Reed College Sketchcrawl

The Urban Sketchers of Portland had a sketchcrawl at Reed this past weekend. The college ha a beautiful campus with gorgeous trees and interesting architecture. I think I could spend another day just sketching gargoyles

This time, I drew another sketcher, ...

the Anna Mann building through the trees, ...

and the doorway to one of the old residence halls...

And now for something completely different: 

From the opposite side of town, here's a view from the Fields, Portland's newest urban park.

It seems like the colors are getting better and better each fall, but maybe I just have time to appreciate them more now.

Whitaker Ponds Nature Park

This weekend, we went to Whitaker Ponds Nature Park, a park we had never visited. I had seen it on another blog, Life is Good, and was curious about it. Since it was a gorgeous fall day, it seemed like a perfect time to go. We saw only a few people, but there were lots of ducks and we heard many songbirds.

The first pond we came to had a log in it....

that looked surprisingly like a shark fin...

Not fearing sharks, but eager to sit in the sun, I sketched from an observation dock. One loose sketch....

and one with more ink....

Here are a couple more views from my camera.  It might be worth a trip back when the colors are even brighter. 

I wish I had a canoe.

Fall Series: 3

Last week in the south park blocks, we saw this man walking his very fat little black dog. Obviously, I took a lot of liberties with the scene--like removing all the cars, signs, and buildings and cartooning the trees, the dapper man, and his adorable little mop-like dog. I think I even took a couple of pounds off the dog.

Fall Series, 2