Solo at Wintergrass

2/21/20 Jammers at Wintergrass

Since 2014, one of USk Seattle’s regular outings has been to Wintergrass, the Puget Sound region’s annual bluegrass music festival. With impromptu jammers playing toe-tappin’ music throughout the Bellevue Hyatt Regency, it’s one of my favorite outings each year. Disappointed when I realized I had an unavoidable conflict for last Saturday’s outing, I decided to go the day before.

It wasn’t quite the same with no other sketchers around, but Greg came along to enjoy the music with me, and the sketching was just as fun. It’s always apparent that the musicians are having the time of their lives sharing music with each other, and their joy is infectious.

A bonus for me: I was sketching the group of jammers above when a woman approached. “Are you Tina. . . ?” It turned out that Serena is a blog reader and a fellow Field Nut (the Facebook group for Field Notes users)! It was great to meet you, Serena! If there’s one thing I love almost as much as sketching, it’s meeting my blog readers in the wild!

Updated 2/25/20: Local radio station KBCS featured some of my sketches of Wintergrass over the years on their blog to promote a program they did on Wintergrass!

Sketchin’ the Jammin’ at Wintergrass!

2/28/14 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, sticker, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

The Bellevue Hyatt Regency seems like such an odd venue for Wintergrass, the annual multi-day bluegrass festival, that at first I looked askance. I love bluegrass music, but surrounded by all that glass and chrome and contemporary Bellevueism. . . ? Not to mention paying the 520 toll to get there. But when Lynne said we could listen to and sketch the informal jammers as long as we wanted to without buying a ticket, the Friday sketchers were sold. And it was the most fun I’ve had since I sketched buskers and other performers at farmer’s markets all summer!

2/28/14 Pilot Iroshizuku Asa-Gao ink, Sailor pen

Sketching bluegrass jammers presents at least two major challenges: The first is that players are always coming and going after a tune or two, so if you don’t finish sketching someone in the length of a song, that player is likely to be gone soon. The second challenge is that it’s dang hard to sketch while you’re tapping your toe (and I couldn’t seem to keep my toe from tapping).

To round out the entertainment, Talulah Belle, a pot-bellied pig wearing a pink bow, was in the lobby supposedly doing tricks, but all I saw her do was scarf down treats from the woman holding her leash.

I wish I could have sketched at Wintergrass all day, but I wanted to get back across the lake before rush hour. Despite my reluctance to go to the Eastside, paying that bridge toll was a small price to sketch at Wintergrass. I’ll be there again next year!

2/28/14 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink

2/28/14 gel pens

2/28/14 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink, gel pen

Still Drawin’ and Jammin’ at Wintergrass

2/22/19 Young musicians rehearsing at Wintergrass

I probably say this every year, but it’s difficult to sketch while your toes are tapping to bluegrass! For the sixth year, USk Seattle sketched at Wintergrass, the Seattle area’s annual bluegrass music festival at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency. It’s an annual favorite for good reason: Lively music is fun to sketch by, and all the jammers seem to be enjoying themselves. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

Guitar vendor

Friday morning seemed quieter than usual this year, and jammers hadn’t gathered yet. Hearing music from an auditorium, I slipped in to see what was going on (sketch at top of post). (Ticketed events are ongoing throughout the festival, but we never attend the scheduled events because so much free, spontaneous music is happening in the hotel’s public areas.) Several musical youth groups were rehearsing for later performances, all at the same time, so the music was . . . cacophonous. Still, it was fun to see fiddles and other instruments of all sizes to fit their owners.

I found a man selling guitars (he had a lot more for sale than I show in my sketch) in the vendor area. Some vendors had beautiful handcrafted mandolins, violins and banjos that were works of art themselves.

By the time I finished those sketches, jammers were starting to form small groups wherever they could fit a few chairs together. This is what I come to Wintergrass for: to sketch and listen to people making music spontaneously. It’s like the musical version of urban sketching!

Jammers

I wish I'd asked what this instrument was called. . .
maybe a type of steel guitar?

Toe-Tappin’ Sketchin’ at Wintergrass

2/23/18 Wintergrass jammers

It’s hard to sketch when your toes are tapping to lively bluegrass music!

For the fifth year, Urban Sketchers Seattle met at Wintergrass, the Puget Sound area’s weekend-long annual bluegrass festival at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency. I missed it last year because I was out of town, so I was especially looking forward to this year’s event, which is one of my all-time favorite sketch outings.

As I sketched the musicians who had gathered in the hotel hallways for impromptu jams, friends greeted and embraced each other, happily reuniting. Some had apparently come from distant states to participate in this long-anticipated event. I overheard them comparing program notes and planning which concerts and demos to attend. All morning, even as I heard the literal vibes of traditional music, I also sensed the vibes of happy people doing what they enjoy most – playing and listening to music. I don’t play an instrument, yet somehow their excitement felt familiar . . .

And then I suddenly realized what Wintergrass reminded me of: The Urban Sketchers Symposium. Instead of sketchbooks, pens and paints, they used fiddles, banjos and mandolins to express their common passion. Tapping and nodding to the music, I knew how they felt.

Wintergrass: Great to Be Back!

 

2/20/25 Wintergrass at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency

Wintergrass, the annual bluegrass festival at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency, has always been one of my favorite USk winter outing locations. With toe-tappin’ music everywhere and happy jammers jammin’, it’s irresistible if you enjoy sketching people. The last time I attended was in 2020 (just weeks before the pandemic hit), and I had sorely missed it. It was wonderful to be back this year!

On the first day of the festival when events were not yet fully under way, we had no crowds to contend with, yet just enough musicians were around to keep us busy. It’s a joy to sketch people who are so clearly passionate about what they are doing and enjoy doing it together (and we urban sketchers know what that’s about).

Jammin’ at Wintergrass!

2/26/16 inks, colored pencils

Today was Wintergrass, one of my favorite Urban Sketchers indoor sketching events! We’ve sketched the annual bluegrass music festival at the Bellevue Hyatt three years in a row (see 2015 and 2014), and it gets more fun each year. It’s hard to beat all that toe-tapping music as an accompaniment to sketching. I also see a parallel between bluegrass jammin’ and urban sketchin’ – people with a common passion getting together to do their thing. My only regret today was that I couldn’t stay longer.

2/26/16 ink

Having just finished Suhita Shirodkar’s Craftsy course, Figure Sketching Made Simple, I warmed with a few pages of gesture sketches trying to capture the “lines of action.” Then I roamed around the Hyatt enjoying the music and impromptu dancing, stopping now and then to sketch groups of jammers.

With 10 minutes left to kill before the sketchbook sharing, I stood on the stairwell overlooking the main lobby, where bright red lanterns hang in a small bamboo grove.

2/26/16 inks, colored pencils

2/26/16 Zebra brush pen, colored pencil

Terrific Music and Foreshortened Limbs at Wintergrass

2/27/15 Diamine Sargasso Sea, Platinum music nib,
Canson XL 140 lb. paper

While sketching most of the day at Wintergrass, the annual multi-day bluegrass festival, I discovered a particular challenge of sketching jammin’ musicians: all those foreshortened limbs! But I love bluegrass, and there’s nothing more fun on a drizzly winter day than sketching to terrific music in a comfortable indoor venue. Last year, it was one of my favorite Friday ad hoc Urban Sketchers outings, and this year was even better.

In addition to scheduled concerts and lots of impromptu jamming, the festival offers lots of booths where vendors are selling various stringed instruments, including some lovely mandolins I sketched. Shoppers were encouraged to sit and try out instruments, and thankfully those players were slightly slower-moving sketching targets than jammers.

After sharing our sketchbooks, most of us took a break for lunch, and then Natalie and I stayed for more sketching in the afternoon. It’s a good thing we did, because we bumped into Michele, who couldn’t come in the morning. Since a group of three sketchers constitutes a sketchcrawl, we took a selfie.

2/27/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi ink, Pilot Falcon nib, Caran d'Ache Museum pencils

2/27/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi ink, Pilot Falcon, Caran d'Ache Museum pencils

2/27/15 Iroshizuku Take-sumi ink, Pilot Falcon, Museum pencil

2/27/15 Iroshizuku Asa-gao and Fuyu-syogun inks, Sailor fude pen, Museum pencils

2/27/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor fude pen, Museum pencil

2/27/15 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink,
Museum pencil

2/27/15 Iroshizuku Asa-gao and Fuyu-syogun inks, Sailor fude pen,
Museum pencil

Natalie, Tina and Michele at the post-sketchcrawl mini-sketchcrawl.

No Dogs at Third Place Commons

10/20/19 Lake Forest Park parking lot

Somewhere out at the farmers market adjacent to Third Place Commons, dogs were supposed to be participating in a Halloween costume competition. I was hoping to sketch said dogs during the USk Seattle outing last Sunday, but the cold and drizzle kept me and all the other sketchers indoors.

Fortunately, I found a large window looking out at the lower level parking lot, which was blazing with red maples. As I was finishing up this sketch, I started hearing bluegrass music from the stage. Four men – the Milner Family Fiddles, according to their CD cover – played guitars and violin, and their lively, toe-tapping tunes made me feel like I was sketching at Wintergrass. The middle guitarist had an interesting way of elevating one knee to support his guitar.

 

10/20/19 Performing on the stage at Third Place Commons

10/20/19 On a table or on the floor? Who knows...

My sketch of the chess pieces has, unfortunately, no sense of scale. A toddler was occasionally running onto the chess board, so my plan was to block in a few pieces, and as soon as she ran onto the scene, I could put her in and show that the knight was only a bit smaller than she was. But of course, she never returned.

I made the last sketch while eating lunch after the outing and chatting with other sketchers. It’s the type of sketch that Liz Steel calls a “reflex” sketch – made without paying much attention because the conversation is more interesting than the scene.

 

10/20/19 diners at Third Place Commons

A good turnout on this chilly fall morning that might as well have been winter!

February 2014 Sketchbook Bound

My handbound February sketchbook.

I just finished binding my seventh sketchbook. Numbering them is getting tedious, since I have to keep going back to count them and remember that one is still on exhibit at MOHAI. The sketches in this one are dated from Jan. 25 through March 1, so let’s simplify things and call it my February 2014 sketchbook. (I do seem to be filling six signatures in just about one month.)

It’s been so rainy and windy the past couple weeks that I couldn’t go outdoors to spray the printouts of the cover sketches with acrylic varnish (a step I take in my cover-making process to keep the water-soluble inkjet ink from bleeding). Rather than wait for a better day (which, when it finally comes, I’ll want to spend sketching instead of spraying), I decided to skip the step to see what would happen. Some of the unprotected inkjet ink did run a little when I brushed on the medium, but not as much as I had feared. (Who knows – maybe I can get away with always skipping this step going forward! I’m all about streamlining the process, not to mention avoiding opportunities to distribute and inhale airborne solvents.)

On the covers this month are the first in my series of sketches of trees that have been cut away to make space for power lines and some jammers at Wintergrass.