12.25.12

for the third year in a row we reserved the kitchen/theater in our building and had The Orphan Annie Christmas gathering. Pretty quiet day so I made time to sketch the spread.

12.24.12

took my sketchbook to the Elysian on Christmas Eve, they were not serving food but the bar was busy

12.16.12

attended the December Urban Sketch meet at EMP last Sunday, lots of odd lines and vibrant colors at this space. I did not have any issues with security but witnessed a bit of that going on from my airy perch, not such a friendly place to draw. 

12.9.12

Last Saturday we attended Gina's company party in downtown Seattle. The event includes a night's stay at The Mayflower Hotel, we always get a room on this side of the building which I love because of the view I get of Macy's Christmas displays from above.

11.30.12

On our last night in NY we were treated to a night out on the Lower East Side Manhattan to see a girl band at The Living Room...pretty outstanding evening!

11.29.12

The apartment we stayed in when we returned to NY was located in Brooklyn. Looking out the back window of this third floor NY walkup provided a rare glimpse into some super urban backyards. A lot of things were fascinating to me about this backyard_the close proximity of the apartments, no side windows in these spaces, there was a huge amount of trees and foliage and four legged activity from cats and fat squirrels. 

11.27.12

rode the F train to an entrance of Central Park, the only rainy day we encountered on our entire three week vacation...I drew these feet on the ride in. I could ride NYC subway all day!

11.24.12

I had three libraries on my list for our east coast trip, The Library of Congress in DC, The Boston Public and The New York Public. Library of Congress had very little general public access area and the day we visited New York Public we were soaked and chilled from walkin in a soggy snow. Boston Public was beautiful especially with the glow of the green bankers lights stretching out across the reading room.

11.23.12

Walked the Freedom Trail all day and stopped into "The Bell in Hand" Americas Oldest Tavern for a brew before getting lost on Bostons bus transit system.

11.21.12

After driving all day from D.C to Boston, we got back in a vehicle and traveled to Vermont, I made this from the backseat.

11.18.12

We visited the National Gallery of Art on Saturday but I returned alone on Sunday to make this in the rotunda, pretty awesome place. It wasn't really crowded and the rotunda space is very large with big marble benches all around the fountain, I saw alot of ass while making this drawing because people thought maybe my view was more interesting...

11.16.12

On Friday we visited our first free DC Smithsonian museum, The Museum of Air & Space. Big stuff here! I enjoyed the old planes hanging from the ceiling the best. The Bi-Wing in the foreground is an Eastern Airlines plane as well but I failed to notice that until after my drawing was done. 

11.14.12

We spent the first night in Queens,NY and walked to Flushing Meadows on our first day. The Unisphere is quite a site and we pretty much had the park to ourselves on a cool windy weekday.

11.13.12

1st day of vacation was spent in transit, we flew from Seatac to DIA to LaGuardia, the flight was delayed in DIA so we got free TV on the second leg of our journey east. I made this sketch of a fellow passenger before I zoned out on in flight television.

10.20.12

if your sitting dead center of the bar at Elysian you get a truncated view of your bartenders and on a busy day that view is fleeting

10.15.12

when I first came to Seattle, I found this little tin counter in the Pike Place Market that serves up fish&chips and hot chippino (that I call northwestern gumbo)...anyway been wanting to sketch here for a while...this was my first attempt.

10.7.12

my 3rd sketch in or around Bauhaus coffee, the colors in this little place match my favorite palette

9.30.12

Made a second sketch of Bauhaus Coffee from across the street. Note to self for early morning sketching_ease up on the caffeine and eat a good breakfast_I felt a little wobbly.

9.16.12

The Urban Sketcher group met at Jack Block Park in west Seattle this month. The park is really well hidden but has great views of the city and industrial waterways nearby.

9.12.12

Continuing my quest to draw places on the hill which are slated for change in the near future, Bauhaus will remain on this corner but the building is about to be altered.

9.6.12

some wee sketches from the bar, Elysian has been pretty busy so my view has been changing 

9.3.12

The Velo Bike store at 11th and Pine will be closing soon and moving to Belltown, judging by the amount of bicyclists I saw pull up to the place while I was drawing only to find it closed for the holiday, I think it's presence on the hill will be sorely missed.

8/25

we went "camping" last weekend....Tinkham Campground is just past North Bend on I-90, not so far out of town. The site is near the river but you would never know it for the constant hum of the traffic. Crazy noisy, I usually don't like to have my headphones in when we are out camping but I opted for them so I could tune out and draw.........

I attended the August Seattle Urban Sketch crawl, we met in Georgetown, Seattle area. Very industrial environ and kinda ghost town like, we were to meet at "Jules Maes Saloon" for lunch so I settled on making a sketch here.

made a couple of little sketches while I sat in here, very interesting space

schlitz...

8/18/12

took a little day trip to Olympic National Park 

, there are no roads that travel through this park but you can drive loops on different entrances...we did the Hurricane Ridge ride. Got my stamp, then made a sketch.

8/9

Thursday afternoon at Volunteer Park, all kinda stuff I want to draw here, but I settled on the Asian Art Museum

8/7

As an Urban sketcher I shy away from drawing crowds because I am intimidated by their constant motion, this too is something I want to conquer. Feeling a little bold after my workshop in Portland

8/5

While I was in Portland I stayed with some folks int the "Sunnyside" neighborhood, about a 15 minute bus ride from downtown. Every morning on my way in,  the bus passed a pub called "Dig A Pony". On Sunday I got off the bus before my stop and ventured in to this decidedly "hipster" bar (there was no gray hair here). It was so airconditioned cold in here I wanted to spend the night, anyway I was chatting with the Uber cool bartender and told him that any bar named for a Beatles song was some place I could not pass up. He said he was so glad to meet someone he didn't have to explain the name to...free IPA's for me. dig it

free beers merit sketches

Portland Urban Sketcher Workshop

I traveled to Portland,Oregon via the new BOLT bus last weekend for an Urban Sketcher Workshop. Cheaper than the train, BOLT advertises that you can get tickets for a buck depending on when you book, I got a round trip ticket for $44 and it was quite a bit faster than the train because it runs non-stop from Seattle to Portland. I got my weekend off to a good start with a little bus sketch.

The workshop was really a plein air watercolor workshop in the downtown Portland area, there were about 25 students and two instructors. They split us up into two groups, on Friday one group worked with Shari Blaukopf and the other worked with Marc Taro Holmes at different locations then on Saturday we switched instructors.  On Sunday we all came together and had a "free sketch day". Both painters were amazing and demonstrated different styles and approaches to making a watercolor painting on location.

I was in Shari's group on Friday morning, she did a demo painting of the McMenamin's Crystal Hotel. We were in the shade and it was windy, the group was shivering en masse.

midway thru her demo she turned us loose to paint on our own, my biggest disappointment throughout the weekend was that I didn't really finish anything, but I keep reminding myself it was about practicing new techniques. Here's my 1st, different for me because I will generally attack the paper with my pen first and then add color, here I did a light sketch and went right to color.

In the afternoon, we moved into windy sunlight at the First Presbyterian Church. Shari likes to play with getting the watercolor to "bloom", introducing new color to an already wet area and letting it mix on the paper....definitely outside of my box but something I want to work on.

On Saturday my group went with Marc, he has a very different style than Shari. He worked on a larger sheet of paper and started with a very detailed drawing in soft pencil, then he approaches the painting with something he calls Tea w/milk&honey. Three Pass Speed Sketching in Watercolor, I truly am interested in getting this process down ( both artists are Canadian so "process" was pronounced with a long O). Our first location was at The Telegraph Building, this day was so effin HOT! Got to 104 degrees, fun painting outdoors rite? I hadn't sweat that much since our trip to NOLA.

Marc's painting's are amazing! I struggled with perspective, our worms eye view of this clock tower and the no shade heat of this location.....can you hear me whining

In the afternoon, we moved to a park that offered quite a bit more shade but as I said before it got so hot this day that the shade did not offer much respite from the heat. It did give me a little more patience with my painting though, this is the U.S. Customs House that I started.

Some folks didn't last the afternoon on Saturday because of the heat so they changed our Sunday sketch location to the lovely big tree shade of the South Park Blocks area. Most everyone sketched the Simon Benson House.

here's my attempt

This workshop did not really get into what I think of as "an Urban Sketch" so in the afternoon I wanted to do something looser to finish out the weekend. I sketched the Rogue pub across the street from the Simon Benson house, I did not make it inside. One of the sketchers brought a rubber stamp that I used to document my little painting.

Our final "show & tell" was rather large as the two groups converged, very interesting to see the differences in everyone's approach to painting and composition.

Marc's painting

In spite of the wicked sun, I thoroughly enjoyed my first watercolor workshop! I met some really great folks some that I hope to paint with again and I picked up some great tips that I hope to employ in the coming days before they escape me.

One of my fellow sketchers offered up this quote by Yogi Berra

"You can see a lot just by looking."

7/29

Went up to our rooftop yesterday for a sketch of the new Bullitt Building. It's suppose to be completed this fall and is being touted as the greenest building in the world.

A six-story, 50,000 sq. ft. building that will function completely off the grid with solar panels for energy, geothermal wells for heat, a giant cistern for water and composting toilets. It's a really pretty building and it's so cool that it's in our neighborhood!