Chapman, one last time

A dry evening, and the swifts circling.  I bought a supper from a deli and walked up to Chapman school.  Found a spot at the corner of the playing field and did a sketch of the chimney, that I'll use tomorrow for Inktober.   I declared it finished when the swifts started flying down it.  I didn't try to add them in, but merely snapped a photo, that will help me keep the scale right when I add them tomorrow.

Portland Art Museum

Today's assignment was to go to the gallery of photographs of African-Americans and work on people whose features were not like ours.  I wasn't thrilled about drawing from photographs, but then, drawing people who aren't white is a problem for me.  But the photos were small and the gallery dark, which was also a problem.



I stuck with the 19th century, starting with a cabinet card that was slightly larger than the rest of the photographs.  The hair was the bit I was focused on - the facial features were mainly by shading.







Then I leafed through the books in the reading alcove.  I read bits of one on the history of African-Americans in Portland.  But it had no portraits, and the people's faces were tiny.  Eventually I picked out a photo of Frederick Douglas that had extremely high contrast.









Afterwards we met in the museum coffee shop.  (And I learned that I can get a discount there, because of my membership.)



Poetry reading

Tanner Springs Park

Met a group of sketchers (one significantly smaller than yesterday, or even last week) and then fanned back out into the park.  I started on the south end, to try to get the waving wall made from recycled railroad tracks.



Then I moved to the spring towards the west end, trying to portray moving water.  It started raining, a little, at this point, and I drew my jacket up over my head to protect my tablet, peering out from under it to continue.


Finally, I moved to the rain shed and did the pond lilies below me.

Slabtown sketchcrawl

We met in my neighborhood, at New Seasons.  I'd been admiring the two funky old houses on Quimby for a while, and decided that I should sketch them.  Today, before the weather turns bad or they're torn down and redeveloped.

Chapman swifts

Went up to watch the swifts again. 

And this time, I watched the swifts instead of the people.

Tanner Springs Park

I started out with a view of the pond and causeway.  There were fish aplenty bouncing around under the surface, and one mallard coasting along on top.  And plenty of kids coming along trying to spot both.


Then a quick sketch of Madeleine, who had brought her lunch and ended up sketching the mallard, who stuck around looking for crumbs.


Then another quick sketch of a few of the buildings overlooking the park.



Class

On emergency preparedness.  All the things that I ought to be doing.

Swift-watching

Or rather, watching people who are watching swifts.