100 Percent Chance of Rain at King St. Station

12/10/22 Smith Tower

The forecast for today was for 100 percent chance of rain, but we weren’t worried – King Street Station has a huge, gorgeous interior where USk Seattle has met many times. It’s one of our winter-weather standbys. We even held our 10^th anniversary celebration there in November 2017 with participation by more than 50 sketchers. Imagine our rude surprise when we arrived to learn that a recently changed policy allows only ticketed passengers to enter the station!

Urban sketchers, however, are nothing if not resilient, flexible and hardy (the temperature was in the low 40s). We all found sheltered areas surrounding the station and nearby, and at the throwdown, we all amazed each other with fabulous sketches. Though I wasn’t feeling hardy while shivering and dripping all afternoon, by the end, I was proud to be among Seattle’s hardest of the hardcore!

Along with several other sketchers, I began under a station overhang facing my beloved Smith Tower (left). Using the cooler side of my secondary triad palette gave me the gloomy grays I was looking for.

12/10/22 Chinatown Gate

Getting chilled, I took a brisk, drippy walk to the International District, where I knew the light rail station walkways offered a sheltered view of the historic Chinatown Gate. I’ve sketched the full gate several times, so this time I picked half of it. The warmer side of the same secondary palette gave me the gate’s bright hues. (The more I use a secondary triad, the more I love it, even in the dead of winter.)

I started shivering during that sketch, so I took another brisk walk, this time to Uwajimaya, to warm up and do a little shopping before the throwdown.

The only cozy sketching I did was on the Link light rail trains in both directions.

Light rail commuter

Bravo to the hardcore sketchers who turned out for what was possibly the wettest USk outing in my memory (except maybe the outing at Northgate Light Rail Station last year – that was both windy and wet!).

Intrepid!

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.

Out the windows

We spent part of this Valentine's day doing what we love...sketching together in our town. We spread out around Columbia Center, which is the tallest building in the city. The view from the 40th floor Starbucks isn't what it used to be and it now costs $20 to ride the elevator up to the 73rd floor. So I spent my time sketching out the windows of the 4th floor.

Liz and Peggy found warm spots on an outdoor patio with a good view.



Sharing our sketches. The Smith Tower got a lot of attention today. It opened in 1914 and was the first skyscraper in Seattle as well as tallest building west of the Mississippi for many decades. It is 35 floors.




My first sketch was a window view of that same Smith Tower.

 
Then I moved to the other side of the building to sketch the Rainier club dwarfed by new skyscrapers.


More photos here. 

Ground Level at Columbia Center

10/11/19 Smith Tower

Around the time when the USk Friday group was still fairly small, we met a couple of times at Columbia Center, Seattle’s tallest skyscraper, mainly to sketch from the Sky View Observatory on the 73^rd floor. Back then, the admission was nominal, and apparently it was the city’s best-kept secret because we had the place to ourselves. Now it’s a “destination,” the price has gone up to $22, and even on this off-season day, tourists were queued up for tickets by noon.

USk Seattle members opted not to pay the sky-high price, though several chose the Starbucks on the 40^th floor. It’s not the 360-degree view of the observatory, but for the price of a latte, you can sketch through numerous huge windows facing west and north.

Though the Starbucks view was tempting, I wanted to face south to sketch the Smith Tower, my favorite Seattle building. Near ground level, Columbia Center has three atrium floors that have been improved significantly since the last time we sketchers met there in 2014 – many more well-lighted public areas with lots of tables and other seating. I found one that allowed a great view of Smith Tower without going out in the chilly but sunny day.

The rest of the morning, I wandered around the three atrium levels hunting victims. I chose two hapless guys who only wanted to eat their lunch in peace without getting sketched. The one I sketched from above was irresistible: He was only a few feet below me but separated by a glass partition. Columbia Center is all about views that are difficult to get anywhere else in the city.

10/11/19 Columbia Center Atrium

Paul, a visiting sketcher from New Zealand, knew he would have to leave before the throwdown, so we took a photo at the
initial meetup. Great to have you sketch with us, Paul!

Sunny Yesler Terrace Park

9/28/18 Looking north up Broadway from Yesler Terrace Park

As a native and lifelong Seattle resident, I’ve seen a few new city parks open, and I’ve usually gotten around to visiting them within several months or a year of their openings. Thanks to Urban Sketchers, today I saw a brand-new park that just opened last month – Yesler Terrace Park – much sooner than I probably would have otherwise.

Formerly the site of the Yesler Terrace public housing development, the 1.7 acre park serves “as a gathering place for current and future residents of Yesler Terrace as well as people who live and work in the surrounding community. The current residents are primarily from Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa.” A new housing development for a range of income levels was built nearby.

9/28/18 Yesler Terrace Park and the Smith Tower

Having seen only a few photos of the park in the newspaper, I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived. It’s a wide-open, welcoming space with lots of benches, tables and small sculptures. Looking right past the freeway, there’s a spectacular view of south downtown, the stadium and even a peek at the peak of Mt. Rainier. (And somehow I forgot to take photos of any of it!) If you walk through the park and down multiple stairways, you pass newly landscaped and terraced grounds and eventually end up in the middle of Chinatown-International District. If you are looking for one of Seattle’s most diverse neighborhoods, Yesler Terrace Park would be at its center.

With all of that to choose from, what did I sketch? Streetcar and utility wires criss-crossing Broadway and shadows in the street cast by new construction.

As seems to have become my habit lately, I spent so much time on that first sketch that I left myself only 26 minutes before the throwdown for a second sketch. Looking for the Smith Tower, my favorite Seattle building, I had to sight past one of numerous concrete spheres around the park. It reminded me of one of the early exercises we did in the drawing class I took last month: sketching a ball in the sunlight to practice capturing the core shadow, cast shadow, form shading and reflected light. The whole scene looked like a value study, so study it I did.

This time we had a rain contingency plan that consisted of more than optimism, but luckily, we didn’t need it. The morning turned out sunny, warm and beautiful – a lovely gift for the end of September.

A Library and a Walrus

6/9/17 Seattle Public Library

How many icons can a person sketch in one day? When I started out yesterday for the Urban Sketchers Seattle gathering, I didn’t know I would end up sketching several icons, including two on my “must sketch someday” list.

6/9/17 View facing east on Madison Street

The meeting place was the Fourth and Madison Building’s seventh floor terrace – a pleasant outdoor space for nearby workers to bring their bag lunches and for sketchers to catch unusual peek-a-boo views. The one I (and many other sketchers) chose was looking east on Madison Street toward St. James Cathedral at the top of the hill looking very tiny in the steel and glass canyon.

However, that’s not one of the “must sketch” icons I was referring to. For one I went down to the building’s lobby, where a large window faced the Seattle Public Library’s downtown branch. Although I’ve sketched inside this flagship library building several times, I’ve never sketched the whole building, although I’ve wanted to. Designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, the unusual and striking building has always seemed too intimidating. Yet as I gazed at it yesterday, I had the same feeling I had while sketching in Positano or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.: The architectural lines are so unconventional and unexpected, who would know if my sketch were wonky? I took it on.

By then I had only five minutes left before the sketchbook throwdown, so I quickly went back up to the seventh floor terrace for the other peek-a-boo view I’d considered: The Space Needle hiding behind the “Darth Vader” (Fourth and Blanchard) Building.

6/9/17 Space Needle and Fourth & Blanchard Building

However, that, too, is not one of the two “must sketch” icons I was referring to. The second one was a walrus on the side of the Arctic Building. One of few old buildings in Seattle with any kind of gargoyles or other cool exterior decorations, it has walruses all the way around, way above eye level. Luckily for me, this one was adjacent to a parking lot, so I could stand next to it instead of on the street, where I would have had to look straight up to sketch. As a bonus, the Smith Tower was right next to it! 

Whew. I think I hit my Seattle icon quota for the year.

6/9/17 Arctic Building walrus and Smith Tower

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. 

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!