Next Sketch Outing
Saturday, Sept. 13: Georgetown Steam Plant
Fran's Chocolates was a beautiful space (and yummy samples) but just not cluttered enough for me, so I headed over to the Trailer Park Mall. Even when they're closed, there's always plenty of yummy eye candy there.
After yesterday's record-breaking heat, I was underdressed, and didn't realize how chilled I was until it came time to wrap it up.
Then it was off to teach my On Location class. We met at Café Ladro on Capitol Hill. To help my students overcome the anxiety over perspective, I dove in without pencilling and pushed the wonkiness to extremes. Check out the lower left shelf. Proportion schproportion.
Fooled by the sunshine, I set up on the corner of 22nd and Market and too late realized I wasn't going to make it in the cold without my gloves and scarf. I whipped this out in record time and headed to a vintage shop I'd never drawn before so I could sit indoors.
As I drew this, I thought my pens were leaking tiny little drops of water. Then I realized the roof was leaking. It smelled like grandma's attic and the radio played such sad music: In The Still of The Night, Save The Last Dance For Me, I Am Music. To make matters worse, the sun began calling to me, insistently, but now I was trapped inside, midway into a drawing. But the elderly woman who owns the place was kind and curious about why I would want to draw her dusty old junk and came outside to wave as I drove off.
Atlas Vintage Mall, Fremont
Trove Vintage Boutique, Ballard
I happened on this three-month old boutique in Ballard, on Market Ave. I got there when they opened and finished around 1:00, just as it was getting crowded and I began to worry that I was in the way. There's nowhere for me to sit that isn't blocking something that someone wants to look at, but customers are surprised to see me squatting there and they step away, even though I could see their trajectory was toward something just beside me. It's always interesting to watch people moving the things I'm trying to draw. They often touch things just enough to change their position in the drawing, but don't actually pick anything up. I wonder about the psychology of shopping where people feel the need to caress and fondle things they don't intend to buy. It's like a petting zoo of inanimate objects.
I missed doing a drawing yesterday and woke up cranky about skipping a day, due to a late work night and then going to watch my students play basketball. I'd planned to draw while watching them, but I wasn't inspired by the wide, empty gym. I'll try to do two tomorrow to make up for it.
Mort's Cabin Antiques. Darold's a super nice guy (Mort was his dad). Offered me coffee and warned me about the meter maids while I sat in his crowded but meticulous shop on Eastlake Blvd., Seattle. Check his place out and tell him Steve sent you.
Another experiment with lighting. I've built up so many layers of diluted India Ink I don't think the paper can take any more. You can see to the left of the chair it's just pooling up. The shadows above the cat and whatever that tan thing is weren't really there, but I thought it would help the effect, so I cheated and put them in. The line work was done on site, but all of the color work was done at home from a reference photo.
Sofa, davenport, settee, chesterfield, divan, canapé... "It's just a couch!" as Kevin Spacey insists in American Beauty. And now it's just clutter in the basement of a downstairs vintage store in Fremont. Along with these lovely dolls with the photoprinted faces of someone's granddaughters and a purse made of buttons, a clock shaped like a life-preserver and an "I wuv you THIS much!" statue. American culture at its finest.
Another couple of hours sitting in this vintage mall. There's an endless supply of subjects, all arranged into still lifes just for me to sketch. I wonder how long until I feel I've been there, done that.
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." -Confucious
Of all the different approaches to sketching, this is my favorite. Starting without any pencil or guiding marks, ignoring the hues, not choosing a focal point. It's more a meditation on contour and assemblage. The notion of "a mistake"- whether in perspective or proportion, omission or placement- becomes moot. A clutter of things I don't recognize and can't name allows me to see not "the thing," but rather "this bend meeting that point, and this line almost parallels that one." I don't stop until I can't see anything else to draw and then I'm sort of bummed to be finished- surprised that so little, or so much, time has passed.
