RIP Shawn Yim

I spent my morning documenting the procession of over 100 buses honoring the memory of murdered King County Metro driver Shawn Yim, who was stabbed to death in December 2024 while on the job. It was the first time in 26 years this has happened in Seattle.

There were a lot of media folks on the bridge over 4th ave on Yesler this morning but I was the only one with a sketchbook. A little after 10am police blocked off the street and the buses started rolling through below us. The first one displayed "Shawn Yim / 21882" on its sign. (21882 is his King County Metro employee number.)

There were a few vintage buses in the procession along with tons of Sound Transit and King County vehicles, including maintenance vans and tow trucks. I saw drivers representing agencies from as far away as Grays Harbor & Skagit counties.

Using watersoluble pencils, I quickly drew some of the buses as they drove down 4th Ave, and added colors after the procession. 

 

Around 11, I finished up my drawings and headed to WAMU theater by Lumen Field, where the memorial service was being held. The cavernous space was pretty much full of people, mostly of safety vest wearing folks from transit agencies. A huge turnout.

I definitely teared up while taking notes from the speeches. It was good to get to know some more about Shawn Yim as a person. He seemed like a really kind guy and it's such a tragedy to lose someone like that involved in public service. The few speeches I was able to stay for had notes of humor, sadness, and anger.

I don't have any personal connection to Shawn Yim besides that I used to ride the #70 route a lot (the one Shawn was driving when he was killed), but I am a transit user. I want to show my solidarity with the workers who move our city and are put in danger far more than they should be.

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.

daily drawing

I've been making a point to do one solid sketch every day. It's an answer to my desire for a bit more structure in my life. I live alone & am self employed & single so I have to account for all my time by myself. day in day out. No more regular events anchoring the months. With all the wildly scary and depressing news out there, it’s important to fall back on something positive and immediate. 

I’ve been daring to go out for coffee again (outdoor seating only) while the weather is still nice. It’s been comforting to sit in places where I can overhear conversations and watch the world go by as I sketch, as all urban sketchers can appreciate. And making sure I do something every day that grounds me and consistently makes me happy is therapy.

Here are the first 12 days of my project, September 22 - October 3.

9/22: morning coffee at Broadcast on 20th Ave, listening to two guys chat in Arabic (?).	9/23: work meeting with my writing partner Jonathan. he's working as the caretaker of the Lotus, a 1909 floating lodge moored by Mohai. great views of Lake Union from the cabin!
9/24: dinner at my friends' place in Capitol Hill. we drew Sara while she participated in a distanced performance, which took place over an hour long phone call. it involved a 3 way call between her, a stranger, and a robot prompting conversation & narrative.	9/25: grocery run to Lam's Seafood Market on King St, my favorite food store in the neighborhood. I've wanted to draw this place for a while. Sketching it made me notice how the awnings were attached to the original part with lots of different materials.
9/26: A Saturday where I forced myself to not work on client projects. I ended up at Ada's Technical Books on 15th Ave, where they now have street parking partitioned into distanced tables & chairs. REALLY hoping all this outdoor seating stays a thing forever.	9/27: Sunday plein air club meetup. We ended up at a picnic table on Seattle University campus. drawing those boring buildings in the background was surprisingly fun.
9/28: Feeling lonely, I went up to Bhy Kracke park to take in some sunlight and eat a bag of Dick's. the way a guy was encouraging his dog to fetch made me laugh.	9/29: we watched the presidential debate in the studio, everyone was on edge and I dissociated by drawing this.
9/30: I landed at this cafe i've never been to before, London Plane. It's a really nice, very distanced place to sit and sketch in Occidental Square.	10/1: my scooter friends and I took a little ride down to Burien to eat donuts and sit in Seahurst Park and do the first day of Inktober (clearly I got a head start). it was a smoky day, and the bluffs came in & out of view.
10/2: my sketch friend Alexander has wanted to draw this tower on Swedish Hospital on Jefferson St so we met up and sat in the parking lot across the street. I've discovered my side-hobby of feeding crows peanuts goes really well with my outdoor sketching.	10/3: biked to London Plane again, where I ate a massive cinnamon bun all by myself and drew trees turning fall colors. Pioneer Square has really changed in the last few months.

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.

Melancholy in Pioneer Square

12/30/16 Pioneer Square Christmas tree

You know Christmas is over when the large tree in Pioneer Square comes down. Meeting with Urban Sketchers Seattle for the last time of the year, feeling a bit wistful as I always do when I know the holiday season is coming to an end, I sketched the workers cutting off the branches and taking down the shiny ornaments.

On the other hand, I was thrilled to be able to sketch outdoors, however briefly. Although I didn’t paint it into my sketch, a large part of the sky was actually blue this morning!

After 20 minutes in 40 degrees, I retreated to the warmth and pastries of Grand Central Arcade. While I enjoyed sketching a silhouette of the main entrance and its beautiful arched windows, and while the cinnamon roll from Grand Central Bakery was as delicious as ever, I was again struck with some sadness about how the Arcade seemed dark, somber and empty. When I worked downtown decades ago, the Arcade was a favorite lunch break getaway (I already had my nostalgia fest the last time we sketched there), and it was full of interesting shops; its many tables were always crowded with people. Today there were more “for lease” signs than occupied spaces, and the homeless seemed to outnumber the employed (though not the sketchers).

12/30/16 Grand Central Arcade

Finally, my third reason for melancholy today was that we had to say good-bye to Ching, who is moving to the Bay Area. She’s been a very regular, enthusiastic urban sketcher the past seven months, and we’re all going to miss her.

We'll miss you, Ching (second from left, front row)!

Plugged Ears in Pioneer Square

7/17/15 Occidental Square

When I sketched the 200 Occidental construction site a couple of months ago, it was more colorful – two cranes and a concrete pumper. Today only a concrete pumper was visible, but it was much noisier – I was happy to have earplugs, which have long become a permanent part of my sketch kit, given my penchant for sketching construction sites.

7/17/15 200 Occidental construction site

Wanting to give my ears a break, I went around the corner to Occidental Square, the primary site of the Friday sketchers’ outing. I settled in to sketch the two large totems in the center of the park surrounded by trees (Frank is sitting against one of them at far left). Tubaluba, the featured Out to Lunch concert series group, started tuning up and testing mics for their noontime performance, and I happened to be sitting directly in front of the stage speakers. I actually like the kind of jazz they play, but not at that volume – again, my ear plugs came in handy!

To fill the last few minutes before our sketchbook sharing, I sketched a girl and her dad playing chess on the park’s giant chessboard. By that time, Tubaluba had started the concert, and once again, I was relieved that my ears were still plugged.

Interestingly, during each sketch, at least one passer-by stopped to watch and express curiosity and interest in my sketching. Shouting through our conversations to be heard through the noise and music, it was a loud morning, to say the least.

Whoever said sketching was a quiet hobby?

7/17/15 chess game at Occidental Square

Main Street Gyros

I've had my eye on this former Taco Bell (you can see the old bell logo design in the stucco) for a while, and meeting the sketchers in Pioneer Square was the perfect opportunity to knock this out. Somehow this little eatery has survived many incarnations and is now a Mediterranean/Greek place. It reminds me of Edith Macefield's place in Ballard, dwarfed by modern towers and busy traffic. It was a bright sunny day and over the hour and a half I sat near the curb drawing I sunburned the backs of both my hands.

A Horse, Some Cranes, Firemen and a Waterfall in Pioneer Square

5/8/15 An old saddlery sign's bronze horse at Second and Jackson.

Although the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (actually a small museum) was the main destination for the Friday sketchers, the “good weather contingency plan” was anywhere in Pioneer Square. I decided the day was too sunny to sketch indoors!

While waiting for others to arrive just outside the Klondike museum, I sketched the three-dimensional horse sculpture that used to be the sign for a saddlery back when there were as many horses as vehicles going through Pioneer Square. The building owner had the good sense to save the horse, which now stands over the 88 Keys Dueling Piano Sports Bar.

With my warm-up done, I moved on to my objective for the day: The construction site for 200 Occidental, destined to be “155,000 square feet of office space, underground parking for 68 cars and 15,000 square feet of retail” next to Occidental Square. OK, OK, I know progress marches on, but I’m saddened that this view of the Smith Tower, one of my favorite Seattle buildings, will soon be blocked. Someday I’ll come back and sketch the “after” view.

5/8/15 200 Occidental construction site

A short distance away is Waterfall Garden Park, a little gem of an urban park that you could easily miss walking by if it weren’t for the sound of rushing water from the 22-foot waterfall. I used to eat my brown bag lunches there during the summer when I worked downtown a long time ago, but I hadn’t been there in years. Wouldn’t you know it – the same construction cranes from 200 Occidental were visible behind the waterfall.

After the meetup to share sketches and after lunch with Kate, I still hadn’t gotten enough sketching on this gorgeous day (70 degrees by then!). I went back to Occidental Park to sketch the Fallen Firefighters Memorial made up of four life-size bronze figures (the dude at left is not made of bronze). Erected in 1998 for the four firefighters who died in an International District warehouse in 1995, the memorial honors all Seattle firefighters who have died in the line of duty. And ha! – there are those same cranes again! (Even when I’m not sketching them, I’m sketching them.)

5/8/15 Waterfall Garden Park

5/8/15 Fallen Firefighters Memorial

Yes, definitely COLD . . .

. . . but sunny and bright so I headed out to the streets. As often happens I thought it wasn't so bad. An hour later after concentrating intensely on the drawing, I started to notice I was starting to shake. So I finished this double-paner as best I could.

Fortunately, I had been sitting just outside a Starbucks. As I entered I saw at least 5 other urban sketchers. And there was a couple of intense chess games on one of the long tables. I think these guys meet there regularly. They were really into it. Made me think of Washington Park in New York.

 

Here's a couple of shots of the group. 

Sunday Sketching in the COLD

Near freezing temps, but a motivated group of Seattle Sketchers showed up on Sunday at the Pioneer Square underground bus tunnel!  This is part of what is so great about USk, the group motivation and support to venture out on a Sunday morning, even in the COLD, to see our world one sketch at a time.

First was the bus tunnel...it was very hard to get the curves right, took longer than expected.

Second, with frozen hands, I needed to feel some sun, so it was up to the sunny corner at 3rd Ave. and Yesler.

After, I headed over to Zeitgeist cafe and sketched the entire interior.  I have been trying a limited color palette over pencil drawings in my work sketches lately, and I suppose this is a variation on that idea, with just ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and a touch of manganese blue in the glass. I was tired, so the perspective got a little wonky in places! I also probably need to draw into the gutter a bit more, maybe try pen...always learning...

The Sinking Ship at Pioneer Square

I tried to find an unusual/complex perspective, and found a good spot at the corner of 1st and Yesler looking down both James and Yesler, prominently framing between them what has been called the ugliest building in Seattle, the "Sinking Ship" parking garage. In adding the text later, I came across some really interesting history behind that site -- and this is what I love about sketching cityscapes: the endless stories and discovery!

Pioneer Square Station

11/16/14 Pioneer Square Station mezzanine level

Our outdoor thermometer read 33 degrees when I left the house this morning to head for Pioneer Square Station. Despite the chill, the bright sunshine brought out a good showing of Urban Sketchers Seattle to sketch in and around the Metro tunnel station.

I decided to get the hard one out of the way first – the view from the mezzanine level out toward the tunnel, plus a few sketchers.

The tunnel station turned out to be colder than I thought it would be. By the time I finished that sketch, I was so chilled that I had to go outdoors to seek sunshine! I set my stool down on Second and Yesler facing west. Just as I was finishing up, I ran into Michele, so we ducked inside Shawn O’Donnell’s American Grill and Irish Pub to warm up with coffee and a quick sketch of the bar. 

Second and Yesler facing west

Shawn O'Donnell's pub