Dr Sketchy

I'd heard of Dr Sketchy before, but this was the first time I'd managed to make it to one.

Life drawing in a bar.  With booze.

But with one-minute poses, who has time to drink?

Portland Art Museum

This week's assignment was to incorporate a mythical creature into our sketch.  But I'd spent some time in eying 'Bolt', which is now in the basement corridor between the two buildings, and decided instead to dedicate the morning to trying to capture it.  I accepted that it was liable to defeat me, but I think that I actually succeeded.

Party

A happy hour with PDXWiT.  I managed to get a couple of quickies in during the lightning talks.

Author Talk

I walked to Powell's for an author's talk.  The seats were mostly full already by the time I got there, and I plopped myself on a bench on the side, where I had a good view, and started sketching one of the other people waiting.  And an employee came out with a cart and set up another row of chairs.

But the talk ended up being a dud, because there had been protests at the author's talks in other cities.  And so he didn't talk.  He sat down at a table to sign books.  And did offer to answer questions, but only one-on-one.  So half the people got up and stood in line at the table (including the woman that I was sketching) while the other half got up and walked out.  And the man came back and started putting the chairs away.

Play

This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing

A fairy tale for all ages.  Three sisters and the people they meet, along with a constantly shifting staff of narrators.  (And the obligatory evil stepmother, who doesn't get to speak even her own dialog.)

The girls are pushed out of the nest and set out on their own to see the world, returning all grown up and mature.

The director(?) and some of the cast sat down after the show to talk about the play.   It gives minimal stage directions and doesn't pin down who is saying any particular line of narration.  They tried divvying it up many different ways during rehearsal before setting it in stone.

Sketchcrawl and Materials Exchange

A bunch of people showed up at Andrea's and piled their no-longer-wanted art supplies on a table in the hall, and then chatted over coffee and waffles.  About half of us stayed there, settling down in the warm to sketch each other and Andrea's house plants, while the rest of us ranged up and down Mississippi.

I walked out with Paul, a tall young man who had just started sketching, and we soon found Glenn, who had found a spot sheltered from the wind and rain.  So we all sketched the nursery across the street.

Then back to Andrea's house for sharing our sketchbooks and selecting from the art supplies that Andrea had organized in our absence.  I didn't really need anything (one of the advantages of switching to digital sketching) but, after everyone else had picked through the piles, I found a couple of mechanical pencils and some lead that should combine well with my mismatched pencil and lead at home.  And a few pouches, that should work to organize something.

Chinese New Year

I went to Lan Su Garden for their New Year's Day.  For the Year of the Dog.




Both the paper bush and daphnes were blooming, so the air was fragrant. I sat down to sketch one of the giant fabric lotus flowers that had been installed in the pond.

Then I circled back to the entrance courtyard, to check out the replacement osmanthus, with a clump of oranges huddled at its feet.  It looks like it's thriving.

Artificial leg

I went to PNCA for the opening reception for Bespoke Bodies, an exhibition about prosthetics. Their history, how they work, and the current state of the art.  Including a 3d printer, happily sputtering out a kid's plastic hand (cheaply and quickly, for a piece that will be tossed in a few months when the child outgrows it).  There were arms and legs designed for athletes, a wrist with interchangeable hand parts, designed by a kid for himself, and range of art pieces - decorative covers to go with one's outfit, or prosthetics that stood out and made a statement.  There were even a set of front legs designed for a dog, and a top bill of a beak for a toucan.  And a working thumb.  Not a replacement for a missing thumb, but designed to be attached to an intact hand to work as a third thumb.

The exhibit was too crowded for me to find a place to stand and sketch.  Mostly.  I found that, after an hour, the crowd at the entrance had thinned out enough for me to sketch one of the historical legs.

Play

Quickie done during intermission

Fertile Ground - Supplemental

Magellanica

A marathon.  A play in 5 acts, each about an hour long.  Think binge-watching a mini-series.  A group of scientists and their maintenance crew, wintering over at the South Pole in 1986.

Ostensibly about discovering proof that CFCs were causing a hole in the ozone layer.  But mostly about the interactions of people stuck together for months in close proximity.  The set, which kept being rearranged to become various rooms in the south pole station, took up the width of the stage.  But felt cramped, claustrophobic.  (The only scene that didn't work was the one where some of the characters suited up and ventured out onto the ice.)

During the first intermission a couple of young women sat down beside me.  Giggly young things, even more annoying than the character studying the Aurora Australis.  The woman who had somehow managed to earn a PHD without graduating from junior high.  So, at the second intermission, I found another seat.  And found that there was nobody at all in the last row, which meant I could quietly sketch while the play was going on.

The third intermission was the dinner break, in which the caterers very efficiently handed out box dinners to those who had ordered them.  Mine was a grilled chicken sandwich, which ended up as little more than a slab of meat in a roll.  I would have been better off running up to the pizza or fry joint, or even bringing a cheese sandwich from home.

After dinner I had time to do a bit of sketching in the lobby.

Party

A farewell party for the outgoing head of the Intertwine.

Lunch

A sketching meetup.  But between having lunch and giving up my seat to newcomers, this was all I got done.

Portland Winter Light Festival

The festival had expanded quite a bit since the last time I visited it, with four hubs.  The first one that I visited was in the courtyard of the World Trade Center.


This was a centipede, mounted on top of a half dozen bikes that were hitched together.  This was as far as I got in the sketching before a half a dozen people mounted the bikes and rode it away.

This was a huge dodecahedron containing thousands of LEDs, cycling through endless pretty patterns.  Prettier than I was able to replicate, actually.


Then I walked down to the waterfront and headed down towards the Tillikum Bridge, stopping to sketch OMSI from across the river.




There was another hub at OMSI, with scuptures both along the esplanade and in an empty lot behind the museum.  I remembered some of the works from the last time I came to the festival, but there were many more, including a row of mushrooms, each surrounded by a ring of kids who coaxed music out of it, and this - a steampunk flamethrowing chandelier.


I left that pod and headed north along the esplanade, stopping to sketch the made in Oregon sign.


The third pod was at the North Park Blocks, but I didn't find any sculptures out of doors, only something going on in the PNCA auditorium.  And the fourth was at Cathedral Park, which I wasn't going to walk to.