Museum of Flight

The Museum of Flight is a huge collection of fascinating items. Most of them very challenging to draw. I settled on these two planes. But I was so involved in the  sketching that I forgot to learn what they were called. The stubby yellow one really is that stubby. It's surprisingly a racing plane.

Lunar Rover

Sat in the darkened room with the landing simulator games and drew the lines of this Rover while listening to the audio loop: "We got some guys turning blue, thanks for restoring the oxygen. We got some guys turning blue, thanks for restoring the oxygen. We got-" and so on.

The guard watched me and said, "I draw, but I never show anybody." I convinced him to show me his drawings on his phone, and they were beautiful detailed urban sketches in pen and ink! I hope he follows through on his promise to look us up.

I finished the ink wash afterwards from the trophy photo at left.

For WSU...Printing, Cutting, Scanning...

In early April, I will be driving across the state to Pullman, WA, home of Washington State University.  I am so honored to have been asked by the School of Design + Construction to present a lecture, exhibit work, and teach a workshop!  So this weekend is full of scanning, printing, cutting, organizing images for the show, etc.

The Lecture on April 6 will focus on the two fellowships that have taken me to Europe the past two summers to sketch and paint.  The first, in 2013 was the Gabriel Prize, awarded to one architect in the United States each year for three months of learning about architecture on-site through drawing!  So perfect!! 
      My project was to study the use of perspective in the 17th c. landscape designs at Versailles and Vaux le Vicomte.
     The second fellowship was through NIAUSI/The Civita Institute for two months in the amazing hill town of Civita di Bagnoregio ITALY (where I also teach a summer workshop). There, the project was to create an illustrated walking guide to the architecture of the town--a project I'm still working on!

The Exhibit April 6-17 will feature, oh, maybe 100 sketches from the fellowships. Many of these are posted on my flickr page.

The Workshop April 18-19 is in three parts:  Saturday morning, April 18 is a lecture on how to sketch, is open to all at no charge.  Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning are small group hand's on sketching instruction--contact WSU to see if there are any open spots. Sunday afternoon is a Sketchcrawl, open to all.

Thanks so much to Bob Krikac from WSU for arranging this wonderful opportunity.  I hope that sketchers in the area might join us!

Overwhelmed Again at the Museum of Flight

3/27/15 Between the wings of a Boeing 801-A

Every time I visit the Museum of Flight, I imagine that it will be easier and less overwhelming than the last time, but somehow, that never comes true. (My very first time was with the Friday Seattle Urban Sketchers more than two years ago.) This morning with the Friday sketchers was no different. As soon as I walked into the enormous Great Gallery, I wandered around in a daze, trying to simplify the view – any view – enough to sketch it.

3/27/15 DaVinci's Il Cigno ornithopter hanging above the main entrance.

After quite a while, I caught a glimpse of a Lockheed SR71 Blackbird and a couple of other stealthy-looking fighter planes between the wings of a Boeing 801-A (1929). That one sketch took me more than an hour – much longer than I usually take for any one sketch just because I had to keep talking myself out of putting in more!

After that lengthy sketch, I had only a few minutes before the meetup, so I went out to the main entrance area. Above the line of people waiting to get in was a reproduction of Leonardo DaVinci’s Il Cigno, a human-powered ornithopter.

After sharing sketches and having lunch al fresco, a few of us stayed behind for a little more sketching. The day had warmed up nicely, so I went back out to the café’s outdoor seating area to sketch Air Force One and a 787 Dreamliner in the Airpark.

Many thanks to Museum of Flight volunteer Kate Buike for sponsoring today’s USk sketchout!

3/27/15 Air Force One and a Dreamliner in the Airpark near the outdoor cafe.

Sketching in the Great Gallery.

Friday at Museum of Flight

The Friday sketchers adhoc met at the Museum of Flight today.  It would have been a perfect day for an outdoor outing, but one never knows in March.

I sketch here all the time.  Today, I let the USk global flickr pool's weekly theme of "star
shapes" guide me.  I knew I could find an aircraft with a star!  This is a 1940 prototype
Mustang.




One place I've never sketched is the WWI environments.  I wanted to do the trenches exhibit, with it's crashed aircraft.  But it was just tooo dark.  So I sketched this ruined farmhouse which serves as a theater.



Stillman & Birn hardbound Zeta sketchbook; Platinum Carbon Black in a Platinum Cool Pen; Daniel Smith Watercolors

Sharing our sketchbooks:



The group photo with Boeing 787 Dreamliner (#3), Concorde and a shrink-wrapped B-29 in the background.


standing:  Susan, Pat, Gwen, Peggy, Donna, Steve, Gloria, Frances
kneeling: Natalie, Tina, Kate(me)

Ada's

It was a semi spring day at Ada's for the Ad Hoc gathering. I mistakenly parked near Broadway instead of 15th. It turned out to be a beautiful Capital Hill walk to get to the cafe.  I sketched these views without moving from a peaceful window seat.

The coffee by the way, was delicious and the staff generously friendly.

Seahawks and skulls at the Burke

Starting off the day I intended to draw the mask that inspired our beloved Hawks logo (that logo is oft repeated in my household by my 9 year old son.) What I saw at the museum was so much more than just an icon. This three dimensional transformation mask once gave a performer three personalities and the heads to go along with them. The way the beak opens to reveal the human face and the devilish second head still haunts me.  

Drawing the people in the lobby was like trying to capture a moving vehicle but the terror bird grounded the center the whole way through.

I was inspired to post tonight by Jane, Kate and Tina's message about the Urban Sketcher manifesto. We sketch to capture our interest and share our view of the world but most of all because we love to draw. If there's one thing I learned last week at the Burke it is that you can sketch a city street, a room, an artefact or a bowl of fruit. The important thing is to get out there and do it.

Burke Museum on a Rainy Day

A great way to spend the morning on a rainy day with Seattle Urban Sketchers.  The variety of things to sketch made for a wonderful sketch crawl.

Sketching at the Burke Musum

Sunday I joined the USk crowd sketching at the Burke Museum on the UW campus. Sketching is usually a solitary occupation, so it is great to be part of a group and see other people sketching everywhere you look! I wandered through the museum, drawing objects from the collection as they caught my eye.

Sketch outing to the Burke Museum

I had a great time with the Seattle Urban Sketchers last Sunday at the Burke Museum. It had been a long time since I had visited the  museum. Amazingly, few things had changed since I was a kid, but there are plans to build a new museum in the next couple of years.

Hopefully, this museum will be able to display more of the museum's collection. The Burke serves as the repository for all unclaimed archeological and natural history discoveries in Washington state. This has created an extensive collection of geological and human based artifacts that are mostly stored away in the museum's many warehouses and unavailable to the public.

I mostly remember visiting the Burke Museum as a child to see the dinosaur bones. This includes a wide range of animals including a stegosaurus and a wooly mammoth. The museum also houses an extensive collection of human artifacts that I did not appreciate as a child. These artifacts focus on Pacific Rim cultures.

I was particularly taken with a Maori Meeting Ground Gate. The elaborate carving work was other worldly and created a sense of a portal to another world. I was also struck by the similarity between the gate's carvings and the work of the cartoonist Jim Woodring.

Of course, I could not pass up an opportunity to draw a dinosaur. In this case it was a sea based dinosaur called a Plesiosaur. The skeleton was a cast of an 80 million year old fossil.

If you have a chance to draw at the Burke Museum before it moves it is a great space. The extensive collections presents a wealth of sketching opportunities and a great lesson in Pacific Northwest history. 

Burke Museum Masks

I've always been attracted to the mask collection at the Burke Museum, which represent the cultural heritage of the Americas, the Pacific Islands, and Asia. Here's a small collection. Drawing objects instead of buildings and environments was a nice change of pace, especially on a cold, rainy, blustery day outside.

Sheltered from the Storm and Surrounded by Natural History at the Burke Museum

This morning at the Burke Museum, another sizable crowd of Seattle Urban Sketchers came together for the monthly outing. Along with families, individuals and a meeting of the Tlingit and Salish tribes, we all shared a cozy and warm place to be on a blustery, rainy day. Thanks so much to the Burke and staff for making us feel so welcome.

Again, as I always do in museums, I felt a convergence of experience and time.

One of the featured exhibits was "Here & Now: Native Artists Inspired", which showcases how today's artists learn from past generations. The exhibit features 30 new works by contemporary Native artists, paired with historic pieces from the Burke Museum that artists identified as key to their learning. Coincidentally, a contemporary tribal group met in an adjacent room where a man with drums chanted, wearing his own woven hat in the traditional design. See photos above/left depending on your display screen.

My sketches of wings and eggs from the ornithology display in the lobby.

The elegantly displayed Xiphactonus from Kansas.

Although I enjoyed touring much of the rest of the museum, I was captivated by what I found in the lobby, where we all met in the beginning. I stayed there most of the time and sketched the two sketchbook spreads seen above.

The Confluence of Science and Art: Wes Wehr's Inspiration is now on display in the lobby of the Burke Museum. It is a fitting tribute. The entire display was beautifully arranged, like the perfectly arranged cabinet drawers of treasure in the paleontology and geology collections – the focus of Wehr's study and inspiration.

Sketchers, both new and experienced, found their subjects.

 The sketches above are but a fraction of those set out in the lobby to share at the end of the outing today. Scroll up and down this blog as the correspondents add more accounts and photos of the inspired results.

I can hear these toothy characters now, exclaiming: "So I'm stuck out in the middle of nowhere without a dental plan!"
Pssssst. Hey, guys, I hear there's a drawer full of teeth downstairs. FYI.

Sketching at the Burke

Thanks to Tina for organizing and coordinating with the Museum for our monthly outing at the Burke Natural History Museum on the campus of the University of Washington.

My initial destination was a mask carved in the late 19th century that is on loan to the museum from the Hudson Museum in Maine.  It was carved by the Kwakwaka'wakw of Vancouver Island.  I'd read about this loan a few months ago.

Pentalic Aqua 3x5 watercolor sketchbook, Platinum Carbon Black in a Platinum Cool Pen; Daniel Smith Watercolors

It is likely the inspiration for the first Seattle Seahawks (football) team logo.  The designers were inspired by this mask when they found an image of it in a book.   

I stayed in the exhibit room for "Here & Now".  This is a modern piece by Tlingit Tommy Joseph.  It is inspired by museum pieces he saw.   Several pieces make up this "Rainforest Warrior", made between 2004 and 2014.

Stillman & Birn Zeta, Platinum Carbon Black in a Platinum Cool Pen; Daniel Smith Watercolors

We shared sketches and had our group photo.  We were about 30 people today

A Rainy Morning at the Burke

3/15/15 Mastadon

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. About a year ago, I sketched just its head and amazing tusks.

3/15/15 Mastadon's feet

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 "Terror Bird of Brazil" in the Burke Museum's reception area.

Masks! And Giant Dinosaur Chickens

Well I think the official name is Brazilian Terror Bird, but it pretty much looks like a really big chicken. Probably tasted like one too. Glad to see such a big turnout at the Burke Museum on such a crappy weather day!

Sketching in the Dark

I just came back from nearly two weeks of a difficult trip to Texas.  One of the few bright spots was in San Antonio, joining a small crowd in the cool night air to see a new laser light show that is projected onto the facade of the old San Fernando Cathedral downtown.  It was quite amazing!  

I decided to sit on the ground and sketch, even though I could barely make out what I was drawing and DEFINITELY couldn't see what I was painting!!! I simply relied on knowing what colors were where on my palette. Had to paint it in one pass too, as at 9:00pm it wasn't going to dry to allow layering watercolor. 

I love doing this painting in the dark, as it's a wonderful and fun surprise to shine a light on it afterward and see how it came out!  A few people took photos of it, and I gave this sketch to my mom.

Hiawatha Playfields

I was pleased to be asked to start contributing to the Urban Sketchers Seattle blog. Then I found myself looking for that "perfect" sketch for my first post. Um, no, I did not find it. I doubt that it exists. But here is what I drew this week.

Hiawatha Playfield, West Seattle

Hiawatha Park is one of the many parks in Seattle designed by the Olmstead Brothers in the early 1900's. Other than enlarging the original playfields to accommodate soccer and football, it really does not seem to have been changed much at all since it opened in 1911. I have sketched it several times in the last couple of years, and probably will again. This time, on one of our rare sunny days, I was attracted to the patterns of shadows and the bare branches against the sky.

High Tech coffee at Ada's Technical Books

Seattle Urban Sketchers Friday Ad Hoc group met at Ada's Technical  Book store on Capitol Hill yesterday (Friday the 13th!).  I took the bus to get there rather than try to find parking.  As I walked the short distance from my stop, I noticed this view down a side street.  I walked further in and sketched from the middle of a tiny roundabout.  The weekly theme on Urban Sketchers flikcr page is "pavement" so I put some in the foreground.



The bookstore has so many interesting corners and bits. There are lots of technical kits and, of course, books. Given the emphasis on technology, my first sketch was of a very high tech coffee machine.  I researched it later.  Here is a YouTube about the  method.  And here is even more about it from CoffeeGeek. 



Next I looked at one of the walls, with a door high up near the ceiling!  There were glowing lights in the doorway that changed colors.



Sharing sketches and the group photo:

Ada’s Technical Books & Café

3/13/15 Facing 15th Ave. E.

“For the cravings of the technical mind.”

That’s the slogan at Ada’s Technical Books & Café on Capitol Hill. With a focus on math, engineering and science, the shop is decorated with things like slide rules, compasses and other geeky delights.

My mind is about as technical as a blueberry scone, which, after greeting the other Friday sketchers inside the café, I took outside to the porch facing 15^th Avenue East. Enjoying my coffee and snack in the mild temperature, I spotted a bright yellow pedestrian crossing sign that had been doctored with a sticker. Only in Seattle!

After that sketch, I went inside to the very back of Ada’s, where a small library-like room looks out on the café counter, bookcases, high ceiling and polished wood floors. Ada’s is a fun, eclectic place even if you don’t have a technical mind.

3/13/15 Inside Ada's Technical Books & Cafe