Queen Anne Library - August 31st, 2018

It has been quite while since my last posts, couple of reasons..one of them is I have feeling of enjoy more to my other USk fellows who are good in storytelling than myself...not an excuse, right!
Today's sketch outing really gave me a chance to explore deeper of Queen Anne's history. That's exactly I want to say:  Grateful to be part of group!



This Previous West Queen Anne School was later incorporated and redeveloped into condominiums with its origins appearance still remain.
Envy people who live here, beautiful!

Received a water soluble pen from LK Bing who I admire much when attended Porto Symposium. I love it, whenever quick sketching needed. The scene is from 6th Ave W look down south, attracted by the giant landmarks of Standpipe(?) and power poles. This is unique Queen Anne!

New and Old in Queen Anne

8/31/18 Queen Anne cell tower

This morning’s sketch outing in the Queen Anne neighborhood was an interesting time management (or lack thereof) exercise for me. As I approached the area, which is especially rich in older buildings (many of which seem to be in the process of being converted to condos), a crazy cell tower on West McGraw had caught my eye. I decided to make that my first objective. Lacking color, it made a good exercise in graphite tones, and with all those strange shapes and angles, the tower was a fun challenge.

Completely losing track of time (in a good way) in that drawing, I realized I had only about 25 minutes left before the throwdown – and I hadn’t yet sketched any of the architecturally interesting buildings. I hoofed it over to the street where several stood and picked the Queen Anne United Methodist Church to sketch (below). After hastily putting in a few lines, I slammed down a Pitt brush marker for shading, scribbled in some color and power lines, and called it good.

It was great to see such a strong turnout this morning!

8/31/18 Queen Anne United Methodist Church

Queen Anne neighborhood

We gathered this morning outside the Queen Anne Library. It was closed for renovation but there were many interesting public buildings and private homes and gardens to sketch in the blocks around.



Our numbers grew by the time we had our throw down and group photo, though one or two sketchers had to leave early.  Thanks to Kathleen K. for investigating this area for us!  




After we first gathered, I walked down to Top Pot Doughnuts with Tina to use the facilities. We got coffee and then sat at a cafe table to sketch this jumble of satellite dishes.

 

I walked back up to our starting neighborhood and looked around. I went back to the scene I first noticed. Kathleen told us that this street lamp was part of the history of Queen Anne Boulevard. It has been transplanted to the front of a home owner's yard. In the background is the Queen Anne Masonic Center next door.

I found an image and some information about the street lamp:
https://i2.wp.com/qahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/queen-anne-boulevard-1982-800.jpg
http://qahistory.org/boulevard/

Holy Smoke! Intrepid Sketchers make their First Steps Into Visual Journaling, a 10x10 USK Workshop in Hazy Seattle

Saturday, August 25

Seattle wasn't its usual bustling self with sidewalks and parks full of locals and tourists enjoying the last weekend in August. Unhealthy air quality caused by smoke from wildfires burning in Canada and multiple states has taken its toll on all outdoor activities for the past few weeks. Air quality announcements advise people at risk to stay indoors. How would this work out for beginning students coming to my USK 10x10 First Steps Into Visual Journaling Workshop?

I handed out badges and pencils as my full class arrived. We loaded up on coffee, quiche and breakfast goodies from the Grand Central Bakery and pulled up our seats at the long wooden table inside the Arcade. I had planned for everyone to start the day with some quick warm up exercises. We covered materials, lettering, simple figures, how to use watercolor pencils and water brushes with or without pens, and more!

Warm up exercises and getting to know our materials

Many of my students were healthy enough to brave the unhealthy air for just a 10 minute dash out into the square for some first steps in sketching figures. They were practicing my patented 6-stroke method!

 
In my bag was a packet of handouts with illustrations on brick buildings and alleyways.

I had planned to go out onto the cobbled square with my students around noon for a demonstration and assignment but the air quality app I was using was in the orange zone; hazardous, limit outdoor activity, no strenuous exercise!

I stepped out of the big glass doors onto 1st Ave S. to check on the visibility and smoke factor for myself. As you can see, there was so much haze that things started fading out only a block or two away. There were so few people in this usually busy Seattle tourist area that you would never know that it was a summer weekend in August. Even Occidental Square had few people other than a food line provided by local charities for the homeless.

So it was on to plan "B". Just in case we were smoked out, I had a digital handout ready. I sent step by step instructions to everyone's smart phones illustrating how to take the first steps into drawing and painting cars. I call it Cars: Inside the box. I demonstrated each step. Carefully avoiding the "P" word (perspective) the approach is to draw and connect simple shapes. Everyone amazed themselves with their results. You can see how well they've done when you see the "throw down"  below.

I asked everyone to share their favorite sketches of the day on the old wood bench in the Arcade.

Intrepid new urban sketchers meeting the challenge safe inside the Grand Central Arcade

Thanks to my fantastic students and everyone at the Grand Central Building for accommodating the weather situation. I loved sharing some tips and techniques with this group and can't wait to see you at the next USk Seattle outing! You have what it takes to be an urban sketcher wherever you go! You took off smokin'!

Thanks also to Tina Koyama, who popped in to cover this event for Seattle Urban Sketchers blog.

Michele’s Visual Journaling

8/25/18 Michele demo-ing the 6-stroke figure inside Grand Central Arcade

Although Michele Cooper has taught First Steps in Visual Journaling several times, I’ve always managed to be out of town when it was offered. Yesterday I was finally able to catch up with her in Pioneer Square to sketch and photograph her popular USk 10x10 workshop in action. Known for her delightful sense of humor, Michele gently eased her students toward documenting their day’s activities with sketches and words.

The exercise I caught her demo-ing was her signature “6-stroke people” – like stick figures but with realistic human proportions – which she uses frequently to sketch people in the middle and far distance of an urban environment. Steering her students away from getting bogged down by facial or clothing details, she suggested that they “indicate, don’t illustrate.”

Michele showing some of her favorite sketching tools.

The smoky sky was back again, which kept her workshop mostly indoors. Undaunted, Michele showed her students that urban sketchers adapt to changing, unpredictable circumstances, and they made themselves at home inside Grand Central Arcade.

After eavesdropping on Michele and her students for a while, I became famished and decided I needed a sandwich from Grand Central Bakery. You know I rarely sketch my food: If I’m hungry enough to have it in front of me, I’m too hungry to sketch it. However, inspired by Michele’s montage style of visual journaling, I stopped myself from devouring the sandwich long enough to make the world’s fastest sketch. After scarfing it down, I looked around Grand Central Arcade to make a couple of small sketches next to the sandwich: Michele giving a demo and one of the ceiling lamps.

Before heading home, I walked out to Occidental Park to fill the rest of the page with some ping-pong players and a flower basket hanging from an iconic Pioneer Square lamp post. I guess the sandwich didn’t have to be quite so prominent on the page, but that’s what happens when I sketch hungry.

8/25/18 Inspired by Michele's montage style, here's my sandwich center stage surrounded by other elements of my day.

Some of Michele's students ventured outdoors to Occidental
Park to practice their 6-stroke figures.

Meet the correspondent: Antonella Pavese

Hello Seattle sketchers! I'm Antonella, and I'm excited to publish my first post as correspondent for the Urban Sketchers Seattle blog. This group has been my sketching community in the past two years and I've been in awe of its talented sketchers and supportive environment.

Antonella sketching at Viva Farms in Mount Vernon, WA (Photo by Rebecca Murray)

The John Deere tractor posing for me in all its majesty (Photo by Rebecca Murray)

Here is me sketching at Viva Farms, a non-profit "farm incubator" near Mount Vernon, WA. Viva Farms provides land, tools, and training in sustainable and organic farming practices to new farmers in Skagit Valley. My husband Scott was there with videographer Rebecca Murray to do some filming for a new training video, and I took the opportunity to visit the Farm and to do some sketching. I loved the place, and especially this green and yellow John Deere tractor, but also the amazing produce, the flowers that grow on the farm, and the mission of this organization.

A bit more about me. I was born in Rome, Italy. While working on my PhD in Cognitive Psychology, I took a plane (and an umbrella) to Eugene, Oregon—just like Andika!—as a one-year exchange student to the University of Oregon Psychology graduate program. There I met Scott, my future husband, and I never went back.

Throughout my life, I've been geographically restless. In Italy, I lived in Rome, in Pisa, Tuscany, in Padova, a 30-minutes train ride from Venice, and a few other places you wouldn't recognize. In the US, after Eugene, OR, I moved to Philadelphia, PA and suburbs, and then to NYC. I finally landed in Seattle in December of 2015.

I loved drawing as a kid, and I've been working on some kind of artistic project on and off all my life, but only in the past few years I started to be serious about sketching and painting. I took classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and at the Gage Academy in Seattle, and I started hanging out with urban sketchers, the best training of all. I got hooked with urban sketching even more after attending the two most recent Urban Sketchers' Symposiums in Chicago and Porto. In May of this year, I quit my job in high-tech as User Experience researcher, which left me more time to sketch and draw.

Sketching to me is, above all, a meditative activity. Drawing and painting an object or a scene make me learn about them more intimately than just looking at them or taking a picture. I see sketching as an act of "bearing witness" to the reality around us, an opportunity to open up to the uniqueness of what is in front of us and "to meet it just as it is."

A few of my recent sketches:

The Amgen Helix Pedestrian bridge on August 24, at the latest USK Seattle event

After the Symposium in Porto, I spent a few more day in Portugal, traveling to Évora

Sketching at the demonstration Families Belong Together at the ICE Detention center in Tacoma in June

Learning from the best: sketching at Gabi Campanario's workshop in Seattle last May

I'm looking forward to contribute to this blog. In the meanwhile, you can keep up with my sketches on my Instagram account, @antonellasketches. and on my blog AntonellaSketches.com.

Amgen Helix Bridge

8/24/18 Amgen Helix Pedestrian Bridge facing west 

Although USk Seattle has sketched the Amgen Helix Pedestrian Bridge at least a couple of times prior to today’s meetup, I’d never sketched it myself (or even seen it up close). If you’re driving by on Elliott Avenue West, it’s easy to miss behind the clutter of industrial buildings. Yet once you approach it, its unique and striking shape becomes clear: It’s inspired by the double-helix strand of DNA.

I crossed the bridge over the Burlington Northern railway tracks a couple of times before I settled on this view (above) at the top of the stairway facing west (you can see me sketching in Kate's sketch from the ground level). In tones of black and gray, it was a prime opportunity for more practice in value study using Eduardo Bajzek’s graphite technique. What I cared most about, though, was not the lights and darks but those tiny spots of blue sky showing through the white – not brownish-yellow – clouds. Hallelujah for being able to breathe clean air again!

8/24/18 Facing west from the middle of the bridge

That took a while, and after crossing and recrossing a couple more times to take photos and see what the others were sketching, I found myself with only about 15 minutes before the throwdown. I used them to sketch the westward view again, this time from the center of the bridge, where I spotted two maples blazing in the distance. With my recent travel and being distracted by all the smoky air, I had failed to notice that fall was suddenly on its way.

See the DNA?

Eastward

One more time at the Helix

What a relief to have a break in the weather! It was a comfortable 70 degrees with sun and no smoke! We're told the smoke will be back but at least we got a day of sketching in! We met at the Helix Bridge. We were there two years ago.

Here is some information I found about it back in 2016: “Spanning 11 railroad tracks, this bridge connects Amgen’s office complex on the waterfront to a major arterial road. The bridge is designed after the double helix structure of DNA. (Amgen is one of the world’s largest biotech companies.)” [I think I heard Amgen no longer occupies the building there.]  In 2004, the Amgen Helix Pedestrian Bridge received the “Outstanding Project” award under the Bridges and Transportation category given by the National Council of Structural Engineers Association.

We had our sketchbook throw down on the bridge as well as our group photo. Welcome to a few new people and one transplant from USk Chicago!




Since I'd sketched on the bridge back in 2016, I decided I wanted different views of it. This is from the street corner. That's Tina K. up on the elevator platform. It was quite noisy so I put in my earplugs. (single page Stonehenge Aqua 100% cotton 140# watercolor paper).  



I sat under the bridge for this view of this large collection of elevators. No pencil here just direct to ink lines. I did use the method I learned from Frank Ching to plan out the sketch with dots on the page. (Stillman & Birn Alpha)



There was still about 45 minutes, so I changed positions but sill stayed under the bridge. (again, Stillman & Birn Alpha).

Drawing People From the Outside In, an Urban Sketching 10x10 Workshop with Sue Heston

This is a workshop for cafe sketchers, for lounging-in-the-park sketchers, for stuck-at-the-airport sketchers. It's for sketchers interested in ordinary people, and their ordinary urban activities. The workshop is appropriate for sketchers from beginners on up, who want to improve their people drawing skills. You do not need experience with any particular media, but you should have some experience sketching from observation. We will be using markers, pen and/or pencil. We will be practicing new techniques with many quick sketches rather than focusing on one or two finished studies. I want to get you to see the unique shapes of people and start integrating them into a scene. The class will be September 29 at the Seattle Center Armory. For more information click the tab above for the 10x10 2018 Fall Schedule.

Pier 66

We anticipated lots of sun and heat for our outing to Pier 66. It was also Hemp Fest * .  A 2000 passenger cruise ship was boarding so the area was very crowded with tourists pulling suitcases.

The pedestrian bridge offered a good variety of views of the area. The turn out was surprising... we had so many sketchers. We were also joined by Stephanie Bower's workshop group.




I thought I might try to simplify the complex view of the cruise ship. I liked the red "66" figures, too. Despite the prediction for heat, I got a bit chilled in the shade will doing this sketch. A passerby stopped to look.  He told me this was a "small one".  One docked yesterday was so much larger... the 9th largest in all the world.  This one seemed pretty huge to me.  With 2000 passengers, it's as large as the town in which I grew up!  



I always want to sketch the Space Needle if it's in view. Sounders lime green on two walls was a bonus.



My final sketch of the morning is my favorite.  I liked the shade umbrellas on this patio, where I sat with a cold drink. The woman in this sketch turned around and then noticed me sketching. I showed it to her and we had a nice conversation. She's from Idaho but now lives a distance north of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She and the boy and the rest of their family will be on the cruise ship bound for Alaska.





* Hemp Fest was devoted to legalizing marijuana. It was centered several blocks north. I've been told it's gotten smaller since mj was legalized in WA a couple years ago. The main impact on our outing was the restrooms at the pier were closed.

From Afar: an atmospheric perspective workshop

Hey Seattle USkers, I wanted to let y'all know I'll be teaching a workshop in the fall 10x10 series, From Afar (Oct. 20 in Eastlake). I'll be teaching some methods on making your compositions have greater contrast between close & distant objects in interesting and fun ways, using principles of atmospheric perspective. Although the workshop is not for beginners, it's pretty approachable as long as you have some grasp of watercolor techniques (i.e. it's not your first time ever picking up the medium). 

The subject matter will be Queen Anne hill & Westlake as seen from the Eastlake neighborhood. I love capturing the trees and buildings stacked up on the hill, topped by the 3 antennas I never get tired of it. The techniques can certainly be applied outside of Queen Anne views though! And since it'll be in October, we might even get some stunning fall foliage. I hope you can make it to my first official Urban Sketchers workshop, I'm very excited. 

Here are some sketches which show some examples of these techniques - to me, the typical Seattle landscape is a hill with buildings peeking through trees, and I love painting these kinds of scenes.