Noguchi and the Japanese Garden

Portland is lucky to have several Noguchi sculptures on loan at the  Portland Japanese Garden.  A few weeks ago, a sketching friend and I spent the morning sketching some of them. Portland's Japanese Garden doesn't allow any paints, so we just drew in pencil or pen and I added the color at home. As often happens when drawing, I gained an additional appreciation for Noguchi's shapes and textures while trying to capture the look on paper. It was such a temptation to touch them all--but I behaved.

Isamu Noguchi made sculptures of marble, paper, metal, stone and bronze, among other things.

 

Some of his sculptures were outside in the garden. Portland's Big Pink is in the background and had it been a clearer day, there would have been Mt. Hood, too.

We took a break for lunch and ate in the Garden Room at Elephant's. The hanging lanterns seemed to fit the theme of the day.

Back at the Japanese Garden, we sketched some more...

before visiting the gift shop. This peaceful little stone figure wanted to come home with me, as a souvenir of the day.

Before the visit, I had watched the movie, Leonie. It is the story of Isamu Noguchi's mother and shows some of how he got his artistic start in life. I highly recommend both the movie and the show of his sculptures and the Japanese Garden.

Presidents' Day Sketches

 At Cargo, I decided to draw one of the buddhas. This is actually the same one that I drew in ink and painted on a previous trip. There's something about a buddha face that looks so simple, but is actually very challenging for me. I guess it's hard to capture that look of serenity.

Since I was dressed for the cold, after a while it was pretty toasty in Cargo, so I went outside to draw the facade.  I added the colors that  I remembered once I was home. Like the inside of Cargo, there was much more color than what I showed here.