Sixth and Westlake

 

2/27/21 6th and Westlake, Seattle

After dropping Greg off at the Virginia Mason/Amazon SuperVax site for his vaccine, I drove around the corner to Sixth and Westlake. In the canyon of buildings, an orange trolley waited; behind it, the monorail track. An ordinary downtown scene that I would not have chosen if I’d had free rein, it thrilled me to pieces: my first sketch downtown in more than a year. I am filled with hope that someday soon, I’ll be safe enough to sketch from the sidewalk again, choosing whatever view I want.

Between news reports of poorly treated employees and other unethical practices, I’ve had mixed feelings about Amazon for a long time now. During the past year, however, I have been grateful each time that the retail monster has delivered something – from kitchen towels to avocadoes to Pepto-Bismol – to my door, sometimes within hours, without my having to risk exposure in a store.

It takes that same level of corporate muscle to partner with a healthcare organization and pull together a “pop-up” site that can efficiently vaccinate thousands a day. Greg said that it was a well-oiled machine. Ambivalent as I may be, today I have another reason to be grateful.

Ninth Sketch-versary

 

Today is the 9th anniversary of my first sketch outing. It was with Urban Sketchers Seattle at the Stimson-Green Mansion on First Hill.

I had about an hour and a half between the end of a Museum volunteers Zoom call and my grocery pick up. It was sunny and warm-ish so I decided to go out for a sketch. I didn't have anything particular in mind so I just drove down a street on which I'd never been before.

At first I thought I might find something interesting and beautiful to sketch for this anniversary. When I saw this scene, though, I thought about making the ordinary interesting.

The thing about sketching, and the Urban Sketching movement in particular, is it's important to just keep sketching…anything…the subject sometimes hardly matters. What does matter is that there is a spark of interest. I found these power poles interesting and my challenge was how to keep the sketch from being too busy.

charles st. in blue

Obligatory snowstorm sketch! I wish I drew more that day, but I didn't think the snow would melt so quickly. This is the view from the 3rd floor common kitchen in my building (none of the units have their own kitchens, but there's one on each floor) which has a view of a hill I've always kind of wanted to draw but didn't have a good reason to. 

I was in something of a rush that evening, so I didn't pencil sketch at all before inking, so it's kind of chaotic. My favorite part of this was doing the stylized blobby trees and the big lumps of snow covering the car.

past the mountains

 

I took a long-awaited weekend getaway with my pod of 4 to Soap Lake, WA recently (pre-snowstorm). The idea was to get out of the gloom of the Puget Sound cloud basin for a few days and get some vitamin D and fresh air! It's always dazzling to clear the Cascade mountains and find yourself in a completely new dry, open landscape. Shelby brought along a houseplant (seen between the front seats) for our journey, which actually felt very comforting. 

 

We hiked up Steamboat Rock one morning. The Columbia River Gorge is always so stunning. While sketching these scenes, I wished to be a bird 15,000 years ago, to witness the great flood: when the Missoula ice dam broke and blasted about 500 cubic miles of water (!!!) through this landscape.

Later I sketched my pod friends back at the cabin, where we took a singular bath in the Soap Lake water piped in from nearby.

 

On the way back to Seattle, Alex gave us a short tour of Vantage, where he used to rock climb. I sketched some climbers scaling the basalt columns in pencil & watercolored it at home. Then we got stuck in Snoqualmie Pass traffic for two hours and I reflected on the dramatic change of landscape (dry, open & sunny to a snowstorm in a high altitude forest) that just an hour's drive gets you in Washington.

Snowfall

 

2/13/21 Our backyard, Maple Leaf neighborhood

 After more than a week of dire warnings, the big snow finally fell, and high winds came with it. Unusual for this area, the flakes were small and dry; they fell continuously throughout the day Feb. 13, leaving a foot on the ground by nightfall. Temps were in the high 20s and low 30s. Grateful that we were warm, fully provisioned and with nowhere to go, last Saturday was a beautiful snow day.

Almost exactly two years ago during our snowmageddon, which lasted at least a week, I sketched through nearly every window in our house. This view through a window in our back “TV room,” however, was one I had missed. Not much of a view, but even our yard waste bin is pretty when covered with snow.

looking up second

On an errand to get frozen dumplings in the I.D., I wandered into a little hidden park behind one of the office buildings by the Light Rail station, with a good view looking up 2nd Ave from a slight elevation above the sidewalk. It's very exciting to find places like that, even in an area I think I've explored quite a bit. And I have always wanted to draw the Seattle Lighting Fixture Co

I used a modified parallel pen with blue ink -- which feels so right in the cold winter -- and added some tone digitally. I will probably do a more thorough job painting this at some point.