Ready

8/24/15 ink, watercolor, colored pencil

Around this time of year each year, I start seeing signs of the season of Denial. That’s when I’m not ready to see summer come to an end, but the trees keep reminding me that fall is closer than I want to believe it is.

This year, however, I’m OK with letting summer go, if only because it was one of the longest on record. Since June we’ve enjoyed week after week of sunshine, clear skies, and record-breaking heat and consecutive rainless days. This isn’t as good as it sounds – drought and treacherous wildfires continue to devastate the region. Even as I feel terrible for the loss of life and damage this weather has caused, I’m also grateful for and joyful about the best outdoor-sketching season ever.

I’ve been seeing trees tinged with yellow and orange for several weeks now. Instead of turning, some look downright scorched. These maples in my neighborhood near Lake City Way are still mostly green, but the tips of the branches have that tired, faded look. Weary of all the heat and sun, they’re ready for some good ol’ Pacific Northwest rain. So am I. 

Two Sketchbooks Bound

My Chicago sketchbook

My sketchbook from my week in Chicago is thin – only two signatures of 16 pages each – but it’s thick with memories. As I did last year with my UK and Manchester symposium sketchbook, I bound the symposium program right into the sketchbook between the two signatures. On the covers are two of my favorite street scenes – the El tracks at Wabash and Congress, and Michican Street looking out toward the pointy blue Two Prudential Tower.

The symposium program is bound right into the book between the two signatures.

While I had my bookbinding supplies out, I also stitched together my signatures from May through the beginning of August, including our short trip to the Twin Cities. On the covers are the walrus on the Arctic Building sketched at the beginning of summer and the construction going on outside our Minneapolis hotel. Looking back through the sketches as I bound the book, I have to say it’s been a great season! 

If you detect a bit of wistfulness, it’s because I’ve been seeing traces of yellow and orange in some trees just lately. At the first signs of fall, some years I either panic or go into denial; other times I’m ready to let summer go. This year I feel mostly the latter: We had one of the best summers on record, weather-wise, and I sketched the heck out of it. (And now we could certainly use the rain.) Still, the outdoor-sketching season is always shorter than I want it to be, so the waning days of summer are also bittersweet.

My sketchbook from May through early August

Jack is Back

9/13/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Jack is back! Jack Skellington, that is – Maple Leaf’s celebrity pumpkin. A couple of years ago, the 969-pound pumpkin was featured on KING 5 Evening, a local variety TV show. Kate and I sketched him during the weighing-in event that turned out to be Maple Leaf’s highlight of the year. Last year I sketched Jack’s successor, who didn’t grow quite as large and eventually succumbed to too much love (sitting and touching by visitors).

Jack’s grower has been busy cultivating the next-gen Jack. When they were featured in our community newsletter, I knew it was time to sketch him. He was under 700 pounds at his most recent weigh-in, but he still has a lot of growing to do before Halloween. I’ll be ready.

Material notes: My annual season of denial is over, and I’ve fully embraced fall – which  means I’ve put color back into my bag! As much as I love making comics pages in Uglybooks, I’ve been jonesin’ for full color for a while now, so it wasn’t hard to do. Right now it’s the basic watercolor pencil palette I used last year, but as the fall color season progresses, I’ll probably shake things up. Although I’ll still be using an Uglybook for my daily journal sketches, I’m also daily-carrying my favorite 100 percent cotton Hahnemühle again – in a new form factor. Stay tuned for more on that soon.

The Season of Denial

8/16/14 Platinum Carbon and Diamine Grey inks, watercolor,
Zig marker, Pitt Artist Pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Last year at about this time, I coined a term for the season that comes between summer and fall: Denial. It starts in early August when I first notice the leaves starting to turn. It lasts for as long as possible.

These slender maples growing in a traffic circle in the Greenwood neighborhood are surely a fluke. Actually, the one on the left and the one mostly hidden behind it are still fully green, so I think it’s only the tree on the right that is a fluke. Clearly, it didn’t take enough vitamins or skipped too many yoga classes this summer.

Sweet Gum Season

 

9/2/23 Green Lake

I just needed some time to work out my denial. I have, and now I’m fully embracing the end of summer and the beginning of fall. And the best way I know of to do that is to sketch the Green Lake sweet gums. I couldn’t find a sketch done last year during the first week of September, but that probably means there wasn’t enough color to sketch. There’s definitely more color now than two years ago, when it was just barely beginning at this time of year. It’s not my imagination: The color is early this year.

Color and media notes: The Caran d’Ache botanical palette is working out well for early fall, but I’m missing the easy intensity of Museum Aquarelles. I’m going to stay with the palette a while longer, but I’m going to swap out some Supracolors for Museums when I have colors that are close. I also need to add back in my favorite dark, cool green from the Museum palette. In these parts, even if my sketch is about glorious deciduous trees, they are usually fringed by firs, and the darkest green in the botanical palette is too warm.

After putting up with the bright purple Fibralo Brush Marker as long as I could, I swapped it for a Derwent Inktense Dusky Purple (730), which is warmer than the Dark Purple (750) and Nightshade (770) I used often for darks during my early summer friendship with Inktense. I like it here as a complement to the fall hues.

Also new in this sketch is an Archer & Olive Acrylograph Paint Pen, which I had never heard of until I got one in a SketchBox. It seems to be close to Posca markers in that it requires shaking and priming, so I’m guessing that the paint is similar. When I used it for the first time at Green Lake, I was instantly peeved: The cap doesn’t post! (Also true of the Fibralo markers, and I can’t believe I forgot to rant about it!) You’ve heard me say this before, and I’m not going to stop being cranky about it: There’s no legitimate excuse for a pen to have a cap that doesn’t post! It costs the same to produce a cap that posts as one that doesn’t! That cap is just asking to be lost! So as much as I like the lovely calligraphic marks this pen tip makes (and the color I received just happens to go well with my current palette), it probably won’t last long in my bag.

Nice marks from the Acrylograph, but the dang cap doesn't post!

It Can’t Be!

8/5/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook

Walking around Green Lake this morning, I saw – no, it can’t be! – tiny touches of color at the very tops of the maple trees I have been sketching each season. It was only two months ago that I was finally able to sketch them in full leaf. . . how could they be getting ready for fall already?

Today is the first day of the season that comes between summer and fall: Denial.

(To see all of my sketches marking the seasonal changes in this stand of maples, scroll down to the labels at right and choose “seasonal maples.” I enjoy sketching these trees so much that I decided the series deserves its own label.)

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?

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!