On the road with Mañana: Sketching in Port Angeles and Salt Creek, Washington

My husband Scott bought an old RV that he called Mañana about 5 years ago. She is a bit clunky but functional, and very loved. It's is a relatively small RV, which makes it easier to park and travel around cities.

A couple of sketches of Mañana are shown below. The first is Mañana in our driveway in Greenwood, Seattle, where she usually sits when we are not traveling. The second sketch shows the interior, during our last trip.

Mañana in all her glory, in her usual spot in our driveway

The inside of the RV. There is a kitchen, a propane refrigerator, a tiny bathroom, and a bed, all we need where we are on the road. On the left, my running shirt left to dry after a 5-mile run on the Olympic Discovery Trail.

Last week we took a pre-Labor day trip with Manãna on the Washington coast to Port Angeles and Salt Creek. The day we left there was still some smoke lingering from the forest fires, and the weather was grey, cold, and windy. But we were looking forward to that peculiar sense of freedom that comes from packing our stuff in the RV and just go.

We drove to Edmonds, WA in the late morning and took the ferry to Kingston (no sketches on the ferry: I can't resist the free puzzles left on the tables for passengers to work on) and then drove the 60 miles to Port Angeles.

After a quick walk, we stopped on the waterfront and I found a good place to sketch the view, sheltered from the strong wind. I sat in front of the Feiro Marine Life Center where a couple of young women dressed like tooth fairies were offering to visitors free entrance to the museum and toothbrushes.

My first sketch of the Port Angeles waterfront. I found a comfortable and sheltered place to sit in front of the
Marine Life center and enjoyed the view.

We were also fascinated by the large paintings showing the life of native americans and settlers in the early days of the city. Apparently there were a lot more trees before the European arrived.

Two mural paintings compare, side by side the life of native americans and early settlers in the Port Angeles area
(photo by Scott Doran).

In the evening we drove a few miles west to the Salt Creek/Tongue point camping site. It was almost dark when we arrived, so I only managed to do a quick sketch of the tree stump in front of our RV. 

In our camping spot at Salt Creek. Even at midweek, the campground was almost full.

The second day it was much sunnier but still very windy. In the morning we went for a run on the Olympic Discovery trail, a 100-mile trail on the Olympic peninsula connecting Port Townsend to La Push.

Back to Port Angeles, I did a second sketch of the waterfront, this time looking at the City Pier and the Observation Tower. Even with the sun, I still needed a windbreaker, a scarf, and a hat to keep my body temperature at an acceptable level.

The Port Angeles City Pier with the 4-story Observation Tower.

It was a great little trip and we are planning to travel more with Mañana in the next few months, venturing farther and for longer periods of time to discover the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Stay tuned.

Olympic Peninsula

Continuing from my previous post, here are some sketches I made during some of our day trips out away from Port Angeles. Most of these were also made very quickly onsite and finished up at home. Not everyone in our group had the patience for hanging around, understandably. I'm definitely going to make a trip back to some of these areas with friends who have a similar slow pace to match my own.

Like the painting at the top, this one is set at Rialto Beach. Of the Olympic beaches I've been to so far, this one was not my favorite, although it certainly was very beautiful. We got up super early to drive here to catch the low tide so we could check out whatever creatures were hanging out in the tide pools. This sketchbook painting was done while waiting for the first piece to dry – working on something else simultaneously helps me avoid impatiently messing with a damp painting. Often I end up liking the more spontaneous one more.

 Bogachiel Rain Forest - I drew this one super fast (like 10 or 15 minutes!) and put color on top later. The "nurse logs" of these forests stood out to me this time - when an old tree dies, new ones tend to grow directly on top of it, as you can see happening in the mossy stump in this sketch. It's really tough to capture the lushness and different species of plants intermingling in this environment, as well as capturing the feeling of being deep inside an ancient forest.

Trying to convey lushness through sketching is a tough job. It seems like you really have to draw every detail if you want it all to come through as it is in real life...but that's too much work. so I'm trying to develop shortcuts to visually communicate this, such as drawing in small pockets of detail, and punching out light areas by filling in the shadows.

Port Angeles, WA

Views from a Safeway parking lot, while everyone was grocery shopping.
Since they could return at any minute I went small + fast! 

Recently, my partner's folks came over from the east coast & Colorado to spend some time with us in the Seattle area. We spent 5 days exploring the Olympic Peninsula, with our home base in Port Angeles - specifically, partway up the slope of Mount Angeles, where the small-town feel gives way to barns and woods. 

While I enjoyed my time in Port Angeles – the natural beauty and a lot of the older houses are really nice to look at – the overall impression I got was pretty guarded and even foreboding. Who knows what's behind the trunks of the towering conifers in that darkness? (I was thinking about vampires because we went through Forks earlier)

On one afternoon, my partner & I walked over a mile down the mountain to find this very cute/abandoned(?) moss-roofed house we kept passing in the car on the way to the base. Although it wasn't a busy road, there were no sidewalks and no shoulder, and everytime a car passed us we felt so out of place...like we shouldn't be walking there; we should be driving. Then when we finally arrived at this house, which was in a more suburban area, it felt very weird and awkward to sketch. Some neighbor guy even came out to ask what we were doing; he apparently thought we were casing it to steal their stuff. I wish we asked him what was up with this house, it was quite dilapidated. Most of the painting on this one was done later, as we didn't want to stick around.

On another day, we were able to spend some time down by the water on the Strait of San Juan, near where the Victoria ferry comes in. So many great views, especially on such a clear day like this, where you can clearly see Canadian mountains. I was drawn to the clearly defined horizontal layers of this pier scene.

A final quick painting in my sketchbook, turned 180 degrees from the previous painting. The mountains rising up behind the house-topped hills of Port Angeles are so stunning. This was a rare, perfectly clear day; usually the peaks are obscured by clouds.

Meet the Correspondent: Eleanor Doughty

I'm Eleanor (or Ellie) - nice to meet you! I'm a new Seattle transplant as of September 2017. I moved here from NYC (Brooklyn, Bushwick) for a few reasons, none of which have to do with working for Amazon/Microsoft/etc:

• I was super tired of having multiple roommates, but wasn't willing to pay twice as much rent to avoid it. Also my lease was up, and it's so horrible to move in NYC it was pretty much just as difficult to move across the country as to move across a borough.
• Having grown up exclusively on the east coast, it was time for a change!
• The west coast was the closest thing to moving to a different country before it would be logistically super difficult. I plan to stay here for a few years before moving overseas.
• I wanted to live in a place where you could see mountains. The Pacific Northwest delivers.
• The light on the west coast is different. golden. magical (when the sun is out).

I grew up in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C., earned a BFA in illustration at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, and then moved up to Brooklyn for three years. There I co-founded the Brunch Club Sketchers group, which has a similar mission to USK. After the Chicago Symposium, I wanted to get more involved with the global Urban Sketchers community, and here we are!

I currently work as a freelance illustrator (editorials, architecture, private commissions, etc.) and hustle selling prints online & in craft markets around the city. My sketching style is pretty bold and energetic, influenced by my work as an editorial illustrator, where it's critical to use shapes to create striking, attention grabbing images that also communicate clearly. I got really into watercolors last year but drawing is my first love! I especially like sketching scenery from above or from afar, to see the true character of a landscape. The mood I usually try to evoke is lighthearted & a bit wonky and off-balance.

Although I sketch on the daily, I'm looking forward to this opportunity to write more & provide context to the things I draw. I realized that the drawing part is only half the battle in urban sketching – so now I want to work on my journalism skills. So far in Seattle, sketching has brought me many opportunities to explore the city and meet interesting people, as well as a good excuse to get outside and take advantage of nice weather when it happens. 

You can follow my work on Instagram or Tumblr or see my website at edoughty.com

Here's a flipthrough of my sketchbook from the first four months of my Seattle life (Sept. - December 2017), and some highlights below:

the Row House Cafe (left), a lovely Old Seattle style building unfortunately slated to be demolished in the near future, no doubt for more hideous luxury apartments. I really felt it was my duty to paint it...before going inside to catch their happy hour.

My first ever time going to Gas Works Park. There was a big forest fire somewhere that day so the surroundings were weirdly tinted and super hazy - a new thing for an east coaster. 

the Seattle Japanese Gardens w/ Ad Hoc urban sketchers. The fall colors were beautiful, especially in all the maples. Lots of photo takers were present as well, "appreciating" the foliage in their own way.

While we waited for our new apartment be ready for move-in (spoiler: it would eventually fall through), my partner and I went camping on the Olympic Peninsula. This was the view from our tent – pretty much unbeatable. A huge plus of living on the west coast: ocean sunsets.

Lake Quinault

For our anniversary I decided to surprise my husband with an overnight at Lake Quinault Lodge on the Olympic Peninsula. He'd recently told me he wanted to ease into hiking again and the rain forest seemed like a good place to start. 

We took the long way from Olympia, forgoing 101 for a winding, yet more interesting route and arrived just in time for lunch at the lodge. After an adventurous hike in the hills and along the lake trail that was washed out and strewn with icy logs, the communal lodge complete with a warm fire and leather couches seemed the most inviting place to do some homework from Stephanie Bower's Craftsy class, Perspective for Sketchers

The next morning I found a patch of sunlight where I could sit before the sun slid behind the hill and the grass started growing frost. The lodge is old and spacious, built in 1926, after the first had burnt down. Historic photos line the walls telling the story of its development. The workers, and, I imagine, their bosses, were quite industrious, finishing the building in 62 days!

Olympic Peninsula

I've spent a couple of weekends on the Olympic Peninsula recently playing tour guide to visiting friends and family. Here's evidence of a couple sites. 

We were at Hurricane Ridge in time for the wildflowers. I'd forgotten my walking shoes so I took a few minutes to sketch a quick scene. 

Then yesterday I hiked to the top the the zig zag stairs in downtown Port Angeles and claimed the view in a quick few minutes.