Hot, Dry Summer

Portland has been having a hot and dry summer and I've been in the city for most of it.

This is looking at the PSU Farmers Market. I remember that it was hot.

I drew this from a spot of shade in Directors Square. The new building is nearing completion.

I drew the bottom of the St. John's bridge on a sketch crawl with several local sketchers. By the time I sketched this, it was already getting very toasty and most people were claiming shady patches with views of the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival. I watched our son play and then left for a cooler place.

This is a view of a dress shop that I sketched while waiting for a latte and croissant. (Our neighborhood has many temptations in it.)

I drew the cloudy sky above the Portland Art Museum. 

Here is another cloudy sky and the new building seen from the Portland Art Museum. As I drew this, a man played the piano in the courtyard. 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' and 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square' was a lovely accompaniment for sketching, even as the day got warmer.

The hot weather has been hard on the flowers...

I probably shouldn't have bought a new hydrangea during the drought, but I've always wanted one of these lacecaps and I love the periwinkle color. I planted it right by the faucet.

Last weekend, we had some much needed rain. The next two sketches were made looking out from behind windows.

I hope we get some more rain, but I also hope it comes after I'm back from my river trip.

Sketching Indoors

Here are a couple of sketches done while drinking coffee and nibbling on pastry. This one was done in the Daily Cafe that's inside Rejuvenation Hardware. I wanted to copy this recipe (even though it was only one day after Thanksgiving) and the old cabinet seemed like a good accompaniment to it. This was a fun place to draw, in part because the delightful wait-staff would sometimes break into singing and dancing to the Abba tunes being played. Even some customers were swaying to the tunes while they got their coffee additives from the cabinet.

This sketch was done at Kennedy School. I'm pretty sure I stole the the orange lantern composition from one Kalina did at a sketchcrawl a year ago. It's a great place to draw, but I left out a lot of what's really there.  There's too much for me to get into a sketch.