In a beautiful city like Seattle, I've surprised myself by being so attracted sketching the highway of all things, but here we are. Mercer Corridor along I-5 is an area designated as one of Seattle's "emphasis zones" – which are "places where an encampment has become a consistent problem". It's also very close to where I live. These paintings contrast the traffic, chaos, and sale of the freeway with the people who live their lives around the structures. It might be hard to see at the small scale here but there are tiny people in the landscapes if you look for them.
I sketched all three of these from life while standing above I-5, drawing as fast as I could so as to minimize the amount of fumes I breathe.
These + a few more paintings will be on display for one night only - Thursday 7/19/18, 7pm-2am - at Lovecitylove in Capitol Hill!
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.
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.
Two distinctive and strikingly different churches dominate the South Lake Union area’s historic Cascade neighborhood. The most eye-catching is St. Spiridon Russian Orthodox Cathedral, with its deep blue onion domes. SinceI’d sketched St. Spiridon about a year ago (and since I should have been home packing my bag instead of sketching with Urban Sketchers Seattle this morning and was short on time), I decided to focus on the second church: Immanuel Lutheran.
Completed in 1912, the church has been on the historic register since 1982. Although it doesn’t look like anything I’ve sketched in Europe, the round and arched windows evoke the same architectural details I saw on Gothic buildings in Spain and Germany. It’s exactly the kind of building that makes me freeze with the deer-in-the-headlights look if I try to go at it with a fine point pen. But with only an hour to sketch, I immediately pulled out my brush pen to hit it as hard and fast as possible. It’s probably a good strategy even when I can be more leisurely.
The rain earlier in the morning may have kept some sketchers away, but the seven of us who showed up shared sketches afterwards at Espresso Vivace. Those blue onion domes captured a lot of attention!
In back, from left: Marvin, Ching, Kathleen and Sue. In front: Tina, Anne and Natalie
(Thanks to John Pound for taking the photo.)
What a grand week we had!! When I had meeting in the South Lake Union (SLU) area of Seattle, I rode my bike, with my chair and portable materials so I could sketch in the P-Patch at Cascade. I had barely stepped into the garden before I stopped to sketch!
I had lunch at a place called Nollie's, on Harrison. It looks small, but once inside, there are multiple rooms, including a couple upstairs, with views E and also NW, where all the construction is happening. Good food! and a good meeting. Then I returned to the P-Patch, to work on that amazing view I found before my meeting. (This value sketch was completed prior to my meeting - sketched with water-soluble Indigo Blue pencil, followed with ink-tinted water brushes.)
Yesterday, I sat in a meeting near the window that overlooks the Cascade P-Patch in the South Lake Union area. The colors of this Autumn have been particularly striking, and I wanted to sketch this scene - except, I had no supplies! So I grabbed a sheet of copy paper, and a pencil and sketched away. (see the original pencil sketch below.) Once I was home, I decided to "paint" the scene with my Inktense colored pencils, using my sketch as reference. (When I was growing up, my Mom often made great pencil sketches, and then upon returning home, she painted full-size watercolors from her sketch.)
Then, using my original sketch as reference, I rendered the sketch again, in ink. That's because I had a NEW PEN AND NIB I wanted to try out. Fellow urban sketcher Tina had given me her Noodler's Ahab pen with a bent nib, so I replaced it with a GOULET steel nib, a 1.1mm STUB ITALIC. I think you can see why I fell in love with this nib the minute I started using it! Now I want to go out and sketch everywhere with my stub italic nib!
Here's the original pencil sketch, made with your basic yellow No. 2 pencil!! Even so, it confirmed how much I enjoy pencil sketching!
A couple weeks ago, several of us were sketching at Olympic Sculpture Park at Seattle's waterfront. Most of us included the iconic Calder Eagle in our sketches. In my first sketch, from a distance, I couldn't imagine what a house was doing in the middle of the park, but when I went down for a closer view, I learned that the rooftop was a sculpture!! and folks were encourage to climb on the roof! It was a great view, tho I must admit the weeds and dried grasses were what first attracted me.
Okay, so give me weeds or a garden or P-Patch and I will stop to do an "urban sketch!" The Cascade P-Patch in South Lake Union area has lured me in several times this summer. There's SO much character there, and an ever-changing array of plants.
My church is across the street from the Cascade P-Patch in the South Lake Union area of Seattle. The other day I noticed a "quaint" scene, and I promised myself I would return to sketch it. Friday was a gorgeous sunny day, the neighborhood vibrantly alive as I sat on my stool beside the P-Patch. After I sketched this scene, I walked around the P-Patch, once again promising myself I would return, SOON!
Last week, several outdoor Shakespeare companies started their summer season of performances. I noted that King Lear would be performed by GreenStage Saturday afternoon in lower Woodland Park, just a mile from my home. Since the weather was so perfect, I rode my bike, packing snacks, knitting, and oh, yes, my sketchbook. What an incredible performance!! For almost 2 1/2 hours I watched, forgetting to knit at times. The characters, and costumes, and embellishments finally got me to sketching people - and people are NOT my forte! What can I say? I will, however go back to another performance and attempt the (almost) impossible!!
Links to Shakespeare plays: <www.greenstage.org> and <www.lastleaf99.org> and <www.seattleshakespeare.org/woodeno>
My church is across the street from the Cascade P-Patch in the South Lake Union area of Seattle. The other day I noticed a "quaint" scene, and I promised myself I would return to sketch it. Friday was a gorgeous sunny day, the neighborhood vibrantly alive as I sat on my stool beside the P-Patch. After I sketched this scene, I walked around the P-Patch, once again promising myself I would return, SOON!
