White pine

Felt marker, continuous line.

Narrow-leafed ash

Dip pens and walnut ink

Vine maple

 Walnut ink, using iris and foxglove stalks for pens.

Iris pen

 Experiments with pen and ink, using dried iris stalks as pens.

Catalpa twig and leaf

Pen and ink, then scanned, with color added on a tablet.

Book group, on zoom

 

Japanese Garden and Washington Park

Sunny during the day.  Warm, so long as you managed to stay in the sun.  Clear and cold at night.

Stuffed my sketchbook and some extra clothes into my bag and took off, climbing to Cornell and then heading south.  I crossed Burnside and stopped in at Zupan's, hunting until I found the deli and bought a wrap for lunch.  (I'm reminded of why I hardly ever go there.  There's a sidewalk in, but it dead-ends in a dark corner of the parking lot, next to a service entrance.  The only other way in or out is to use the driveway, which is full of, well, cars.  Who aren't expecting to see people.)

Climbed up the old carriage road into Washington Park, started up the MAC Trail, then cut up through the Rose Garden, then zigzagged up the trail to the Japanese Garden, getting there not long after it opened.

A women stopped to admire my pencil set, and to wonder where she might be able to find such.  Sadly, I had to tell her that I'd had it for decades, and that the store that I bought it in has been closed for nearly as long.

Walked through the exhibit of traditional peasant clothing, woven from plant material (including kudzu) and even paper, or quilted together from scraps.

South on the Wildwood Trail, winding around and hearing at intervals both real trains from across the river and the little toy steam engine that plies Washington Park.  Diverted off the Wildwood near to the zoo, to walk the ridge and get my fill of mountains.

Then spiraled down the wrong way through the Vietnam Memorial, coming out in the zoo's parking lot.  Headed for the MAX station and caught a train to the stadium, and then caught a 15 home.

Milwaukie Sculpture Garden

Sunny, turning quite warm in the afternoon.

I packed a sketchbook and took off, walking into the Pearl, and getting to the bus stop a minute before the 33 was due to leave.

We drove up the bus mall, then crossed the river on the Hawthorne bridge and turned south, heading for McLoughlin. (The east side streetcar tracks have made it all the way to where they turn to go over the new bridge. The new bridge, on the other hand, does not yet exist.)

I got off at the Milwaukie Transit Center (one block long) and sat down for a sketch in their sculpture garden.

Director Park Fountain, three ways.

Overcast and cool in the morning, turning warm and muggy by afternoon.

I found that it's damned hard to see the screen of my phone in bright sunlight.

WES line

Sunny and warm. Damned warm at times.

Art along the WES line, from Wilsonville to Beaverton.

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

Blue MAX line and swifts

Sunny, cold in the morning but turning quite warm in the afternoon.

Civic Drive MAX station

From PDX Transit

Rookwood

From PDX Transit

As it was getting towards 7pm I walked up to Chapman School. There was still a soccer game going on on the field, and the hillside was filled, save for the lanes where the kids were sliding down the hill on pieces of cardboard. I headed for my secret spot among the trees, and found people sitting there too. But I was able to squeeze in.

The swifts took their own sweet time in massing. At one point everyone disappeared - I hadn't seen it, but it must have been a hawk. Eventually they started elevatoring in. And then a hawk did swoop through, grabbing a hapless swift. They saw him off and resumed their descent. But it took a long time. They formed a circle, going clockwise, with the bottommost birds in the ring flying down into the mouth of the chimney. When they needed a break from that they reformed as a counterclockwise ring. And then a clockwise one again.

Downtown Bus Mall

Labor Day

Mostly cool and dry. Lacy clouds in the morning with rifts of sun in the afternoon. And also leaden skies and a few sprinkles.

Went sketching up one side of the bus mall and down the other. Skipped a lot of MAX stops, either because I couldn't find a seat, couldn't find anything worth looking at, or was blasted away by tobacco smoke.

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

From PDX Transit

Interstate MAX

Hopscotched up the new Interstate MAX line, sketching...

Rose Quarter

Albina/Mississippi

Overlook

Prescott

Killingsworth

Ainsworth Greenspace

Kenton

Vanport

Atlanta Airport

A long flight over the Atlantic (in front of a couple of unsupervised children), a long lay-over in Atlanta (real, and real expensive, lattes). Napped on the flight to Portland, to find my luggage waiting for me (It had taken an earlier flight). Found the bus stop before I found the taxi rank, so came home the slow way. Got home at midnight, er, breakfast time, er, I don't know when.

Barcelona

Parc Guell. Weird, wavy organic rock formations. Like a medieval church with a bad hangover.
Parc Guell
Gaudi
This was another of Eusepi Guell's commissions. It was meant to be a gated community for the city's wealthy, but the only house that was ever built in it was the one that Gaudi lived in while working on the site.

Barcelona

I had a choice of three museums to visit, and chose the Museu-Monestir de Mare de Déu de Pedralbes, because it was supposed to be peaceful, and I was still weak from the night before. It was peaceful, though I was a bit disappointed in the restorations, which seemed undecided about which century they were restoring to (and which never got close to the 14th century, when the monastery was founded.) But then, the monastery was in use until 1983, so multitudinous improvements had been made. (The nuns are still on the grounds, but have been moved to a more secluded part).

I walked down to Parc Reial, and sat down to rest.


Parc del Palu Reial di Pedralbes
This once was the Guell family's private estate, then became a royal residence, and now is a public park, with museums housed in the buildings.
Ran out of ink in my favorite pen.

Barcelona

Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau

Domenech i Montaner

This is still a working hospital, consisting of 48 separate and unique pavilions. The bright colors were meant to cheer the patients.

Montserrat

Hiked out under Los Delsodos before breakfast. Hardly any people, but the trail was entirely within earshot of the road to the entrance. Many shrines to various Virgin Maries. Many more impressive rocks.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped in the church to visit with the Black Madona.

Montserrat

Got up early, dressed in the dark and walked partway down the trail to Monistrol to sketch.


The view of the flatlands was not impressive, possibly because of the haze. The view down to the monestir was heart-stopping however. And the rocks were simply awesome.
We wrestled Ina back down to monastery level, then I bought a 'vegetable' sandwich (mostly eggs and tunafish) and hiked to Santa Cova. Numerous shrines, depicting the life of Mary form the Annunciation to the Assumption, with a tiny recently restored church at the end, built over the holy cave (The Madonna used to be here, before they moved her to the basilica.)

Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Poblet

Woke up with the Matins bells.

Got up an hour later, dressed in the dark and walked down to the monastery for Laudes. Walked back up for breakfast, bused back down for a tour, hung around and sketched until I had used up the sketchbook, then walked back up to the hotel.




Poblet is a "real" monastery. Here monks dress the part (in white, being Cistercians). There are a few men in civilian dress, but they're secular priests, who have come on retreat. The monks serve in multiple services each day, from matins, at 5:15am, through lauds, mass, and vespers, to compline, at 9:30, and if their voices are not perfect, well, then, God calls men to the monastic life for other reasons than for music. The church bells ring shortly before each service, to wake the monks or to bring them home from their chores, and so the country round can use the church as a rough clock.



At one point, this monastery was the preferred final resting place for the kings of Aragon. (Catalunya and Aragon were joined through a political marriage way back in the 12th century. Catalunya/Aragon didn't get linked to Castille until the marriage of the Catholic kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, in the 15th century.) The crypts in the church never contained whole bodies, however, but only bones. One of the towers of the monastery is a turris pudoris, a tower of corruption, where the body would be stored until the flesh decayed.


When the monasteries were nationalized, all of the bones were taken up and translated to a cathedral for safekeeping. They were restored when Poblet was rehabilitated, but had gotten jumbled in the meantime, and so each bone probably didn't end up back in the crypt from which it started.