Playing Catch-Up

Hi, Sketcher Friends!
Here are a few Seattle-specific sketches since last posting:

My nearest coffee shop, Grateful Bread on 35th in Wedgwood.

Drawn with my Gage students on the third floor of King St. Station.

The ugliest building I could find in my neighborhood, 65th and 25th in Bryant.

Waiting for students to arrive for my drawing class at Gage.

With students at Suzzallo Library, UW.

Exterior of the same Grateful Bread as above, and the Safeway entry across the street.

Again, inside Grateful Bread.

Drawn while chatting with Tom Ettel at the Whole Foods on 15th, south of Interbay.

Catching up.

To fit everything I liked about this view at Bothell Country Market into one drawing I had to do some squishing. Might be time to get a landscape sketchbook with longer pages, but then habits die hard.

I gave a private lesson at Suzzallo Library at UW. My student and I sat side-by-side and drew this view at a comfy table. 

This view of Suzzallo was drawn with my class from Gage Academy as a demo.

The atrium across the street from the market on Winslow Ave in Bainbridge, drawn a few weeks ago with Urban Sketchers Seattle.

Sitting on a blanket with my partner, as we drew The Shelter on the east side of Green Lake.

A sketch from behind an antique shop in Wenatchee, where I'll be giving an Urban Sketchers-themed "sermon" at the Unitarian Church this Sunday, followed by a workshop at Radio Station Gallery and Pub.

Notes From Underground

As part of my New Year's Resolutions and efforts towards general well-being, I'm on a bit of a tech-sabbatical. I deleted Facebook and Messenger from my phone and rarely check my email. It has been a welcome relief reconnecting with the real world and my flesh-and-blood friends in real time.

I haven't slowed down on the drawing however, and have some catching up to do on posting, so here are a few drawings from the last month.

I took my On Location students from Gage Academy to Wallingford Center and drew this scene as a demo. I took a dozen in-progress photos as I worked but I'll spare you all but one.

I'm often asked about my "no pencil" policy, and for the sake of transparency here is the kind of laborious and pains-taking pencil plan I create before inking. As you can see, a long time was spent on this stage (about 30 seconds).

Another scene drawn at Wallingford Center, completed in short bursts between consulting one-on-one with my students who were scattered around the building.

It's a welcoming location where I'll also be teaching my 10 x 10 class on St. Patty's Day.











    













The class also visited King Street Station with the assignment of finding a viewpoint with detail and depth, and to use atmospheric perspective to suggest distance.

Stimson-Green Mansion is good for students interested in architecture, but the rooms are dimly lit. The spaces with the most natural light tend to be the bathrooms and the kitchen- not the most historic of settings.

In my drive to get students to put down their pencils and draw directly in ink, I did this quick silly drawing of a librarian at Suzallo Library. I wanted to show that a wobbly drawing done as a modified blind contour isn't fatal. I was grateful that the librarian seemed unself-conscious about me staring at her for 20 minutes while I inked my way through this bland setting, trusting that my undisciplined pen lines would add up to something.



 

And the US Bank building corporate arch-thingie, where I was gently hassled by a security guard who asked me to put my chair back and move along.

If you'll be in Georgetown anytime during March or April, I'll have a show of a dozen large color drawings (17x23) at All-City Coffee. Not technically urban sketches, but using the same technique:

Suzzallo Library

I hesitate to post this because this is not what the drawing looked like at the end of our sketch crawl today. I work way too slow to finish a drawing to my satisfaction in two hours. At home I added a lot more shading and my white gel pen lines to raise the contrast. I'm not really an Urban Sketcher, I just play one on TV.

This is what it looked like at the sharing.

Library Refugees

Our power had been out for four days and the temperature in the house was a cozy 46 degrees, so we found refuge at the Kent Regional Library along with hundreds of others with the same idea. It made for good people watching and sketching. As always people aren't that active at the library.

Ballard Library 12-17-09

It gets dark early in December in Seattle. I found this scene at the public library in Ballard at 4:30 p.m. Ballard has Nordic heritage and the "new" library has a ship's theme. Beautiful beams in the ceiling, very tall windows and whimsically and environmentally sound, there is grass growing on the roof.