Inside and Outside Urban Sketching

After days of rain, Monday in Portland was mostly sunny. My husband and I took advantage of the weather to walk over our newest bridge, Tilikum Crossing. (This is the one bridge that might escape destruction should the predicted huge earthquake occur.) As it was Martin Luther King day, many people were out enjoying their walks in the sunshine. After taking in the view from both sides, we finished up with a coffee and snacks from Elephants Cafe on the west side. There was just enough time to get in a sketch.

On Saturday, the Urban Sketchers of Portland met at Union Station for a sketch crawl. Again, with the holiday weekend, there were sudden arrivals and excited greetings of travelers.

This sketch was made at f & b cafe inside Rejuvenation Hardware, but if you know the barista, you won't recognize him here. I changed his mutton chop sideburns to a full beard (among other things) and the poor customer is made of parts of at least two different women.

Shells, Portland Collects, and Paula's show

It was rainy outside and since I couldn't go to the Bahamas for more shells, I bought some at a neighborhood terrarium shop, Artemesia Garden and Gallery.

I didn't know there was such variety in snail shells.

I did a little sketching at the Portland Art Museum's show, Portland Collects.

Buddha

A friend, Paula, has a display of her paintings at a local hair salon.

Here are a few small sketches from another trip to Rejuvenation Hardware.  There were some unusual clown decorations on a wall.

December Sketchcrawl

On Saturday, several of the Portland Urban Sketchers met for a sketchcrawl. We started at a coffee shop in SE Portland and then moved on to the Architectural Heritage Center where we drew items that had been salvaged from old Portland buildings. We had lunch, shared sketchbooks, talked sketching and sketched some more at the Side Door. Here are some sketches from the day.

Sketchers and dazed customer at coffee shop. Lamp from  Architectural Heritage Center. I 'm pretty sure I saw a similar lamp to this while I was on jury duty. I wanted to sketch it, but it wasn't the right time and place.

Various displayed items and a poor likeness of a fellow sketcher.

This is the same face as on the previous page, but it looked surprisingly different from this angle.

Sketchers and others at the Side Door.

The day before, I sketched with some friends at Rejevenation. This little woodstove looked like it could be dancing with the andirons, Beauty and the Beast style. I was tempted to add movement lines to the sketch.

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.