Northwest Seaport’s 60th Anniversary (Plus Bi-Bim-Bap)

6/15/24 Lake Union Park historic ships

Although the weather gods teased us with dire forecasts of rain, hail, lightning and thunder, they took mercy on USk Seattle this morning – windy but dry to the end! A good turnout of brave sketchers showed up for the 60^th anniversary celebration of Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center, which preserves and restores historic work ships on Lake Union.

To capture a survey of ships, I made small sketches of the historic tug Comanche, the Fremont Tugboat’s Dixie, and the lightship Swiftsure. Painted red, the 120-year-old Swiftsure is always popular among sketchers. In fact, I’ve sketched it myself several times, but this time I wanted a tall, narrow view to fit the space on my page spread, so I focused on the mast. (My current comics-like approach helped me see a composition I might not have chosen otherwise.)

6/15/24 Stone Korean Restaurant

After the outing, I joined a few sketchers for lunch at nearby Stone Korean Restaurant. Although I’ve had traditional bi-bim-bap, in general, I don’t eat Korean food often, so many dishes were new to me, like the delicious veggie pancake that the table shared. For my entrée, I chose a hot pot-style bi-bim-bap with crispy, toasted rice on the bottom – very different from regular bi-bim-bap and so delicious! Served in a dangerously hot cast iron pot, the food stayed hot for the duration of my sketch – an ideal sketch-meal!

I was so ignorant of Korean foods that another sketcher accused me of not being Asian, but now that she has educated me, I’m looking forward to enjoying more Korean meals.

Drizzly Lake Union Park

 

8/25/23 1904 Swiftsure docked at Lake Union

You can’t keep USk Seattle down with a little drizzle! OK, the drizzle eventually turned to rain, which I happily welcomed if it would clear away the smoke. In any case, we had a good time at Lake Union Park this morning.

I found some cover that gave me a good view of the 1904 lightship Swiftsure, which I’ve sketched at least twice before – it’s hard to resist the red hull and yellow masts. My previous sketches were more detailed, but I don’t think I scaled the ship accurately either time. Standing fairly close, my goal was simply to scale it as accurately as possible on my small A6-size page. I still couldn’t get all of the center mast in, but I resisted drawing it shorter just to squeeze the top in.

Space Needle from Lake Union Park

By the time I finished, the drizzle had turned to rain, but that was when my walk around the park brought me to a view of the Space Needle. It’s apparently a mandatory subject for me whenever I see it.

So this is where all the sketchers were hiding out when it started raining!

Natalie fashioned her wearable umbrella from a tote bag!

Lake Union Park with New Friends

 

6/18/22 Space Needle from Lake Union Park

Urban sketchers and fans of products from Traveler’s Company and Art Toolkit have a lot in common: They all love documenting their days, and they all love fun sketching tools! Seattle urban sketcher and Traveler’s rep April Wu invited USk Seattle to help introduce urban sketching to users of Traveler’s Company art journaling materials. In addition, Maria Coryell-Martin, developer of the Art Toolkit, gave a demo and showed her popular portable watercolor kits at the event yesterday. It was fun to meet new sketchers, and we hope they’ll continue to join USk at future outings.

The chosen location, Lake Union Park, is one of my favorites, and it was a productive afternoon for me: Several compositional studies, a couple of which made the cut for larger, color sketches. A bonus was the gesture sketches I got of the many critters hanging out near the water.

First on my list of priorities was documenting the Space Needle, which was recently repainted in its original “Galaxy Gold” to commemorate its 60^th birthday. I tried a composition with the Needle next to the Museum of History and Industry’s old clock, but I didn’t like it enough to do a full-color sketch. A walk around the park led me to some large purple allium flowers that seemed a perfect contrast to the orange Needle.

As many times as I’ve sketched at Lake Union Park, I don’t think I had captured the Center of Wooden Boats building before. To me, it’s not a very interesting modern building, so I looked for a composition that would frame it. While I sketched, some aggressive Canada geese walked right up to me, honking their demands for food! Anyone who gets in my face like that should know they will be sketched.

April (at right) and Maria (in cap) introduce urban sketching to fans of Traveler's products and the Art Toolkit.

Great turnout of many first-time urban sketchers as well as long-timers!

Rip Visits Lake Union Park

7/30/21 South Lake Union skyline from Lake Union Park

I had another Rip Van Winkle moment, this time at Lake Union Park, which I had last visited nearly two years ago. So many new buildings had popped up or been completed since then that it was disorienting. Thankfully, the Space Needle was still visible, but I wondered how much longer that would be true. Sketching with USk Seattle, I deliberately chose this view with new buildings obscuring it from this angle.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the sketch outing early to get to a class, so in the remaining time, I filled a couple of pages with quick gestures of sailboats. I’ve sketched boats on the lake before, but only as part of a larger scene. My goal with these was to simply capture their movement and varying angles as they went by. What fun!

After the last 10x10:

The last class of the 10x10 series in Seattle was a Group Reportage. The class met in the morning at Lake Union Park. The attendees were invited to join some members of USk Seattle in an afternoon sketch outing.

The group was a mixture of instructors, USk Seattle members and workshop attendees. We had a shorter than usual outing as those involved in the workshop had had a long day. That was probably a good thing as it started to sprinkle as we were finishing. We shared out sketches and had our group photo in the shelter of the MOHAI cafe meeting room:





I've sketched several times in this area so I looked for something a little different. These large flowers caught my eye. It was even more interesting with the Space Needle peeking through.