Music Everywhere

There was music all over the host hotel hallways and lobbies! We gathered for the 6th year in a row to sketch Wintergrass, a bluegrass festival held in Bellevue, WA.  And we had a good turnout.  On the left is Marcia, visiting from Michigan!  




While sketching the truck, below, I heard a flute! Once done with the sketch, I went to investigate. I found "Hall Crystal Flutes". They're made by James Hall out of glass
 I was enthralled. Have a listen. I was a serious flutist when I was young. I nearly bought one but decided it would be best if I was playing my modern flute more before I add another flute to my collection. Sigh.



Right after starting I went up to the second floor to one of my favorite spots. I found a seat next to a group of musicians and sketched a couple of them.



Next I went to the end of the first floor hall to find the old truck that Loretta mentioned. It is a 1941 Chevrolet 3/4 ton long bed named "Hank". Just as I finished, the two guitarists were packing up. Stuart, on the left, is also an artist so I gave him a USk card.



Lastly I stopped by a large group and sketched just a couple of the players. I noticed Steve's guitar only had 4 strings and he was playing the bass line. Normally, it would be a bass viol. I spoke with him briefly between sets and he said it was specially made for him by Taylor Guitars.



It was a good time. I'm going to think some more about that glass flute!

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?

Friday at Le Fournil

I had a morning meeting with a client at Le Fournil, a French boulangerie in Eastlake, and stayed after he left to finish my latte and croissant & do a sketch. It's not the most successful drawing I've ever done, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a rainy Friday! I think it's a good example for the ~atmospheric perspective in mixed media~ workshop I will be teaching in Seattle & Amsterdam this summer. I captured some of my process and I'll describe it below.

I like the rounded wall of windows here, and I wanted to capture the scene with everyone sitting around cozily as it drizzled outside. But as soon as I started, almost everyone left...rude. That's why you take the photo at the beginning of the sitting!

I didn't bring any watercolors or even a water brush, so it's all dry media for this one: I used a fat yellow Posca paint marker, chisel-tip markers in tan and dark brown, gray sign pen, a light brown colored pencil, and white gel pen. All these colors are basically in the same color range so the end result feels unified, even if the media are really different.

First I loosely blobbed in the indoor structures with the paint marker. Daytime windows are always more bright than interiors, even on gloomy days like today, so make sure to leave them white. The yellow shape-sketch unifies the interior, sets a color tone, and lets me establish the basic shapes quickly. I then added a few dimensional details to the windows and captured some sidewalk passerby with a tan marker.

Not feeling like getting fussy with this, I go straight to drawing in the people and tables in a darker brown (Kuretake Zig calligraphy marker ) which sets them definitively apart from the background. I started with the guy looking at his phone since he was distracted at the moment. I (correctly) got the feeling they were about to leave since they had finished eating and the other man seemed bored, and ended up finishing him from a photo. Then everyone sitting in the window area left too!! ´• n •`

I liked the complex tangle of black chairs in the space, but I probably could have composed this better – e.g. it bothers me how the line of the floor in back is awkwardly obscured. Oh well!
I felt like it needed another figure on the right side, but no one came back to sit in the window...so I drew myself there, using a gray pentel sign pen (note: this self-addition is technically outside the bounds of urban sketching). This gray is close in value to the brown so it feels like part of the foreground, yet recedes slightly due to being lighter and less saturated.

Final touch ups: I went back in with the white Signo gel pen to add definition to objects in the foreground, establishing what's in front of what by outlining their contours. Also filling in the bulbs in the cool wall sconces, and white-ing in the right hand table. Added some more yellow acrylic to the sides to fill out the space, and finally put a hint of the floor & ceiling tiles down with a brown colored pencil.

Hope this inspires you to do more mixed media experimenting in your sketchbooks this weekend!

adventures in Santa Cruz

After my jaunt in San Francisco, I made my way south to the Monterey Bay/Santa Cruz area where my friend June lives. She's working on her Master's degree in marine science - it's a nice change to hang out with a scientist who is also on my level creatively. Someday we're going to collaborate on something amazing. But for now, it's always really fun to hike and drive around with her. I'm truly grateful for my friends who accommodate my sketching addiction.

We decided to spend a day hiking in the redwoods just a 10 minute drive away from where June lives: The Forest of Nisene Marks. The land was bought from a lumber company by the Marks family in hopes of finding oil. Turns out there was no oil to be found, so they donated it to the state in the name of their nature loving matriarch, Nisene. Good job guys! We walked for 5 hours in there & were constantly confused about where we were on the map & had to turn back before we reached the waterfall, but it was really nice anyway.

After the long hike I was craving a beer, so we went out to one of the local breweries. As soon as I started sketching, a bartender notified us it was last call, so I gave up on doing a "good" drawing and just had fun drawing people in the large party across from us. Couldn't figure out what they were celebrating though. Overheard one guy, apparently working in real estate, talking about one property's interesting amenity...

My final full day in California had a rainy forecast, so we took it easy and spent our time in the small town where June's marine lab is located: Moss Landing, pop. ~750. It's a strange little oceanside town surrounded by produce fields - you’ve definitely eaten food grown here in the fertile Salinas Valley. Formerly a fishing village, now more and more a tourist destination, visited for attractions like good waves, kayaking, and whale watching, though it's pretty sleepy in the wintertime. This is a view from between the town and the sea, looking over windswept bushes. 

This bright blue façade closer to the center of town caught my eye. Once a post office, then an antiques shop, now just a boarded up building. Some things here still haven't really recovered from the massive 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, not sure if that's the reason it's closed or if it's just someone waiting for a buyer (I'll take the cute little attached house please). 

On my last morning, I killed a couple hours in Santa Cruz, waiting for the San Jose airport-bound bus. The Mission-style architecture in the downtown area is really charming. It was pouring rain but I was really happy with the views from this cafe, Verve Coffee Roasters — the sketch at the top of this post is also from here. The red tile roofs remind me to be excited about going to Europe in a few months.

Escape to SF

San Francisco is really one of the most beautiful cities anywhere. Definitely not without its flaws, but the combination of the architecture, steep hills, natural surroundings, and that golden California light is heavenly. I could probably paint there forever. One of my good friends lives in SF now, which gives me a good reason to visit, but honestly I'd be living there now...if only I could afford it. that income inequality tho 😩

I barely made it out of SeaTac. Snowmageddon began as I was waiting at the security checkpoint, and then we sat on the runway for a couple hours waiting to be de-iced. Passengers around me were starting to lose it, but I had a window seat and a sketchbook, and I tricked myself into being less impatient by sketching the view out the window — instead of being desperate for the plane to move, I was appreciative of the fixed viewpoint. Apparently we were the last SEA plane allowed into SF's airport that afternoon. Blessed!

First full day in the city! It was supposed to rain the whole weekend, but when we woke up it was sunny. I bolted upright from bed, threw on some clothes, and went out on the town to make the most of the small window of not-rain with my friend Lauren. We went to this great brunch spot called Greens, in an old warehouse/former Navy area on the water. The views of the marina are pretty great from here, seen through a whole wall made of windows. The food was also excellent!

Lauren knows the best spots, one reason I love to visit her. We split the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever purchased (thanks S.F.) and watched the sun set over the hills from this sky bar called The View on the top of the Marriott downtown. Another place with really striking windows. Though once the sun set, there was very minimal lighting so I couldn't see what I was painting, and of course the light is constantly changing at this time of day, not to mention the weather - sunny one minute, raining the next, and on.

Next day, I did a solo sketchwalk for a couple hours around one of my favorite neighborhoods in SF, Nob Hill. It's extra steep, just how I like it. I didn't have much time here, so on this sketch I went straight to ink – using up some colored water soluble ink cartridges (the kind that are made for the parallel pens) instead of my usual permanent Carbon Black or rapidograph inks. Trying to play with the soft/hardness you get when applying water selectively, but it's sad when you really like that underdrawing and it just melts away...

I want to capture the golden light I see in California (and to a lesser extent in Seattle too) but it's truly elusive. I can't really explain it, but I could point it out to you when it's there. Do you know what I mean? There is definitely a difference between the west coast light and the east coast light, especially later in the days when it's clear out.

Ina Coolbrith Park: a place I'm intimately familiar with, yet never set foot in until last week. I was commissioned to illustrate the view from here last year, a project I remember being super frustrating despite the appealing subject matter; I spent (too many) hours staring at photos and street view here. It's quite a strange feeling to know a place so well but without having been there. Anyway, it's a wonderful viewpoint – this is only a fraction of what you can see from this small hillside park!

Timing Is Everything

My winter get-away to Southern California coincided perfectly with Seattle’s Snowmageddon.  I eased out-of-town the day before the snows came and arrived in California the day after major rain storms soaked Los Angeles. Rain wiped away the smog  revealing crisp outlines of the Hollywood Hills against a bright blue sky.  I didn’t know how many opportunities I would have to sketch so I took a 6” X 4” pocket sketchbook. It’s a smaller size than I normally use but was handy and discreet in an unfamiliar setting.

Because I was staying within walking distance of Paramount Studios, I decided to go on a studio tour.  Early getting a ticket, I trekked down Melrose Avenue to a coffee shop.  Passing  time with coffee while sketching,  I imagined  the man in the window seat was writing an Oscar- winning screen play and the shiny red Porsche parked by the curb belonged to me.

Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles

A recent graduate with a BFA in Script Writing guided the 8 person tour.  Called a Page, it’s an entry-level position at Paramount Studios.  The tour guide had ambitious plans for her future in the entertainment industry.  In the mean time, her entertaining tour was a multi-media experience. She used an iPad to reference Paramount movies from the past as we explored the studio lot.  She also took pictures of us in front of  iconic movie props so we didn’t have to do selfies. The New York apartment scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window movie was completely constructed in a Paramount Studio sound stage.  Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart were never in New York, it was pure Hollywood magic! 

Paramount Studios

Rear Window with Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart

After the tour, I had lunch at Astro Burger where I sketched in their outdoor courtyard. The billboards and signs sent strong messages to the cars careening along Melrose Avenue.

Inside the Astro Burger on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles

My theme of stars continued at LACMA,  the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, only this time they were art stars.  Robert Rauschenberg: The 1/4 Mile, is a massive work on display  in the Broad Pavilion.  Assembled with found materials over a period of 17 years, the work is almost 1/4 mile in length.  Another exhibition, Outliers and American Vanguard Art, is a stunning collection of over 250 works by trained and untrained artists. As an Urban Sketcher, it was fascinating to see drawings by self-taught artists hanging next to drawings by art super-stars. The drawings of self-taught master Martin Ramirez impressed me with their scale and content.

Tony Smith sculpture Smoke inside the Ahmanson Building, LACMA

Popular Larchmont Village has a pedestrian-friendly main street, unusual in  the strip mall car culture of Los Angeles and perfect for sketching.  I couldn’t find any empty public benches so I ate too much for the sake of the sketch.  No rationalization necessary, we need to support establishments that let us use their spaces. I couldn’t help but notice what looked like an Urban Sketch on all the recycle bins in the village.  Now that’s a good idea!

Rooflines and Ice Creams in Larchmont Village, Los Angeles

Recycle Bins in Larchmont Village

The best laid plans - sketching with New York City Urban Sketchers

After several months of planning to spend a few months in warmer weather this winter, we changed our plans and decided to stick around the northwest. January was going pretty well, then a family emergency called me back to the east coast right in the middle of their deep freeze.  It went from -6 on Thursday Jan 31 to 60 on Feb 5.

That burst of spring was very short lived. Saturday it was back down to 25. The New York City urban sketchers, however had scheduled a perfect location for a winter outing that day. And since family matters had settled down I was able to spend the day with them. We met up at the former Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House now Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indians in lower Manhattan. 

I was able to sketch a couple of fellow subway riders on the way before finding the massive building in Bowling Green near Battery Park and Wall Street.

Joy Hecht, an urbansketcher from Newfoundland who uses collage as her medium, and is about to teach a 10x10 class, lent me her glue for the logo (the red square says "National Museum of American Indians".)

NYC urban sketchers meet from 10 to 3 every Saturday (!) so we broke for lunch and I found this peek-a-boo view from the restaurant window. 

After lunch I braved the twenty-five degree afternoon to watch folks lining up in front of the Charging Bull. The sunshine helped for the fifteen minutes I stood there as did two down coats and my Uggs and fingerless gloves, but it was a quick sketch.  

I went inside to thaw and watch the people watching the exhibitions. 

The "afters" was held at Murphy's pub around the corner where, New York USK style is to have everyone present their sketches show and tell style. Since I had missed their portrait party the previous weekend so I thought I'd throw in a belated offering, my tablemate, Linda Moses who had come to join urban sketchers for the first time. 

So the best laid plans of wintering in the tropics has had many bright spots and hopefully more to come.  

Snowmageddon Arrives

2/9/19 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Snowmageddon delivered the promised several inches overnight. We woke to a thick, magical blanket and the pure silence that occurs only when it snows.

After the sun came up, I looked through every window to see what I could sketch without putting on my boots. I settled on this view from the kitchen – our neighbor’s tree and patio table and our bird feeder. Even the birds were smart enough to stay in bed. (A couple of chickadees did show up toward the end of my sketch.)

I’m very grateful that we didn’t lose power overnight as many homes in the area apparently did. I hope you’re warm and safe, wherever you are!

Yet another Viaduct post

As you can gather from Tina and Ellie’s posts, urban sketchers have not escaped Seattle’s obsession with the Alaskan Way Viaduct and its closure. Yesterday we witnessed the “end of an era” final act: the new SR 99 tunnel officially opened and pedestrians had a unique chance to walk the new tunnel and the old dingy-with-oh-so-beautiful-views-viaduct before its final demise. 

The first of several "Goodbye Alaskan Way Viaduct" sketches - December 2018

Some of us have been sketching the viaduct for the past couple of months. I found its dark grey ugliness mesmerizing. Since I moved to Seattle, 3 years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the city’s contrast of beauty and ugliness: the Olympic Sculpture park and the corporate buildings of South Lake Union; the snow-capped mountains at the horizon and downtown’s ubiquitous construction zones; the beautiful waterfront and the ugly viaduct. 

A view of the Viaduct closed to car traffic from the back of the Pike Place Market - January 2019

I could not stop myself from sketching the viaduct once again, during the USK Seattle sketchwalk at the Seattle Art Museum on January 25

My Viaduct/Tunnel celebration day started at 6:30AM on February 2nd, when I took the bus to the Seattle Center to run the Tunnel to Viaduct 8K race. The race, as the name suggests, ran down through the new tunnel, up to the viaduct, down the old tunnel, and ended by the Seattle Center. 

Waiting for the race to start

It was the most crowded race I’ve attended in Seattle: 25,244 walkers and runners completed it (for comparison, less than 5,000 finished the Seattle Marathon and Half marathon this past November). There were also a record number of selfies taken in the tunnel and on the viaduct.

Runners making their way to water and food at the end of the Tunnel to Viaduct 8k Race. 

After the race, I sketched the view at the Seattle center as seen after crossing the finish line.

Throughout the day, 100,000 people showed up to walk the viaduct goodbye and to welcome the new tunnel. 

Before bowing to exhaustion and going home, I sketched a large image of Bertha hang on the tunnel operation buildings, which also features the four iconic yellow ventilation stacks. Bertha, the “world's largest earth pressure balance tunnel boring machine” was manufactured specifically for the SR 99 Tunnel and has cool steampunk look. Her starts, stops, and breakages have entertained Seattleites since 2013.

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A giant image of Bertha on a building. The four yellow cylinders are the tunnel's ventilations stacks. Raindrops create the mottled effect on the sketch. So Seattle.

Those yellow ventilation stacks on the tunnel's operation building are so iconic

It was starting to drizzle and I was cold and tired. Time to go home.