practice continues

Here's what I've been up to - practicing, practicing.

A couple more AK cruise sketches - top one, a church in Sitka, next is Creek St in Ketchikan, Sorry the scans come up with all these weird shadows. Someday I'll have to figure out how to fix that! :)

I recently finished a book on sketching and watercolor by Cathy Johnson (a couple of them actually), so that inspired me to work on trees. I love a beautiful or weirdly deformed or unusually shaped tree so my practice is encompassing some nature practice as well as buildings........

the giant tree in the neighbor's yard

some urban sketching

My sketching practice continues:

A random building on Las Olas Blvd, Ft Lauderdale  (watercolor painting, 2nd for #worldwatercolormonth)

On my walk I passed a house with these wonky, beat-up, old birdhouses poking up out of the front hedge......a perfect sketching opportunity! And those angles! Oh my......

The train yard on 4th Ave just south of Costco.....perfect sketching place with a railing to prop my sketchbook!

I went to my 4th monthly urban sketcher get together last weekend. We celebrated the 7th anniversary of the first Seattle USk meeting by gathering at Fisherman's Terminal again, like the first time. There were about 35-40 of us spread over the area. Once again some absolutely beautiful sketches were created. I'm in awe.

Here are my efforts (boats are HARD!), Drawn across the spine in Stillman & Birn Alpha with Platinum pen, carbon ink, watercolors.

After completing the above one, I had a little time so did a couple smaller ones in my 4x6 Pentalic bk.

A sculpture of an eagle (my somewhat sad attempt) and a beautiful tree on the marina walkway.

Hope you're having a creative week!

#world watercolor month

Participating in #worldwatercolormonth, here's a couple recent urban sketches of my neighborhood walk with watercolor added......

Drawn in 4x6 Pentalic sketchbook, platinum fountain pen, carbon ink, watercolors.

A local church that I drive by every morning on the way to work. A front yard swing on my evening walk.

week 2 of vacation

Our second week of vacation found us in Pompano Beach, a small community sandwiched between Boca Raton and Ft Lauderdale. We stayed at a Wyndham resort which was lovely - a beautiful room, gorgeous grounds and lots of on-site activities. We went to the beach once and it looked just like Myrtle Beach (long strand of white sand), so our  relaxing time was spent pool-side. Most of my sketching was done around the resort.......

Kind of practicing on all the variety of palm trees near the pool.....there are an amazing amount of different types of palms. 

This is definitely an example of how sketching helps you focus on your surroundings. In previous years, I would have admired a tree or two and gone back to reading. This time I really LOOKED at the trees, figured out how they were similar or different, attempted to capture them. I love that aspect of embracing sketching. 

Once again I attempted people - we went to see a horse race - trotters - one evening and between  races I tried my hand at capturing these guys..... You can see I gave up on one of the faces; but the bodies are okay....

the everglades

the everglades

he takes his gaming very seriously!

lots of funky trees in FL

It was very hot and muggy in FL - don't think we'll be going back.....we've been there several times and that's enough. There are more places to explore.

where does the time go???

It's been almost a month since I shared here.  Sheesh!  Where DOES the time go? Well, I was on  vacation for a couple weeks, so that might be part of it. And, I took my sketchbooks and pens. I did post a few things here and there on  FB while on the trip, but I'll share a bit more here for those of you interested to follow along.

Week 1 was spent in Myrtle Beach, SC. Our timeshare was on the beach which was good - just a trip down the elevator and walk on the short boardwalk to the beautiful white sand beach. Dan and I walked 3 miles every morning up and down that beach - alternating north one morning, south the next.

All of these sketches are from around our resort area - the beach umbrellas and chairs were set up every morning by the lifeguards about 8-8:30a. You could rent 2 chairs and an umbrella for $35/day. We went and bought 2 low folding chairs for a total of $25 and just left them at the end of the week - a much better use of $$$.

sitting on the beach, looking back to the row of hotels/resorts and umbrellas. Those stupid recliner chairs became the bane of my sketching efforts! Never did really get the figured out.

those stripey shapes going through the bottom right are supposed to be tire tracks from the early morning police check.

dan prefers no color, so I tried one with less color.

there are those stupid recliners again! Obviously need more practice.

Don't laugh.Okay, go ahead and chuckle. We had an hour or so wait between dinner and an  outdoor concert - so I sketched several pages of what I could see, which was mostly people. People are HARD! I kinda get the bodies, kinda sorta, but heads.....not so much. Do people really need to have heads?

We thoroughly enjoyed our relaxing week of sitting on the beach, drinking on the beach, sunning on the beach, talking and walking and relaxing on the beach.

We did take a day trip to the Georgetown area (about 1 hour away) where we visited historic homes and a historical rice plantation house (Hopsewee Plantation) and another half day trip to Brookgreen Gardens & Pawley's Island. The garden is the largest sculpture garden in the US with over 500 sculptures placed throughout a huge garden. Gorgeous!

Kaminski house in Georgetown.

Don't we look relaxed?  Vacation is great!

sketches for last week of April

I only did a couple on-site sketches this week - stopped at South Seattle College and wandered around & discovered this clock tower.  Man, it was hard!

The black smudges are because my fountain pen leaked and made a big black blob on the shirt I was wearing so I was trying to press some of the ink out.  Hopeless.  Ruined.  Oh well.....in the name of art, right?

Neighborhood house sketch done on my way home from work in my new Stillman & Birn book - that sure is great paper but I haven't decided if I like bound or spiral yet.  Also tried a new brush pen and discovered the ink isn't waterproof.

drawn from a photo  - Whistler Village from vacation  a couple years ago.

I purchased the book The Art of Urban Sketching - it's a wonderful book filled with contributions from sketchers all over the world, and so full of a variety of styles. Since copying is some sort of form of flattery, I thought I'd practice on some of the sketches from the book:

I particularly like the food truck on the top - it's the first time a vehicle drawing of mine doesn't look cartoony. I'll have to pick just the cars out of some of the others from the book to try to understand drawing vehicles better.  The colored sketch is a Cape Cod lighthouse from my photo.

I love that I'm continuing to work without penciling in anything first and yet shapes still seem to appear, mostly correctly!

This practice sketch is copying a Pinterest image - we'll be headed to FL in a few weeks for vacation so I wanted to get an idea about how to draw palm trees. This is one effort - more will show up next week.  I also want to practice a few ocean / water scenes since we'll be on the beach. I don't want to get there and have no clue about how to capture what I'm seeing. :)

thanks so much for checking in and browsing all my sketches. Hope you have a fabulous, creative week.

urban sketching adventure

Yesterday I joined in on my first Urban Sketcher (USk) adventure!  The group meets monthly around the Seattle area to sketch and share their efforts. I have to admit I was more than a little intimidated, but there were a couple of familiar faces (Stephanie, instructor at  the workshop I just took, and Barry, a classmate) in the 25 or so people who turned out.  You can read more about the Seattle chapter of USk here and see sketches some of the participants did.  There's also a flickr group if you want to see more.

We met at UW Suzzallo library and since it was pouring rain and super windy outside, everyone headed indoors to sketch. The building has a few beautiful, dramatic rooms.

I decided this was much too complicated for me yet.... so I kept looking.

I decided to try this view.  I spent the most time figuring out the proportions and getting the "big" shapes in, in pencil. Then switched to ink to do the actual drawing ...... learned a couple things about watercolor when I added that step that I hope I remember next time - I need to work a little wetter so my colors blend better and my shadows don't have such hard lines.  But, for today, a good effort.

5x8" sketch

Looking at all the great sketches at the end. There is SUCH a range of styles and paper sizes and abilities..... an amazingly talented group!  I'm looking forward to the next one.

On the way back to my car, the rain let up a bit so I wandered thru the quad to look at the cherry trees, soggy though they were.  

Hope you're doing something creative this week!