Market Color

10/9/17 Metropolitan Market, Wedgwood neighborhood

When I arrived at Metropolitan Market, it was early enough that I could choose nearly any parking spot I wanted. Several maples are planted there, so I picked a couple of the most colorful ones, then found the ideal spot across from them. I had a clear view when I started sketching, but of course, two cars pulled in shortly thereafter. (It’s the Murphy’s Law of urban sketching!) Even so, Metro Market is one of my favorite retail spots for fall color. Coincidentally, I sketched a few different trees in the same lot exactly a year ago. 

Technical note:  My tried-and-true method of using water-soluble colored pencils to sketch trees is to apply pencil pigment dry, and then spray lightly with water. I like the texture that method imparts. Most of the turning maples I’ve sketched this season were done that way. For the one above, I tried something different – more of a traditional watercolor technique. First I sprayed the paper lightly. Then I used a waterbrush to “lick” pigment from the pencil tips and apply it directly to the wet paper. This technique with pencils is just as tricky and difficult to control as it is with wet-in-wet watercolor paints. But in the case of trees, I love the uncontrolled effect.

Last Call for Peaches

 

8/30/21 Wedgwood neighborhood Metropolitan Market

Metropolitan Market always has the best peaches in town. During its annual Peach-o-Rama promotion, it’s a big deal to see how high the sugar content is on the “sucrometer.” “Our peach experts check the peaches daily to make sure we offer only the ripest peaches, bursting with sweetness. The higher the brix score, the more flavorful, aromatic, and sweet the peach.” The daily brix score is posted next to the peach display. Maybe it’s just marketing, but I don’t care – they really are the best.

In the Before-Vax Times, we didn’t shop at Metro Market at all, and we sorely missed Peach-o-Rama last year. We certainly made up for it this summer, though, and the peaches have been as good as ever.

Knowing that peach season would end soon, I was happy to still get some when I stopped in on Monday, but I was told it was probably the last week for Peach-o-Rama. The maples in the parking lot (which are on my annual leaf-peeping tour), already with more color than I expected, seemed to confirm that summer was over.

Technical note: In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I was nervous about putting my primary triad hues together for the darkest value, so I used black instead. For this sketch, I wanted the store interior under the awning to be as dark as possible without the bright hues overpowering the trees. Using only cyan and magenta worked OK, and avoiding water activation helped to keep the hues subdued. I’d like to get the tone darker, though.

This triad is going to be fun to use during my leaf-peeping tour this year! It’s a bit challenging to mix the right balance of cyan and yellow, but I love the cohesiveness of the simple palette.

Metropolitan Market Produce Section

3/15/13 Platinum Sepia ink, watercolor, Zig markers, Hand Book

Eager to try out my latest watercolor mixing palette, I went to a place where I knew I could get a big dose of color. The mezzanine level of the Sand Point Metropolitan Market looks down over the produce section. Color, indeed! And the new mixing palette works perfectly as I had hoped.

 

All is right with the sketching world.

 

Metropolitan Market Maple

 

10/13/22 Bryant neighborhood

The next stop on my leaf-peeping tour was the Sand Point Metropolitan Market, where a few slender, nicely placed maples give color to the parking lot each fall. Some years, they truly blaze. This year, they seem more subdued, with darker hues instead of brilliant red-orange and gold as they were at just about the same time of year in 2017. Instead of trying to put all of them into one composition as I often do, I picked out only the showiest one (and despite how conscious I try to be of composition, I got so dazzled by color that I ended up putting the tree smack-dab in the center).

Incidentally, this may have been the first time it was warm enough to sketch this tree from the sidewalk instead of from my car as is my usual practice by mid-October. We are breaking every record this year.

Blazing

10/3/18 Metropolitan Market parking lot, Wedgwood neighborhood

Every fall I wait with anticipation for the maples at Metropolitan Market to blaze. Sometimes I drive by even when I don’t have shopping to do, just to see how they’re doing. The last time I shopped there a week or so ago, they were only just beginning to turn, but on Wednesday afternoon they were on fire.

See my sketches of these same trees last year and the year before.

Just Peachy

 

7/26/23 Peachy in Maple Leaf

Although they would be neck-and-neck with strawberries, peaches may be my favorite summer fruit. Since I refuse to buy fruit that came on a truck from California or Mexico the rest of the year, I can get local peaches only for a few weeks each summer. Like strawberries and sakura blossoms, they are fleeting seasonal jewels.

I’ve sometimes blogged about Metropolitan Market’s Peach-o-Rama peaches (available right now), which are the best I’ve ever eaten, but I rarely sketch those peaches because they don’t last long in our kitchen before we breathe them down. In recent weeks, however, I’ve been watching peaches grow on a nearby neighbor’s sidewalk tree. Although the tree has been there for years, it hasn’t always grown fruit as abundantly as this year. We must have had just the right spring conditions of temperature and rain. Not yet ripe, they are just beginning to show a pink blush, so I stopped one morning to sketch one.

Although I was tempted to eat one, I’m perfectly happy with just a sketch. And now, off to Metropolitan Market!

Metro Market Maples (and My Dry Pencil A-Ha Moment)

 

9/25/23 Metro Market parking lot, Wedgwood neighborhood

The slender parking-lot maples at Metropolitan Market are on my annual leaf-peeping tour because they often turn a brilliant, fiery red or at least bright orange and yellow. But this year they seem to be dull brownish-orange, and some are half-bare already. Our dry summer took its toll on trees.

My pencil a-ha moment: Last year I went through a couple of phases when I wanted to use dry colored pencils to work on specific experiments, like optical color mixing and secondary triads. In the field, however, I always feel like they are slower and less efficient to use than watercolor pencils: Activating them with water is the fastest, most efficient way to intensify color. And yet I’d like to learn to be more efficient with dry colored pencils because I’m so intrigued by their optical-mixing potential (an effect that gets lost when colors blend fluidly).

So I’m in that phase again. Since we have begun moving head-on into the rainy season, I’ll be sketching more from my mobile studio and coffee shops, which is a good opportunity to bring along different media. I filled my larger Sendak pencil roll with a careful selection of 13 Caran d’Ache Luminance and Derwent Lightfast colored pencils. To select colors, I used the same strategy as for my daily-carry watercolor pencils (described in my recent sketch kit update post).

This is the way the sketch looked before
I intensified the colors later at home.

When I stopped working on the sketch at left (from my mobile studio in the rain), I was disappointed by the wimpy colors and contrasts. Using an A6-size Uglybook (in white! Shocking, right?), I worked for about as long as I usually do in an A6 Hahnemühle with watercolor pencils, but I couldn’t get the colors to be as intense without the extra umph of water that I’ve come to depend on.

Normally I don’t fuss with a sketch after I leave the location, but the pencils had put me in experimental mode: Using the same pencils at home, I hit the page hard with color (never recommended, by the way, by colored pencils artists) until I got the degree of intensity and contrast I wanted (top of post) – and it only took another minute or two! Why couldn’t I do that in the car?

The answer is that at home, I had a hard desk surface, which made it much easier to apply color with the pressure I needed. My Hahnemühle has a hardcover, which gives me the same support while standing. But the Uglybook has a softcover, and in the car I didn’t have a hard surface for support. Although I use Uglybooks constantly while standing, I almost always use markers, which don’t require pressure. A-ha – a light bulb moment!

I looked around and found a small clipboard of the right size – and like the Uglybook, it fits in the Sendak’s largest pockets. Now I have a firm surface like a desk to slam the color down hard. Let’s see if this is the trick I need to make dry pencils work for me on location. If it does, I’ll look forward to brightening the blah, wet weather ahead with optical color mixing experiments.

Sendak fully loaded in my mobile studio.

Color at Metro Market

10/13/14 Platinum Carbon and Pilot Iroshizuku Kiri-same
inks, watercolor, Caran d'Ache Museum water-soluble
colored pencil, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

At the Sand Point Metropolitan Market where we were doing our weekly shopping this morning, I saw that the maples in the parking lot were still not quite at their peak of color, but at least one of them was already empty of leaves at its very top. I considered bringing my sketchbook next week, but I realized that might be too late. Time’s a wastin’!

I took an afternoon break and drove back to Metro Market. A heavy cloud cover threatened rain, but the temperature was still comfortable, so I brought my coffee to an outdoor table facing the lot. Just as I was hoping for some shadows, the clouds parted for a few seconds – exactly long enough. (I’ve lately had a knack for wishing for something to come into view for a sketch, and suddenly, there it is! At last, a useful superpower!)

Chatting, Sketching and a Colorful Lunch

2/9/24 Rainbow roll and people at Metro Market, Crown Hill neighborhood

Metropolitan Market (the small local chain where I sometimes shop and also sketch the lovely parking lot maples in the fall) opened a new store in the Crown Hill neighborhood. A major benefit of this store over the one closer to my ‘hood is that it has a huge seating area. When I popped in last week to check it out, I knew it would make a great social sketch location: Excellent natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows, lots of tables, and even some bar seating facing the windows.

Ching, Natalie and I met up there on Friday. Famished, I could barely hold off on devouring my rainbow roll, but who could resist sketching such a colorful meal? Afterwards, I swiveled around to sketch the view out the window, all the while cracking up at the hilarious workplace story Ching was telling. Metro Market is a keeper for winter social sketching!

Metro Market Maples

10/6/20 Metro Market parking lot, Wedgwood neighborhood

Metropolitan Market was one of our favorite food stores in the Before Time. Though pricey, it offers good produce, a great takeout/deli area, and locally made products that we can’t get anywhere else. Sadly, it doesn’t offer delivery or pickup services, so we haven’t shopped there since March 10 (feeling extremely uneasy, I remember that shopping trip vividly; it was the last time I shopped inside any store).   

Besides the food, another reason I enjoyed shopping there in the fall is that several slender maples are planted in the parking lot – a regular stop on my personal leaf-peeping tour. The color this season is much later than it has been in previous years. The sketch above was made on Oct. 6. Three years ago, I sketched the same trees, probably from the same street parking spot, on Oct. 16 (shown below; here’s the full blog post), and they all had much more red and hardly any green. I’ll go back in a few weeks to see if I can catch them in their full glory as I did in 2017.

10/16/17

Cheap, Idle Pen Throwdown: Petit1 and Preppy with Carbon Ink

Pilot Petit1 Mini (left) and Platinum Preppy

What is it with cheap fountain pens?

A while back I noticed the ridiculously inexpensive fountain pens on the market, even from highly regarded manufacturers that also make high-end pens. Are they just a way to bring in a new audience used to buying rollerballs and ballpoints for a few bucks? Or could they possibly be any good?

I had to find out. I used the under-$10 sorting on JetPens.com and picked out some Platinum Preppys and Pilot Petit1 Minis for less than $4 each. (I also got a Pilot Plumix for $7.25, but its tiny, annoying screw-on cap kept me from using it beyond the first scribble.) Both the Preppy and the Petit1 Mini turned out to be solid sketching and writing pens (although I found the Preppys to have inconsistent nib quality: Of the five I bought, three had good nibs, and two were scratchy). If luring in fresh victims to the fountain pen market is the goal, I’d say these inexpensive starters are probably successful.

But that’s not why I’m writing about the Preppy and Petit1 Mini today. That they write decently wasn’t too much of a surprise (they come from good manufacturers, after all). The real surprise came when I had unintentionally tested the Petit1 for idleness – leaving it ink-filled and unused for nearly a year yet discovering it could write as smoothly as the day I filled it. That got me curious, so I ran a more formal test of the Petit1 and found it to be a great idle pen (just as good as the more expensive Pilot Metropolitan, which continually beats my Lamys in idleness field tests).

All of this is preamble to today’s test results, which are about waterproof Platinum Carbon Black ink – a tough ink in terms of idleness. The same pigment-based qualities that make the ink excellent to use with water media also tend to clog up fountain pens. Because I use Platinum Carbon regularly in the field, I don’t usually leave a pen filled with it idle for long, but occasionally the one on my desk gets left unused for a couple of weeks at a time, so it was worth testing. Here’s what I did:

On Feb. 7, 2014, I filled a Platinum Preppy and a Pilot Petit1 Mini with Platinum Carbon ink. I stored both in a cup, nib pointing up, and left them untouched until yesterday, Feb. 21, when I wrote with each. The Preppy stuttered a bit at first, but it was still able to write immediately. I gave the pen a shake (the cartridge contains an agitator), and it smoothed out considerably – completely, actually. I could write with it without flushing it at all.

The Petit1 tested even more impressively: not scratchy or skippy at all, even on the first stroke! That’s two full weeks of standing upright with waterproof ink in it! For $3.80!

So what is it about cheap pens that makes them perform unexpectedly well in terms of idleness? Maybe the manufacturers want them to appeal to those ballpoint/rollerball crossovers, so they know the pens have to be idle-ready? I’m curious, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The upshot is that in circumstances when I might need to keep a pen idle for a while (a spare while traveling, in my fitness-walking bag, in my studio during the summer when I hardly sketch indoors), these under-$4 pens will be my go-to’s.

Here’s the full list of my recent idle fountain pen tests and related product reviews referenced above:

Beating the Idle Fountain Pen Blues: The Pilot Petit1

Product Review: Pilot Metropolitan

Pilot Metropolitan: Idleness Update

Fountain Pen Idleness Updates: Pilot Metropolitan and Petit1

Updated 6/21/14: It’s official: Both the Preppy and the Petit1 have idle times that are practically indefinite, and the Petit1 is the all-time champ! Both have been filled with Platinum Carbon ever since my test in February, standing nib end up in a cup since then, completely forgotten. Today I saw them and gave each a scribble, expecting them to be completely dried up. The Preppy stuttered just a bit at first, just like it did during my test – but after that, it was as smooth as ever. The Petit1? Smooth from the very first scribble, no stutter at all. I’d say that’s stellar performance for a fountain pen that costs less than than 4 bucks!

#OneWeek100People2022: Live!

 

3/7/22 Northgate Light Rail Station from the John Lewis pedestrian bridge

One Week 100 People, the annual sketching challenge initiated by Marc Holmes and Liz Steel, has always been one of my favorites. It’s a fun opportunity to work on my people-sketching chops while seeing other sketchers’ work online. Since its inception in 2017, I haven’t missed a year. Although the challenge rules include drawing from photos, I always prefer drawing from life. Using photos invites spending too much time on a single drawing. When you know you have to do a hundred of them, it’s easiest and most efficient to simply capture people in public going about their business.

The 2020 challenge has a strong emotional connotation for me. One Week 100 People was to begin just as news of COVID was becoming increasingly alarming. We had planned an Urban Sketchers outing for the purpose of participating in the challenge, but by the time the outing rolled around, we had serious concerns. The other admins and I went back and forth about whether we should cancel or go forward. Ultimately, we went ahead with it, and I participated, but not without trepidation. As it turned out, that outing was USk Seattle’s last for 15 long months.

One of 58 selfies from 2021

Last year COVID continued to take the fun out of the challenge. Not feeling safe in places where I might see enough people to draw a hundred, I decided to make self-portraits using a mirror. I only made it to 58, but I learned plenty (and gave myself a giggle or guffaw each day). Although it wasn’t my favorite way to do the challenge, it was still worthwhile as a drawing exercise.

As I started seeing announcements from Marc and Liz for this year’s challenge, I was still not feeling completely comfortable going into crowds, but I felt safe enough in outdoor spaces. I zipped up my jacket, straightened my hat and declared that One Week 100 People was on! Usually I give myself additional goals (besides hitting 100). This year, however, my people-sketching skills were so rusty, and I was so thrilled just to be back at it, that I decided to give myself a break. I would be happy enough if I simply captured 100 gestures from life, even if they were nothing more than glorified stick figures.

Although the official first day was Monday, March 7, I got started on the Saturday before (a “week” is seven days long, right?) because I wanted a busy weekend day at Metropolitan Market. In the parking lot, I nabbed 24 victims rushing to and from their cars with groceries.

On Monday, which turned out to be cold and windy, I invited USk Seattle to join me at Northgate Light Rail Station. Only one other sketcher showed up, but we had fun catching the steady stream of commuters going into and out of the main station entrance. Standing on the John Lewis Memorial pedestrian bridge, I was hoping to get a few more people near the upper-level entrance, but only one made it into my sketch (top of page). The wind was biting up there! That took care of 25 through 47.

Joyce and Tina at Northgate Light Rail Station

Tuesday was a scattered, busy day of errands and appointments, so I got only a few more. I made a quick stop at Volunteer Park, which was empty that drizzly afternoon, but I knew that people always stop for photos near Isamu Noguchi’s sculpture, Black Sun.

On Wednesday I was meeting a friend to walk around Green Lake, so I arrived a little early to catch a few more people. My challenge there was to draw the legs and arms of runners so that they look different from walkers.

The weather report was sunny for Thursday, so USk Seattle scheduled a sketch outing at Volunteer Park – our first in-person outing since December. So much for the promised sunshine – it was cloudy and cold. I had really hoped (and expected) to finish my hundred at the park, but I only got 66 through 84 – not to mention chilled to the bone! Even so, it was fun to be out with the group again.

Friday was my last chance, and you know me – I was going to finish, come hell or high water. Right after breakfast, I headed out to the PCC Market parking lot, which is much smaller than the Metro Market lot. It meant that I could park facing the entrance and get a better view of shoppers going in and out of their cars and the store. It took me all week to warm up, but I felt like I was finally hitting my stride. I finished off my last 16 in a half-hour and then did a couple more for good measure.

Whew! It was like running a marathon without training first! Though I was creaky and out of practice, there’s nothing like the endorphin rush of trying to keep up with moving people. It was the most sketching fun I’ve had in months!

First Stop: Metro Market

 

9/22/21 Wedgwood neighborhood

My personal leaf-peeping tour has begun in earnest! It seems early this year, but maybe I say that every year . . . it’s probably more a reflection on my reluctance to let summer go than nature’s actual timetable.

First stop: the maples in the Wedgwood neighborhood’s Metropolitan Market parking lot. These are not the same trees I sketched at the end of August (sadly, those are half-bald already). I looked back through my sketches to see if I had captured these same maples another year. Sketched from a different angle, the trees in this post from 2018 are likely the same ones, as they are in front of the fire station. That was two weeks later in the year, so I suppose they are turning at about the same rate this year.

Technical note: When I pick a focal point for a composition, I usually do a decent job of staying focused. I admit I was a bit distracted on this one, however. Obviously, I wanted to sketch the trees, but the ever-changing pattern of cars was fun to chase, too. Maybe some dreary winter day when the trees are bare, I’ll park in the same spot and sketch the layers and layers of diagonally parked cars instead.

Personal Leaf-Peeping Tour

10/16/17 Wedgwood neighborhood

Strong winds and rain are in the forecast for the rest of the week, so I figured yesterday may have been my last chance to sketch the spectacular color we are having. In a few days all the leaves may fall off or turn brown and soggy, so it was now or possibly never.

10/16/17 Green Lake

First I went to Green Lake to sketch my favorite stand of maples that I sketch every year, but I was surprised to find that they weren’t yet at peak. (I’m going to take my chances and give them a couple more weeks.) Instead, I was fully dazzled by all the many yellow-green trees around the lake that are trying to steal the show from the maples. I didn’t know what these trees are called, so I put out the question on Instagram, and one of my friends thought it might be a honey locust. I think that could be correct – when I Googled for images, the leaves looked right, and it’s common in the Pacific Northwest.

After that, I went back to the Metropolitan Market where I keep sketching the same flaming maples (top of page). This time I parked on the street instead of in the lot so I could get all three of the brightest, boldest, most showy trees. (The right-most tree in the sketch above is shown in the photo, below, that I took Sunday afternoon when I was there to shop and didn’t have time to sketch.) 

I hope my readers in the northern hemisphere are enjoying as much seasonal color as I am! 

10/16/17 honey locust leaf

On fire at Metro Market!

No Peaches

8/15/22 Burke-Gilman Park

Metropolitan Market is where I go to get fantastic peaches every August. With Peach-o-Rama well under way, I eagerly hopped over there last week, only to learn that they were out (at least for a few days). Disappointed, I walked over to the park behind the parking lot, which I learned is called Burke-Gilman Park. Lovely backlit trees to sketch from a cool, shady spot: Not a bad consolation prize.

Color note: As you can see, I’ve resumed my summer primary triad (and the colors in my “normal” palette). It was fun and challenging to use Beya Rebaï’s colors, but I knew it wouldn’t last. It’s not that I don’t like the colors, but I kept feeling like I was borrowing someone else’s sketch kit. It made me realize how personal color selection is.

Two Rebai-inspired colors that I'm retaining for now.

I did, however, keep a couple of pencils in my bag for now: Apricot (041) and Genuine Cobalt Blue (662). A warm and a cool tint that were new to me, they have made me think differently about how I color white buildings, so they are worth hanging onto for now. If I don’t use them by the next time I clean out my bag, they will be jettisoned.

Mostly Sweet

9/27/16 water-soluble colored pencils, ink

Once I get out of denial and accept the end of summer, I fully embrace fall; it has always been my favorite season. (It’s only been since I began sketching that I’ve had ambivalence about it.) Brilliant foliage; cloudy mornings that burn off to sunny afternoons warm enough to take the top down; the return of salted caramel mochas: What’s not to love?

Last year on Labor Day weekend I sketched some slender maples in Metropolitan Market’s parking lot when they were still mostly green, so I wondered what they looked like now. Shopping there on Monday, I saw that they were showing a full palette of hues – everything from dark green to yellow to orange to crimson and magenta. I went back the next day and sketched them with the top down. Autumn is bittersweet – but on that day, it was mostly sweet.

What’s the color palette in your part of the world?

Basement Stairway Construction

 

9/11/24 Metropolitan Market, Crown Hill neighborhood

Just like urban sketching reflects where we live and where we travel, the contents of sketch journals and diary comics reflect whatever is going on in our day-to-day lives. I’m probably stating the obvious: While I usually find it challenging to maintain a sketch journal when my life is ordinary, my pages are prolific on days when a lot is happening. Even when I’m so busy with the “lot happening” that I hardly have time to sketch, I always find time to document what I want to remember about the day. The visual elements don’t necessarily even illustrate the activities; instead, they indicate the break I took to record.

On this day, I was moving all my clothes and shoes from my closet to another room (where they were piled in a heap on the floor) so that the carpet could be removed and replaced with new flooring. Meanwhile, a contractor was noisily rebuilding our basement stairway. When he warned me that in a few moments he would be doing something that would sound like six gunshots, I decided it was time to leave for a lunch break.

(By the way, when all of this is done, I plan to make a post showing before/after photos of these home-improvement projects that have been occupying my time.)

Color note: As simple as it looks, that cup of coffee was a fun color-mixing challenge. I stopped carrying brown in any medium years ago, so if I need brown, I must mix it. Since the paper was green, all I needed was dark purple and orange – my all-purpose secondary triad.