Thursday, March 28, 2024

Empire Roasters and Records

 

3/25/24 Empire Roasters & Records, Columbia City

Kate, Roy and I decided to explore a venue new to all of us: Empire Roasters & Records in Columbia City in south Seattle. As its name implies, it’s a coffee roaster, café and a vinyl record shop. Most interesting to me, though, was that the third floor seating area was furnished with numerous tables, benches and chairs made of beautiful raw edge wood. The scribble you see at lower left, however, was not a piece of furniture – it was a potted aspidistra in front of a window that didn’t come out quite as I had intended. Still, a morning of sketching and chatting with friends is always a good time, regardless of the sketch outcome.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Pink on Capitol Hill

 

3/24/24 Capitol Hill neighborhood


Until I had learned about it from my yoga instructor last year
, I didn’t know that this usually quiet street on Capitol Hill needed to be a permanent addition to my petal-peeping tour. I sketched there with a few friends then, but this year I felt greedy if I didn’t share it with USk Seattle. I even ordered up some sunshine that was delivered just in time for our outing on Sunday afternoon. The rain and wind the past few days had already sprinkled pink snow on the pavement, but we caught the blossoms just in time before they passed their peak.

To give gouache another try, I found a typical Capitol Hill bungalow framed by pink on this residential street (at left). Then I followed my ears to the other end of the block, where a teenage violinist was busking for all the petal peepers (below). From the looks of the cash in his violin case, he seemed to be doing a brisk business, and he certainly gave a pleasant soundtrack to our pink fairyland.


When I turned around, I spotted a sketcher dwarfed by an enormous cherry behind him (top of post). Frustrated (as usual) by the gouache and watercolor I had used previously, I resorted to my tried-and-true brush pen and watercolor pencils. (I’m not sure why I keep trying paints when I like the results of my “usuals” so much more.)

Although sketching the cherries at the UW Quad will always be a mainstay, I have to admit that I prefer neighborhood streets like this one and my favorite in the Sunset Hill neighborhood. There’s something special about walking slowly down the middle of a residential street (moving to the sidewalk when occasional cars come through, always slowly as their drivers and passengers take in the splendor) lined with these majestic trees on both sides. I imagine it must be especially magical for the residents who wait for their block to transform each spring.

Note: My sketch of these trees last year is dated April 13 – three full weeks later than this year. A recent article in the Seattle Times talks about how the dates of cherry blossom peaks are giving researchers data about climate change.

Magical!

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Sunset Hill Cherries Redux (Abstraction Homework)

 

3/21/24 cherry trees, Sunset Hill neighborhood (Inktense Blocks)

3/21/24 Inktense Block and Inktense pencil

After sketching them last week, I had two reasons to go back to the Sunset Hill cherry trees: One was that they were not quite at peak then, and I wanted to see them when they were (and boy, were they ever!). The second was that I wasn’t too happy with my gouache sketch that time, and I wanted another try.

Freshly inspired by the previous day’s class on abstracting landscapes, I combined that idea with the minimalism practice from the previous week’s class. With wet media like gouache, I’m always tempted to paint roundish blobs to evoke the shape of blossom clusters, but it never looks good to me. Using only Derwent Inktense Blocks (black and magenta) and a pink Inktense pencil, I squinted my eyes at those fairyland trees to minimize details and drew only the main trunk lines and the haze of blossoms. I like these attempts much better.


Peak blossoms!

Fairyland comes alive!

My favorite tree on this block... more for its amazing roots than its blossoms.


Monday, March 25, 2024

“Unique Line” Class Catch-Up


3/13/24 minimalism (photo reference)
3/13/24 maximalism (photo reference)

I’ve been so busy with 100 People, life drawing, cherry blossoms and other fun what-not that I’m two weeks behind in talking about my Gage class with Gal Cohen, Find Your Unique Line. With only one more class left, I feel like I’m just getting started with having my eyes opened to new ways of seeing, imagining and drawing.

Minimalism/Maximalism

The topic two weeks ago was minimalism vs. maximalism. As always, Gal began class by showing us numerous examples of contemporary art that could be described as either minimal or maximal. She chose interior domestic scenes as the subject. How little can be drawn and still evoke a sense of “enough”? Conversely, is a drawing that is densely packed with linework, marks and color ever “too much”? The point was not to determine whether one or the other was preferable or better but simply to ask how well a piece accomplishes its objective by taking one approach or the other. As always, we also discussed how the specific materials and techniques used helped to accomplish the artist’s intentions.

During class we used photo references of a couple of interior scenes and drew them either minimally or maximally (top of post). My natural style is to tend toward minimalism, so that exercise was easy for me. Going the max was a greater challenge; I kept thinking, “This is enough,” but then I pushed myself to keep going.

The homework was to draw either a domestic scene from life or from a photo with minimalism or maximalism in mind (below). She encouraged us to use color if the drawings called for it. I sketched a cluttered corner of my studio twice, once with each approach. The minimal approach was easy (and I chuckled about how I wished it were as easy to clear the clutter from my studio as it was to simply avoid drawing it). As expected, the maximal approach was more challenging, perhaps especially because I did it after the minimal version and was tired of doing it a second time. Still, I pushed myself to keep adding more and more stuff. I even added more clutter than was actually there!

3/17/24 minimalism (from life)

3/18/24 maximalism (from life)

Landscapes

Last week’s class focused on landscapes as the subject and pushing them toward abstraction with values and shapes (below). Making somewhat abstract drawings from a realistic photo reference is a serious struggle for me, so I especially welcomed this exercise. 

Using photos was hard enough, but I tried to imagine doing the same exercise from life – it’s so much harder to abstract what I “really” see! My trepidation meant that the exercise was important for me to do. Stay tuned for the results.

3/20/24 photo reference

3/20/24 photo references

3/20/24 photo reference

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Tulip Times Two

 

3/11/24
3/10/24 Tulip (both reference photos by Sandie Frakes)

Although I’m taking a break from pet portraits for a while, I had promised two to a donor who had been looking for good reference photos of her pooch Tulip. The first one she sent wasn’t very well lighted, but it seemed like a good candidate for messy hatching (left), which matched Tulip’s messy beard. I had a lot of fun drawing that fur.

The second photo that she sent later was worth waiting for: It was among the best pet reference photos I had used in that it was taken next to a window, casting beautiful light on one side of Tulip’s face. Most of the drawing was done with colored pencils, but I had made an underpainting with Viarco ArtGraf water-soluble graphite on the shaded side. It helped the pencil work to go faster, and it also served as a map so that I wouldn’t inadvertently color too much of the areas I wanted to reserve as the lightest.

Polychromos colored pencils and black, brown and gray technical pens in various sizes

ArtGraf water-soluble graphite underpainting

Polychromos and Museum Aquarelle colored pencils and
Uni Pin technical pen


Saturday, March 23, 2024

Fabulous Weather, Usual Frustrations at the Quad

3/19/24 cherry trees, University of Washington Quad (watercolors in a primary triad plus Derwent Inktense pencils in pink and green in Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook. I love how easy it was to give texture to the blossoms with a pink pencil -- an ideal use of pencil in a mixed-media piece like this.)

Using the search term “Quad” on my blog, I pulled up posts as far back as 2013, which was probably the first time I attempted to sketch the blossoming cherry trees on the University of Washington campus. Other than the pandemic pause, I think I’ve sketched the blossoms there every year, usually with USk Seattle. It never gets easier – simplifying the massive complexity; trying to capture that ethereal near-white hue and sheer volume of dense blossoms; the inevitable crowds of people; the backdrop of the Quad’s stately buildings. Every year I come away feeling a bit disappointed that I still haven’t figured out how to nail them, which encourages me to try something different the following year.

Watercolor pencil, watercolor and gouache in
Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook

And so it was again last Tuesday, when USk Seattle was treated to phenomenal weather – clear skies and temps in the 60s – an ideal afternoon to meet my annual frustrations. I made a total of four sketches, each with a different mix of materials or approaches (materials listed in the cutlines), and all with a limited color palette. For one, I premixed pink gouache (mostly white with a touch of magenta and yellow, all from the Holbein CYMK primary set) before putting it in my new palette (I promise I’ll show it soon). I also used watercolor and Derwent Inktense Blocks. To push myself out of my comfort zone, I minimized use of my tried-and-true watercolor pencils. During the last 20 minutes or so before the throwdown, I ran out of steam and did a comic-style spread in my green Uglybook – ahhh, so familiar and comforting!

Overall, my goal was to emulate my main takeaway from Harumichi Shibasaki’s YouTube that I mentioned in yesterday’s post, which is to make the blossom shadows much darker than I would otherwise dare. Based on his principles, I could have gone even darker without going too far. I hope to have at least one more chance to give this principle a try before another fleeting Sakura season is over.

Derwent Inktense Blocks in Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook

Uni Pin brush pen and Pentel Milky acrylic paint marker in Uglybook



Despite my frustrations, it's impossible to walk through this spectacle without feeling the joy and freshness of spring!

Friday, March 22, 2024

The Pink is On!

 

3/18/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Last weekend, all the cherry trees in town started exploding with pink! Our recent spate of good weather pushed them along nicely – just before several days of rain. Seeing the forecast ahead, I went out Monday intent on catching pink wherever I could.

I didn’t have to go far: On my morning walk, I found this old tree just a few blocks from home. I walk that route frequently, and it seemed to have bloomed overnight.

That afternoon, I went on a scouting mission to Sunset Hill, a favorite stop on my annual petal peeping tour. Those trees are usually a week or two behind the University of Washington Quad’s cherries, which were nearing peak at that point. I was surprised to find them closer to peak than anticipated – perhaps only a few days behind the Quad. Expecting to come back later, I decided to sketch them then and there, just in case the rain kept me from them before the petals came down.

3/18/24 Sunset Hill neighborhood

For the Sunset Hill sketch, I brought along my gouache and watercolors – contained in yet a new palette (a post on that coming soon)! Painting on location is always a more troublesome event than using my tried-and-true watercolor pencils, but every year the cherry blossoms push me to try it. This year I’m inspired by this YouTube video from Harumichi Shibasaki (Japanese with English subtitles). My jaw dropped when I saw how dark he makes the shadow areas – much darker than I would normally dare to use, especially with such pale pink blossoms – but his result is astoundingly beautiful. Emulating his example, I went as dark as I dared (though certainly without his elegance). More attempts in tomorrow’s post.

Sunset Hill: Not quite peak, but close enough!
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