Christmas Eve

A family get-together, where I sketched my oldest niece.

Party

Meeting

An art night at Portland Women in Tech.

We were given postcards, with pens and pencils and markers to draw on them.  I hadn't used pen or pencil as a medium for several years.  And found that my hand started hurting halfway through the second card.  I think that I'll have to stick to the tablet from now on.

Portland Art Museum

Mash-up of a number of pieces from the Andy Warhol exhibit.  From the upstairs room.  I didn't realize until I was done that there was a whole other room of his newer works downstairs.

Bus sketch

Note to self:  Don't try sketching on a bus that has chains on.

Goose Hollow Sketchcrawl at Fehrenbacher Hof

Cold and icy outside.  So everyone stayed inside to sketch.

I  bought a pretty pastry, solely for artistic purposes, and then had to resist biting into it until I'd finished this.

I followed that up with a couple of the other sketchers, and a bare naked tree that I could see out the window.

Union Station

Did a small section of the Christmas display, while waiting for my train to board.

Chinese Garden

After the ice melted and the sun came out, I finally made it down to the Chinese Garden for the very last of their free days.  But it was still pretty cold, and, even stationing myself in a sunbeam, I gave up and went indoors after less than an hour.

Mom's 90th

An afternoon party in the church fellowship hall, with cake and balloons.  Most of the people who came were retired, but none were as old as Mom.  She's getting to the point that she's outliving her contemporaries.

Meeting

Actually, a Spanish language practice group that I sat in on.  Not speaking Spanish.

Downtown

I went to a tutoring evening through Code Oregon.  They actually had more than enough tutors for this one, but the coordinator invited me to come anyway, just to hang out.  Which let me get some sketching in.

From there I headed for Pioneer Square to check out the tree, now up and fully lit.  And completely surrounded by tents from an ale festival.

This was done from exactly the same spot as my sketch from the day the tree arrived.

One North

A bit of a brand-new office building in N Portland, next to New Seasons.

The courtyard is a public space.  It might be an interesting place to revisit, once it warms up a bit.

Portland Art Museum

Concert

Outlaw Gospel

From Burning Man, by way of Clackamas Community College.  Mighty young, and mighty fine. 

Concert

While waiting for a concert to start (Sequentia, in Seattle) I passed the time by sketching other people in the audience.

Sketchcrawl at the Foundery

I started out with the big green machine.

And then, putting off the supreme struggle of getting myself up off the floor, did a clump of the other sketchers.

And then walked around to unkink my legs.  And found another view of the big green machine, behind a wall and through a window.

And then one more sketch in the pub, while we were waiting for lunch to arrive.

Christmas is coming!

Headed downtown to see this year's tree arrive.  I got to Pioneer Courthouse Square ahead of time and found a seat, then did a sketch while waiting.

When the tree arrived it was an event, accompanied by a marching band and motorcycle cops, on an 18-wheeler with Santa riding shotgun.  And a second 18-wheeler piled high with extra branches.

I had to sketch quickly, as it only took them about 10-15 minutes to get the thing unhitched and hanging upright.

Party

The people who went to Manchester this summer wanted to show off their sketches, so we had a party.  At which, of course, some of us couldn't resist sketching.  Each other, mostly.

Movie night

...at a WiT event at Jama.

Portland Art Museum

This with a reconstituted Drink and Draw, back from the wilderness of Vantucky.  Helped by a new cheap yearly membership, aimed squarely at artists.

The new format of the meetup is to meet at a predetermined piece of artwork to discuss it for 10 minutes, and then separate to sketch whatever we pleased.  But the chosen sculpture was so intriguing that we decided to all focus on it, doing it from every possible angle.


I worked on mine for about an hour, until I feared that I was fussing with it too much and would ruin it.  Got up, creakily, and carried my chair back to its storage rack, then took a stroll into the 'modern' wing of the museum.  (With 'modern' including van Gogh.)  Tried a quick sketch of a bust, but was dissatisfied with it and threw it away.

Pittock Mansion

Deb planted herself on the east lawn, to sit in the sun and do the mansion.  I found a bench in the sun a little ways off, and settled in to do the same view.  But with Deb stuck in front of it.

I had been comfortable in the sun, but after about an hour I got chilled.  And looking around, found that the shade of a nearby tree had crept around and enveloped me.  It was time to wrap it up, anyway.

Around noon Deb and I both left, leaving Rita halfway through a panorama of the view of the city.  I headed down into Hillside, but stopped for one more when I found that the mountains, even Rainier, were out.

Party

Mozilla, for a Women In Tech arts and crafts party.  An alternative to the 'standing around making chit-chat' party that they normally do.

Good Sam

A sunny afternoon.  And an excuse for a walk to find some fall color, and to play with a new random(ish) color feature on my tablet.

Seattle

Starting out with a sketchcrawl at the Olympic Sculpture Park. The Seattle urban sketchers had scheduled this session especially to join up with students from WSU. Only none of them showed up. And only a couple of urban sketchers.
The rain held off for the morning, but a vicious wind came up in its place.  Those of us sketching on paper had problems with it trying to blow away.  And even I had to find spots that were sheltered from the wind.  Like the patio behind pavillion.

 And then, the sound, from the ped bridge crossing the RR tracks.

Then in Seattle Center (where I'd ended up just so I could use a restroom),  I did a quicky for the few minutes that the monorail stopped in that station.

 From there I walked downtown, ending up at the central library.  I rode up the escalator to the reading room at the very top, straight into a clump of sketchers.

Art students, or maybe architecture students.  Maybe even the WSU students that didn't show at the sculpture park this morning.  But they were much more skilled than me. The best I could do inside the library was a tiny bit of the grid work, with normal rectangular buildings outside.

Rail Museum

Chapman swifts

I started with the chimney itself, before the swifts even arrived, and did the lines, the color and the sky while they showed up and started milling about.  And then added just a few brush strokes to show just a few of them entering the chimney, omitting the thousands still circling overhead.

Lair Hill Park

Early for a picnic, sat down to sketch a gnarly old tree while waiting for everyone else.

Party

 I zeroed in on a woman whose eyes squished down narrow when she laughed.  And wouldn't you know it, a social person picked that moment to come over and engage me in conversation.  And by the time she'd left, so did the woman I'd been sketching.

Meadow's studio

Andrea had planned a sketchcrawl heading up into MacLeay Park.  But a soaking rain started up in the morning, and Meadow kindly invited us all to hang out and sketch in her studio complex.