Colorful Hing Hay Park

9/29/18 Chinatown Gate and King Street Station

This morning USk Seattle met in Chinatown/International District with Washington State University interior design students and their teachers, who were in Seattle for job shadowing and to research local resources. 

Over lunch afterwards, instructor Bob Krikac told me that learning to draw by hand is an important part of the curriculum because he believes clients are more receptive to early design concepts when they see them hand-drafted. As someone who obviously values old-school sketching on paper, I was pleased to hear that there’s still a place for that in contemporary design, where so much of the work is done on computers.

9/29/18 Gateway in Hing Hay Park

I’ve been using a lot of graphite lately, which I love for its expressive, tonal aspects and because it is helping me to see and understand values better. But the heck if I was going to use graphite in the colorful ID and Hing Hay Park! First up was a sketch of the historic Chinatown Gate and the equally historic King Street Station peeking behind it. I sketched a similar view last year during the Lunar New Year celebration when it was mobbed with celebrants. By comparison, it was relatively quiet in the ID today.

Several months ago, I sketched a larger view of the dramatic Gateway in Hing Hay Park. This time I got up close, where a guy was eating lunch next to the bright red metal sculpture.

It was a fun morning sketching with the students and USk Seattle on what might be the last day of our streak of beautiful fall weather.

For WSU...Printing, Cutting, Scanning...

In early April, I will be driving across the state to Pullman, WA, home of Washington State University.  I am so honored to have been asked by the School of Design + Construction to present a lecture, exhibit work, and teach a workshop!  So this weekend is full of scanning, printing, cutting, organizing images for the show, etc.

The Lecture on April 6 will focus on the two fellowships that have taken me to Europe the past two summers to sketch and paint.  The first, in 2013 was the Gabriel Prize, awarded to one architect in the United States each year for three months of learning about architecture on-site through drawing!  So perfect!! 
      My project was to study the use of perspective in the 17th c. landscape designs at Versailles and Vaux le Vicomte.
     The second fellowship was through NIAUSI/The Civita Institute for two months in the amazing hill town of Civita di Bagnoregio ITALY (where I also teach a summer workshop). There, the project was to create an illustrated walking guide to the architecture of the town--a project I'm still working on!

The Exhibit April 6-17 will feature, oh, maybe 100 sketches from the fellowships. Many of these are posted on my flickr page.

The Workshop April 18-19 is in three parts:  Saturday morning, April 18 is a lecture on how to sketch, is open to all at no charge.  Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning are small group hand's on sketching instruction--contact WSU to see if there are any open spots. Sunday afternoon is a Sketchcrawl, open to all.

Thanks so much to Bob Krikac from WSU for arranging this wonderful opportunity.  I hope that sketchers in the area might join us!