Monday, October 30, 2017

Drawing People

Last summer, in preparation for going to the Urban Sketching Symposium in Chicago, I tried to practice drawing lots of people. Unfortunately, sometimes they walked away, just as I was going to draw them.

Other times, they were far away to begin with...




It worked best when I just concentrated on people, but often, I only had time for or only had a view of their heads.
















After all the practice, once I was in Chicago, I was so awestruck by the architecture, I hardly drew people.




Sunday, October 1, 2017

Ashland and Alaska

I'm way behind with scanning and posting, but now that the Oregon rains have started I'm going to catch up.

This summer we took more trips than usual. Opportunities kept being presented, so we squeezed them in around the things that had been on the calendar for months.

For the past few years, I've been lucky to join some other retired educators for several days in Ashland. A couple of us sketch, several of us take daily walks in beautiful Lithia Park, most of us do some shopping,  and all of us join together for breakfasts, dinners, and of course the Oregon Shakespearean Festival plays. These are two of the sketches that I made.



If I hadn't been sitting in the very back row for the play 'Mojita, a Medea in LA', I probably would have tried to draw the set during intermission. There were lots of other things I would have loved to have drawn, if the circumstances and time had been right: the park with the wood duck by the pond, the light in the grove of trees, the hills softened by the sunsets,  the beautiful actors and incredible actors (including the ones in the bar at our hotel), and the large and gorgeous changing southern Oregon sky. Ashland is a small town, but there's plenty to do and to sketch.

The day after returning from Ashland, we headed for Seattle to embark on an Alaskan cruise. We rode the train to Seattle and the ride was too bumpy for me to draw. Before getting on the ship, we had time to visit Pike Place Market and the Seattle Art Museum. I enjoyed drawing some of the Tlingit masks in their collection.


Once on the ship and at sea, I spent some time drawing in various places. These were windows in the Crooners lounge...



I drew during an art sale...

The grand staircase was a bit of a challenge...


One misty afternoon, I had most of the back of the ship to myself...


Another time, I wandered into the empty theater to sketch. I discovered that each of the seats had fold -out side tables (like school desks), probably intended for food and drinks, but just right for a holding a watercolor palette. 


Our first stop was Ketchican, where unfortunately, I lost my new glasses. Luckily, I had a back-up pair with an earlier prescription.


After retracing all my steps in the town, trying to track  down my glasses, I still had some time to visit the Totem Heritage Center.


When he looked at my sketchbook, one of the docents there recognized the hill where he lives.


After we arrived in Juneau, we took an excursion on the Tracy Ann Fjord. It was a wonderful day, with gorgeous sights and the freshest, cleanest air I've breathed since childhood. These are some of the sketches I made as we cruised through the fjord, seeing waterfalls, seals, and the calving glacier. The blues of the glacier were incredible!

We also saw several whales and even saw one breach. I didn't even take my eyes away from it for a second to get a photo, much less a sketch!












Here's my last sketch, from a chilly deck chair somewhere near Sitka in Chatham Strait.