Arboretum and Seattle Japanese Garden.

Stay tuned for more lightning sketches.

6/16/14 Pilot Iroshizuku Take-Sumi and Diamine Grey inks,
water-soluble colored pencils, Zig marker (Japanese Garden)

6/16/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink,
Sailor pen (dried seahorse,
Burke Museum)

6/16/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink
(fish skeleton, Burke Museum)

6/16/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink
(ginkgo leaf fossil, Burke Museum)

6/16/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink
(sabertooth foot, Burke Museum)

A Rainy Morning at the Burke

3/15/15 Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored
pencils, Iroshizuku Asa-gao ink, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Planning a sketch outing in March is always iffy. Chances are good that it will rain, so scheduling an outdoor location would be pushing our luck. But chances are just as good that it will be warm and dry enough to sketch outdoors. At the Burke Museum on the University of Washington campus, we could hedge our bets: If the sun shone, the cherry blossoms on the Quad would be irresistible. If it rained, the Burke would be full of sketchable treasures.

I can safely say that all 20+ (maybe close to 30?) Seattle Urban Sketchers chose to sketch inside the Burke this morning, resulting in many delightful sketches of dinosaurs and human history artifacts.

By now I think I’ve sketched all of the Burke’s complete animal skeletons in the regular exhibits (someday I’ll finish every skull, femur and other individual bones), including the enormous mastodon. The first time I sketched it was nearly two years ago (which, according to my blog that day, was one of the first sketches made with my now-favorite Sailor fude pen). About a year ago, I sketched just its head and amazing tusks.

3/15/15 Caran d'Ache Museum pencils, Iroshizuku Asa-gao ink

Today I spent the bulk of my time sketching a slightly different angle of the mastodon, and instead of my favorite pen, I tried colored pencils. As usual, I didn’t scale my sketch accurately, so I ran out of room for its feet! Like the time I sketched the stegosaurus and had to put its tail tip on a separate page, I decided to start a new sketch and give the mastodon’s feet equal time.

To kill the last 20 minutes before our sharing time, I went out to the main reception area to sketch a long view of the Paraphysornis brasilienis. It may be one of my favorite prehistoric skeletons at the Burke; with a nickname like “Terror Bird of Brazil,” who could resist?

Many thanks to the Burke Museum for sponsoring Seattle Urban Sketchers’ visit today!

3/15/15 Diamine Sargasso Sea ink, Caran d'Ache Museum pencil

New and Much Improved Burke Museum

11/1/19 Columbian mammoth exhibit, Burke Museum

The Burke Museum has been one of my favorite indoor locations for almost as long as I’ve been sketching. Whenever I got my car serviced nearby, I would dash over for an hour or so and sketch an artifact or two; I think I sketched almost all the large skeletons at least once, sometimes more, and some small fossils. The museum had been closed for about a year while its new facility was being completed and everything moved in, and I really missed it.

Who has a bigger mouth?

The new Burke finally reopened a few weeks ago, and the long wait was worth it! Spacious, well-lighted and with many more artifacts on display than they ever had room for before, the University of Washington’s world-class museum is three floors of natural and human history exhibits focused on the Pacific Northwest. What a sketcher’s delight!

Although my sketching interests tend to stay on the animal exhibits – what is it about drawing prehistoric skeletons that is so much fun!? – but the human history exhibits of native cultures are also fascinating.  

Last Friday’s visit was only a cursory run-through so I could plan future sketching objectives. I’ll be back again soon and often. Perhaps this winter won’t be so hard to endure after all!

I recall sketching this stegosaur a few years ago and not being able to fit the whole thing in my sketchbook!

Paleontologists and other scientists at work are visible
in many areas.

Biology exhibit

Big bones!

An Urban Sketching Event at the Burke

4/18/15 Sailor Doyou  and Iroshizuku Kiri-same inks,
Caran d'Ache Museum colored pencil, Canson XL

Urban Sketchers Seattle enjoyed sketching at the Burke Museum so much in March that we went back for more. This time we were invited by the Burke to create an event that would encourage other visitors to sketch at the museum, too. The Burke provided sketching materials and a clothespin line where participants could hang their work. It was tough competing with 65 degrees and sunshine outside, but the museum managed to entice a few visitors indoors.

As usual, I spent most of my time hanging out with the bones – a sabertooth cat, a polar bear skull, and my favorite, the Brazilian Terror Bird. I also captured a girl sketching at a table near our clothesline “exhibit.”

Thanks to all the sketchers who volunteered today, and many thanks to the Burke for inviting us to this event! (For more photos of the event, see my post on the USk Seattle blog.)

4/18/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown and Iroshizuku Kiri-same inks, Museum pencil

4/18/15 Iroshizuku Asa-gao and Iroshizuku Tsukushi inks, Museum pencils

4/18/15 Caran d'Ache Museum pencil,
mix of gray inks

4/18/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi and Kiri-same inks, colored pencil, copier paper
(I left this sketch of a skull fragment hanging in our "exhibit"!)

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.

Bye-Bye, Burke

3/29/19 Old Burke Museum building being demolished.

While I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opening of the brand new Burke Museum this fall, I somehow missed the news that the old Burke building, built in 1962, was being torn down. I thought it would be cleaned up and repurposed – or maybe that was just wishful thinking. In any case, as I walked across the University of Washington campus last Friday on my way to the cherry blossoms on the Quad, I was flabbergasted to see that the old Burke was being demolished. While the gaping foundation still stood in the background, an excavator was building a mountain of debris in the museum’s former parking lot.

As many times as I have sketched the skeletons and other natural artifacts inside the Burke, especially on rainy days while my car was being serviced nearby (it was my favorite way to kill that oil-changing time), I had never sketched the building itself. And all those years that I had walked by the Burke when I was a UW student suddenly flashed before my eyes. Filled with regret, I felt obliged to at least sketch its remains even as they were being heaped into dump trucks.

I must admit, though, that sketching an excavator helped to ease my grief. In fact, I decided that’s where all the action was, so I sketched it again with a bit more detail.

3/29/19 Where the action is!

The Burke Nearly to Ourselves

 

2/14/24 Mastodon replica, Burke Museum

2/14/24 Columbian Mammoth

The last time USk Seattle met at the Burke Museum was right before the pandemic hit, so it was high time for us to visit again. I started on the top floor where all the paleontology labs are and some of the museum’s best specimens, like the Columbian Mammoth. I’ve sketched it from the other side before, so this time I focused on the skull and those incredibly long tusks (at left).

Next I looked through one of the lab windows to sketch a grizzly bear skull (below). A former Woodland Park Zoo resident, the bear was being cleaned and preserved.

2/14/24 Grizzly bear skull

My last stop was the Mastodon replica. The first time I sketched it was from the staircase above. Spotting Janet in a corner, I went to the opposite side of the gallery so that I could capture her in the composition and show the scale of the enormous beast (top of post).

On most visits, the museum has been filled with young students on field trips. On this Wednesday afternoon, we sketchers had the place nearly to ourselves, which was an unusual treat. The Burke is back on our list as a winter-weather standby!

Another Sketchbook Project Begins, Plus a Plug for NARM

10/17/ 13 Diamine Eclipse ink, Sailor pen, Sketchbook Project booklet

Only a few minutes’ walk from the place where I take my car to get its oil changed, the Burke Museum is an ideal place to kill an hour with my sketchbook (much better than waiting in that stuffy little room drinking weak coffee and using weak Wi-Fi). I decided it was also an ideal place to initiate my 2014 Sketchbook Project sketchbook. As a participant last year, I had fun filling the little sketchbook, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to participate again – until I heard that Arthouse Coop is going to take the exhibit to the Pacific Northwest in 2014, including Seattle. I couldn’t resist that, could I? I signed up again.

Last year I chose the theme “Strangers” and filled the book with mostly “floating head” sketches of people in coffee shops or riding the bus. I haven’t decided on a theme yet, but since I’ll still be working on it during the Fall and Winter, I’ll probably be sketching indoors most of the time. I’m sure I’ll still have lots of sketches of people, but maybe I’ll widen my scope to include other heads, such as skulls.

In any case, I didn’t give it much thought this afternoon at the Burke – I just pulled out the Sketchbook Project sketchbook because it was in my bag (I’ll carry it with me daily until it’s full – the best way to make sure I don’t forget to use it) and sketched a polar bear skull on page 1. Last year I discovered immediately that the thin paper in the booklet can’t take a wash, so as before, I’m not going to use watercolor in it. But the smooth surface is nice under fountain pens and markers.

10/17/13 Diamine Eclipe ink, Strathmore 400 140 lb. paper

Having initiated the Sketchbook Project booklet, I used my “Stefano” for a couple more sketches: the same polar bear skull from a different angle and a rear paw of a Hoplophoneus skeleton (which I sketched in its entirety earlier this year). 

By the way, if you’re wondering how I can afford the luxury of popping into a museum for only an hour, please indulge me for a moment as I step onto my favorite soapbox: the reciprocal museum program. My spouse-guy and I already had an annual membership to the Bellevue Arts Museum. We learned that if we paid only $10 more to upgrade to the next level of benefits, we would get free admission to hundreds of other museums in North America, including several local ones where I enjoy sketching, such as the Burke and the Museum of History and Industry. When we travel, we look at the list of participating museums to see if we’ll be nearby one of them. It’s an amazing value, and you support a whole network of museums in the U.S. Canada and Mexico. OK, end of soapbox. But don’t forget to check out the North American Reciprocal Museum Association’s list to see if you can take advantage of this great deal.

10/17/13 Diamine Eclipe ink, Strathmore 400 140 lb. paper

Mastodon

1/19/20 Mastodon replica, Burke Museum

Somehow the mastodon always calls to me. I’ve sketched it at the Burke Museum numerous times, but I never seem to tire of it. At the old facility, the big guy stood at the end of a dark, narrow exhibit area, so it was difficult to get any angle but head-on. In the Burke’s new digs, the replica of the 10,000-year-old skeleton guards the museum’s lower-floor entrance flooded with natural light. Looking down from the lobby stairway, this was my first attempt at sketching its entire length and girth in profile.

I love drawing all those bones, for sure, but capturing the sheer scale of this formidable monster is the real challenge: I used a full spread in my sketchbook this time, but I still didn’t have room for the tail. But at least I managed to get Suzanne and David in.

The Burke’s Irresistible Skeletons

 

1/4/26 Columbian mammoth, Burke Museum

I’ve sketched at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum many times, both at the old building and the current one, and I never seem to tire of the paleontology area. Who could resist the skeletons of huge creatures that have been extinct for literally eons? Apparently, no one: The prehistoric animal skeletons were by far the most-sketched artifacts at Sunday’s USk Seattle outing.

Although I’ve sketched the Columbian mammoth nearly every time I’ve visited the new building, it’s not necessarily because it’s my favorite (although it is one). Many of the smaller skeletons are backlit by the Burke’s floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes them harder to draw. I really wanted to use my black sketchbook that day, so I walked around to get the lighted side of its skull and amazingly enormous tusks (top of post).

Walking down to the lower-level entrance where the Burke’s mascot mastodon greets visitors (another favorite exhibit that I’ve sketched many times), I looked up at the Baird’s bearded whale skeleton hanging high above us all. I didn’t scale my sketch very well to accurately show how huge it is compared to Andika, who was sketching the mastodon on the floor below.

Baird's beaked whale's tail and Andika

In the time remaining before the throwdown, I needed something I could capture relatively quickly. From the stairway landing below the third floor, I looked up again, this time spotting the Elasmosaur replica hanging from the ceiling.

After the outing, I joined a few friends for lunch at nearby Café on the Ave. I was too hungry to sketch my food (which was a delicious salmon eggs Benedict made with a croissant instead of the traditional English muffin; regrettably, I didn’t even photograph it), but after I was full, I caught my friends.

Lunch at Cafe on the Ave

The Whole Stegosaur

10/14/14 Sailor Jentle Doyou ink, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble colored pencils, Canson XL 140 lb. paper (stegosaur)

I hate to say it, but I think the outdoor-sketching season is over for the year. To initiate the start of indoor-sketching season, I headed over to one of my favorite places, the Burke Museum, where I had a long-delayed appointment with a stegosaur.

Back in March 2013, I took a 4-by-6-inch sketchbook to the Burke, so I sketched only the stegosaur’s head and one foot – all I could fit on those pages. I had vowed to return someday to sketch the whole cast replica of the huge, plant-eating beast. Although I’ve been back to the Burke several times since then, I got distracted by other, equally fascinating beasts, such as the elasmosaur I sketched last March. This morning I had the dinosaur exhibit nearly to myself, so I decided it was time.

The tip of the stegosaur's tail sketched
on another page.

I had my usual sketchbook paper, which opens out to a 9-by-12 spread. A couple of college-age art students joined me in the exhibit with their 18-by-24 drawing pads, and I started regretting that I didn’t bring something similar. Although I tried to scale my sketch carefully, I had a bad feeling I wouldn’t be able to fit the whole thing on the spread. Sure enough, when I got to the very tip of its tail, I ran out of space, so I had to use another page (one of these days I’ll learn how to stitch images together in Photoshop and make a complete skeleton).

I recall hearing a docent say that the plates on a stegosaur’s back are the size of a stop sign. As I sketched, I kept wondering how an animal so large could function with such a tiny, tiny head?

Pondering these and other thoughts, I was interrupted about 45 minutes into the sketch by a museum staff person who came by to let us know that in 15 minutes, about 90 fifth graders would be visiting the museum. “Thank you for the warning,” I said, and I made sure I was done by then!

10/14/14 Sailor Jentle Doyou and Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun inks
(pig's jaw)

I still had some time left on my parking meter. With the sound of 180 fifth-grade feet stampeding toward the exhibit, I made a beeline to a quieter room. As I sketched a pig’s jaw, I marveled at how similar its molars were to mine. 

Triceratops

 

4/20/22 Triceratops cast, Burke Museum

It’s been a long time since I visited the Burke Museum – more than two years, in fact. The last time was with USk Seattle when I took on the enormous mastodon replica at the museum’s lower entrance. I wasn’t quite so ambitious during our visit last week – I made a quick sketch of a triceratops skull – but it was good to be back among all the ancient bones and eons of biological history.

Cornish College Celebrated at Cascadia Art Museum

2/5/16 ink, colored pencils (marionettes made of kitchen ware by R. Bruce Inverarity)

The Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds has a new exhibit called “Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Centennial Tribute to Nellie Cornish and the Cornish College of the Arts.” Greg had an appointment in Edmonds, so I tagged along and had him drop me off there. It’s a well-organized exhibit of the visual and performance arts school in honor of its 100^th anniversary.

Costume sketches

While I enjoyed viewing the paintings of mid-century northwest artists like Mark Tobey who were associated with Cornish, I was especially attracted to the small selection of sketches and sketchbooks that were included in the show. Most of the sketches were made as part of designing costumes for Cornish dance and drama performances. Maybe because I enjoy the creative process more than the finished product, I found it intriguing to view works-in-progress or half-baked concepts being worked out on the page.

Costume sketches by Mark Tobey

Cornish had the first marionette department in the country. My first sketch (top of page) was of an exhibit I was immediately attracted to: a stage set for “Z-739,” a surrealist marionette production by R. Bruce Inverarity in 1928. The marionettes were made of found pieces of kitchen ware – a cheese grater, some funnels, a strainer, a couple of bottle brushes!

My second sketch was of a sculpture made of cedar by George Tsutakawa called “Day Dream.” After that, I went through the museum more slowly and eventually made my way into a room of Ebba Rapp’s work, where I had several sculptures to choose from. Greg came to pick me up before I finished, but I started a sketch of “Rumor,” a humorous, two-sided sculpture of someone passing along some gossip. The photo shows one side, and when you walk around to the other side, the rumor is being passed on again.

It was a fine way to spend another cold winter morning! (If you have a museum membership that includes the North American Reciprocal Museum Association benefit – mine is through the Burke Museum – admission is free.)

2/5/16 colored pencils ("Day Dream" by George Tsutakawa)

"Rumor," a two-sided sculpture by
Ebba Rapp