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!

7/25

Tacos at Rancho Bravo, sunny evening last week so I sat outside to eat. I sat at a table with a man I had not met before, he was a fellow southerner, told me he lives here in Seattle now and misses talkin to strangers. We chatted for a bit while I drew my last yummy taco.

 

7/21

On Saturday I went to Tacoma to participate in a sketchcrawl with the Pacific Northwest Urban Sketchers. It was my first time meeting with these talented folks and I am excited at the prospect of drawing with them more. We met near the Tacoma Glass Museum and stayed in that area throughout the day.

The Swiss Pub at the top of the hill is one of my favorite watering holes. We met here for lunch, the one waitress and one bartender kicked into high gear when 30 sketchbook toting people walked in. My drawings are pretty static compared to what I saw others doing....learning, learning, learning

7/16

We went to Mt. Rainier for a 3 day weekday camping trip, I am not fond of hiking on snow fields so I left that for Gina and stayed near our lovely campsite and enjoyed some sketching. A little creek half encircled our campsite and the water was cold! Gina submersed some of my Inversions in the creek for low energy cooling. The next day we were up at the Visitor Center @ Sunrise and I discovered that The National Park System offers a little passport book that you can have stamped at parks that you visit, I stamped my own page and was a little sad that I didn't know about this when we visited all the parks last summer.... 

gear

Gina hiked all day on Monday and almost fell asleep in her chair, I took the oppurtunity to sketch her....I'll have to work on her likeness .....

7/10

Snoopy hard at work at his day job, we bought a cat bed for him, but he chooses instead to curl up in the folds of the futon

7/9

I have discovered that Mondays are the best day to draw at my neighborhood pub, a man from Australia asked to see my sketch and declared it "brilliant" when he asked me how long it took to make, I answered "two beers", later when he saw me making notes on the side he told me not to touch it...drawing in public can be very entertaining