Monday, August 27, 2012

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.........

Sunday, August 26, 2012

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.

Friday, August 10, 2012

8/9



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

Thursday, August 9, 2012

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."