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."
