Sketchcrawl at Cornell Farm Nursery

Planned before things got dicey again, and very nearly cancelled when they did.  But a largish crowd showed up, and we hung out outside and scattered to sketch.

I attempted some of the chickens

And then went back to a strawberry plant that I'd noticed on my first pass through the grounds.

I'm sure that it's the same one that has volunteered in my yard.  Which I'd assumed was F. virginiana.

Pearl District Sketchcrawl

We gathered at the new pedestrian mall on NW 13th.  

And then I walked up to the new bridge at Flanders and sat down in the shade on a traffic island and did a one-point perspective looking down towards the river.

Get-together in the Rose Garden

Our second in-person sketchcrawl since last February, and a bunch of people showed up.  Except for the mass vaccination site at the convention center, more people than I've seen in one place in over a year.  A lot of old friends, but a lot of new faces too.  Some were long-time artists, out to be sociable after a year of isolation, while other were newbies, who'd taken up sketching as a covid project.

Non-virtual Sketchcrawl!

At long long last, the Portland urban sketchers met in person, there being enough of us fully vaccinated (mostly the old farts, but the youngsters are hot on our heels) to feel safe out in the world.

We met on the esplanade, and, seeing that the Hawthorne Bridge was closed to auto traffic, I took the opportunity of planting my butt on the sidewalk and dangling my feet on the road bed and did a one-point perspective of the bridge, taking care not to drop a pen or pencil through the mesh and into the drink.

And then switched to my tablet and did a study of the trunk of a gnarly old willow by the fire station.

Cherry Bomb Blossoms

 

For this month's virtual sketchcrawl, with a challenge of using only three tools.  For me that was a pink pencil, a black pencil, and a black micron pen.  Not even a pencil underlay to sort it all out.  (Which meant that it didn't stay sorted.)

Reflections again

My third sketch for this theme, of my bathroom sink's faucet.  These are the reflections that I see, without really seeing, multiple times a day.

Twinkle Trees

 

Part of the 2021 Portland Winter Light [non]Festival

And my go at the Portland Urban Sketcher's virtual theme of 'Light'.

Virtual Sketchcrawl #12 - Winter - Empress Tree

 I'd been thinking of sketching my own catalpa, because winter exposes its true nature, with branches chaotically strewing themselves every which way.  But from my windows on the first floor I can only really see its massive trunk, which doesn't change through the seasons.

So, when I realized that it wasn't going to be raining this morning, I decided to bundle up and walk to the MLC school grounds to do their empress tree instead.

Individual Sketchcrawl - Pioneer Courthouse Square

 

I braved the iffy weather, dodging both rain and other people, and walked down to Pioneer Courthouse Square to sketch the tree.  

I haven't been downtown in ages.  The number of empty storefronts is scary.  And these colorful circles are painted in the square and on the surrounding sidewalks.  I assume that they're social distancing markers.

Virtual sketchcrawl - Trees dressed up for the holidays

Done a week before the actual date, in an unexpected patch of sunshine.

While I was there a hummingbird - a male Anna's - came to investigate the tree, probing every single ornament, in hopes it was a flower or a feeder.  And then flew away in a huff.

Virtual Sketchcrawl #10 - food prep or aftermath

I'm not cooking ahead for Thanksgiving, but I did have some parsnips and a carrot that needed to get eaten up.  So I decided to roast them.  I laid them out (artistically) and did a quick sketch while cooking some bacon in the preheating oven.

And then, while those were roasting, opened and cleaned an acorn squash, to bake for later.

Virtual Sketchcrawl #9 - Nature preparing for winter

I walked up the street this morning to see if the cedar waxwings were still busily stuffing themselves on my neighbor's crabapple trees.  But no, they'd pretty much stripped the trees and moved on to greener pastures.  So I resorted to looking for tinges of fall color in the trees I can see from my backyard.  

And then, I sketched the tinges of orange creeping into my persimmons in the front yard.

Sketching in a grid

Today's urban sketching challenge.  Vignettes from Aramis' grave.

I ended up not using the musketeer cartoon as a grid, when I decided that it was too ornate.  But I did use a stylized cat head for a grid instead.

Virtual Sketchcrawl #7 - Postcards from the Industrial Refuge

I'd found my old sketching kit and marked off some 6x4 rectangles in it.  This morning I walked into the Industrial Refuge, stopping from time to time (always in the shade) to do sketches.

A water tower near Montgomery Park.  (I'd seen it often, while waiting for a bus, but never found the time to sketch it.)

A piece of 'art' (actually, a massive rusted drill bit, I think) in the ESCO office parking lot.

And the last standing bit of the ESCO foundry No 1.

Virtual sketchcrawl - your favorite green space

Deb had proposed to set today's virtual sketchcrawl in 'your favorite (separated) park'.  And I spent some time in trying to figure out which park was my favorite.  Well, now, there's no debate at all, it's Forest Park.  But I'm not heading up the narrow trails anymore, and don't feel safe lingering in one spot, even on Leif Erickson.  Then I re-read the post, and realized that she'd written 'your favorite green space'.  And my favorite is, hands down, my own yard, where I often hang out with a cat or a dog.  And lately, my favorite activity has been the daily berry hunt.  

So I sat down in my backyard and sketched some of my cane raspberries (almost done), strawberries (only the ever-bearing ones are left, coming ripe in ones and twos) and blueberries (about a week into the season).



There are others that I didn't get to.  Thimbleberries are tiny and hardly worth picking, but they're pretty.  My creeping raspberries were planted as a ground cover.  But I found that I liked the fruit.  My huckleberries are likewise small and hardly worth picking.  Moreover, I don't think they're read yet.  The salal is full of seeds and not very sweet, so I usually leave it for the birds.  And, finally, my oregon grape got wiped out by the oak tree.  It's coming back up from the roots though, so I'll have it again.  I found one stalk that somehow survived the desolation, and produced a half a dozen berries.

Virtual sketchcrawl - change up your process

I decided to do random color, with marker pen and airbrush. 

And it came out virtually unrecognizable.  That's my TV, surrounded by piles of books and DVDs that are waiting to go back to the library, streaming a virtual version of this year's Bach Festival in Leipzig.  

Some performances are still happening in Leipzig, while the groups that intended to come taped performances and sent them in to be broadcast.

The different groups used different ways to record their pieces.  Some did solo works.  Some had all the musicians record themselves at home, and stitched the parts together.  One used a church, with the string section on one side, all wearing masks, and the soprano way over across on the other side.  In Germany, things seemed to be the loosest, with an actual live audience (albeit 2 meters apart and masked).  The musicians were unmasked, and keeping a 2 meter separation.  Even the singers.  Which was a bit unnerving.  (At Trinity Cathedral, singers must keep a 15' separation.)

And this is my (gray) cat, who came to sit on my lap.

Virtual sketchcrawl - Embody the art you love

Today's challenge was to be inspired by and emulate some piece of artwork that you love.  I'd picked Hokusai's Great Wave.  

I used a limited palette and no blending to try to emulate a woodblock print, portraying a few leaves of the shrub beside my front porch.

Virtual sketchcrawl - new media

I'd bought a cheap kid's set of watercolor pencils, months ago, at Freddy's, but had never tried them.  So, with today's theme of trying a different media than you usually use, I dragged them out.

Obviously, I couldn't sketch the pencils themselves, not in their true colors at least, so I let other pencils stand in.  And the highlights didn't work very well.  There was a white pencil in the box, but, wet or dry, it didn't seem to end up in the drawing.

For my second sketch, I dragged everything outside, and huddled under my eaves to do one of the dogwood blossoms.  To make the white stand out, I cut apart one of the multitude of paper grocery sacks that I've brought home during the pandemic.

And, again, the white was pretty pathetic.

Virtual sketchcrawl - Continuous line

Another session of sketching together, while at home.  This time Kalina had issued a challenge, of sketching using continuous line.  I wasn't sure that it'd actually work on a tablet, since I use my big fat finger, but I tried it anyway, sketching the sewing machine with a half-done face mask still under the presser foot.

By the time I was done with that the bread that I'd left in the toaster oven was done, so I pulled it out, arranged it 'artfully', pulled up a stool and did that.

Finished that, salivating, because the bread just smelled so good, and then cut the bread open to have a chunk.  And then another.  And then sketched what was left.

Sketching together, apart

Today was our scheduled sketchcrawl.  We can't get together for it while we're in lock-down, so we did a distributed one, in which everyone sketches in and around their own house, all at the same time.

I did my side yard again, with the dogwood tree leafing out, and Barbara's camellia blooming.

And then the cats, separately.