Say Hi to USk Albuquerque-Santa Fe

Some of you may know I have been traveling in New Mexico this month. I have done a lot of sketching, and I plan to get a post up with lots of sketches soon. But I wanted to put up these sketches I did with the USk Albuquerque-Santa Fe chapter on Saturday.

The first thing I do when I travel is check for a local USk group - and I lucked out here. I had to laugh when the organizer, Jay, said it wasn’t going to be a very exciting sketch outing and, because of the cold, they were meeting at a Starbucks! Just like home, except for the cowboy hats! But I had a great time with lots of chat about art supplies, sketching and I even found someone to reminisce about Porto with.

And it turned out to be perfectly warm if you found a sunny spot outside. So I sketched the lovely view of the parking lot with Domino’s Pizza in the background. Seriously though, if you are in NM, look these guys up ‘cause they are a ton of fun and they love to sketch!

Taichung Nights

As some of you know, I attended the AsiaLink Sketchwalk event in Taichung, Taiwan (kind of like a smaller USk symposium focusing on Asia), a nice finish to 50+ days of travel sketching. I stayed a few days after the event ended on October 7th, hoping to explore/sketch the city more with visiting sketchers (since we really didn't make it out of the central district)...but pretty much everyone else left either for home or Taipei by the next day. Oh well...I'm used to traveling alone.

And I really liked Taichung – moreso than Taipei, actually - so I didn't want to leave, either. Maybe because the weather is better? Or because I met so many nice people there? It didn't look much different from Taipei but my experiences were overall better.

I went to about 10 different night markets in Taiwan, and each one was unique in terms of its vibe,  gastronomical offerings, and layout. But always the lights were bright, the crowds lively, the food cheap and delicious. 

These mixed-media drawings are from my pocket sketchbook, which I bound myself with colored cardstock paper  - made for quick and dirty drawings. I was playing with capturing the light/dark values of these night scenes quickly, as well as the impressions of life in the market. I used Posca markers for the large yellow/pink marks, and a variety of media (correction fluid, brush pen, markers,  etc) for the rest.

Zhongxiao Night Market - sketched while eating tempura fried carrots on a sidewalk. A giant Daruma beckons you inside for fresh seafood.

 Not actually a night market (or at night) but this shop, Chun Shui Tang, claims to be the origin of bubble tea. The food AND drinks were really great. One of the few hyped up restaurants I went to on my travels where my expectations were not only met but exceeded!

Fengchia Night Market main road - the biggest market in Taichung! Sketched this while waiting in line for takoyaki. It was a long but fast moving queue - usually I just stood in line for what had the longest line out front and it was usually a pretty good strategy.

Back page: lady waiting on scooter, and collection of stamps from the Taipei metro. Each station has its own souvenir stamp!! The colors of ink correspond to the train lines - it was super exciting to go into a new station to see what the stamp was. Stamping culture is really big in Taiwan and I am right there with them.

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.

throwback: La Paz, Bolivia

I've been too busy to sketch in the amazing weather we've had in Seattle lately, so I wanted to share some drawings I made last year on a trip around Bolivia and Chile. This post is about La Paz, Bolivia, the most visually interesting of the big cities we went to; its topography is extreme.=!

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March 2017

After a tedious 3 flights from southern Chile, we landed in La Paz super early one Monday morning and caught a couple Zs in the airport lobby until the sun rose. Our Airbnb was deep in the valley of La Paz, while the airport is on the high plain, El Alto, above the city; the taxi drive down the scary-steep canyon roads was stunning and terrifying. The city is characterized by its elevation: at over 2 miles above sea level, many visitors get sick from the altitude, but for some reason it wasn't bad for us (I had more trouble acclimating in Denver, a mile above sea level). 

 It’s convenient to take in the stunning landscape of this city from their new public transit system of Teleféricos, or cable cars. Seattle Metro really could learn a thing or two from this place; I feel like it makes much more sense to have aerial transit when your city is so hilly – less rock to drill through.

My travel partner & artist friend Emily and I got up around sunrise every day to sketch/paint from our home base: a penthouse in the middle of La Paz, with several balconies looking out over the valley (your US $ goes really far in Bolivia, it wasn't even that much of a splurge to rent such a nice place). One day I took the opportunity to borrow some of her gouache supply for a study of the block below from our balcony. 

A typical landscape in La Paz: the rim of the canyon, cliffs, masses of aesthetically identical brick box-like houses (many without glass in the windows). On this day the clouds were especially epic. 
In the bottom right of this photo you can see part of the big Cementerio General in the middle of the city, which I think is an amazing design for an urban place. much more practical than our typical grassy sprawling lawns, arguably a waste of space in a densely populated city.

Rain usually accompanies the early-day cloud cover, so on another morning I stayed inside to draw – still with an amazing view. In La Paz, the wealthiest residents choose to live as low in elevation as possible, apparently to take advantage of milder weather. Interestingly, most other cities I’m aware of have the opposite tendency. We were in the more upscale central valley, which takes advantage of the surrounding canyon walls - shielding its residents from the high winds of the plains. 

Diesel Nacional: one of the coolest bar interiors I’ve ever been in – it has a very industrial and grungy vibe, a very particular aesthetic unlike anything I've seen. The fixtures were all custom  metalwork, even in the bathrooms!, with brass instruments hanging from chains from the ceiling. Highly recommend visiting if you’re in La Paz.

Travel Sketching Essentials, April 21 at 2pm

Have you ever wondered what equipment Urban Sketchers use on their travels? Well, I have bought and tried it all, hauled it to 5 continents, and I’ve seen what inventive things other sketchers use too.

To help everyone get ready for their summer sketching, I’ll be sharing my best tips and tools, showing recent Italy/England/India sketches, and giving a quick demo at an open, free event at Daniel Smith in Seattle.  

TRAVEL SKETCHING ESSENTIALS

Saturday, April 21

2-4pm

Daniel Smith Art Store in Seattle

http://seattledanielsmithevents.blogspot.com/2018/02/free-demo-travel-sketching-essentials.html

And come early, as the world-renowned watercolor artist, Alvaro Castagnet, will be giving a watercolor painting demo the same day from 11am-12:30pm.

Hope to see everyone there!

Thanks to Laurel Holmes for this photo taken at steamy Angkor Wat in Cambodia.