Doodles

A cute kitten, done on a trip on the streetcar.  With a couple attempts to give her Siamese coloring.

But later, when I browsed through my old photos, I realized that Jade was even less of a Siamese than I remembered.  I did remember her white paws (OHS billed her as a 'snowshoe Siamese'.)  But she doesn't have a mask.  Just some gray smudges on her crown and beside her eyes.  And a tan smudge on her nose.

Later, in the afternoon, Aramis wanted to go out and sit in the sun.  So I took my tablet and sketched a clump of bluebells.

Book group

Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid (Everybody Reads)

Snuck in a sketch of Bruce in the first round of comments.

Portland Art Museum

Our assignment was to draw one of the large sculptures in the modern art building, portraying it as being assembled from smaller objects.  Oh, and paying attention to composition.



I walked into the second building and wandered about, settling on one sculpture, to do straight.



















And then I circled around to a different side and attempted to draw that, using the people and signs from yesterday's march.  A bit of a mess actually.  I'm thinking that I ought to have started with a rough sketch that blocked out the shadows and the shading, and then inserted my figures to fit into those forms.









I did the same view again, using straight pigment, to show what I was actually seeing.

March for Our Lives

The marshalling point for the march was the south end of the North Park Blocks, at 10am.  I rounded the corner off of Hoyt at 9:55, and found that the whole stretch of the park, from Burnside to Glissan, was already filled with people.  I wandered up along the sidewalk, looking for a vantage point, when I ran into Glenn and his wife.  And they hooked up with a friend a bit later.

We made it up nearly to Couch, joining other people in taking over the street.  This wasn't close enough to hear the speechifying that was going on at Burnside, but we could join in on the applause after each speech.  Then we started, shuffling along in the crowd, filling Burnside and then wheeling onto Broadway, and inching our way up to Pioneer Courthouse Square.




There was not the faintest possibility that even a fraction of this crowd could fit within the square.  Especially since the MAXes were still running, with the help of dozens of Trimet employees in safety vests, who cleared the crowds off of the tracks whenever a train wanted through.  Glenn and his wife headed east, to find a train home, and I circled around Nordstrom, looking for a place out of the rain to do one last sketch of the crowd.

Play

Good Morning, Miss America, at CoHo

Meeting

Annual Pageturners meeting, to let each other know about books that worked really well at engendering discussion in our groups (which is not at all synonymous with good books).  And the duds as well.  And to give each other tips in facilitating a group.

Cartoon Cats

A series of cute cat cartoons, following the advice out of a library book.  All of these were done on trains or buses, which should excuse any jitteriness.

Big head, huge round eyes with round pupils, eyebrows, and a scruff on top.  With a big bushy tail.

Super cute kitten.  Big ears, huge eyes, with the nose and mouth pushed down as far as they can go, and a teensy body.

Still cute, but not quite so out of proportion.  Kitten paws should be bigger than this, but that wouldn't be as cute.  And kittens really do have small tails.

What the standard comic cat looks like these days.  A big head, shaped like a football.

An adult cat, sitting like a kid.  Adult cats get tails that are way thicker than they have in reality.

Evil cat.  Dennis the Menace in a cat body.  The eyes are squished, and the face is raised up towards the middle of the head.

A female cat.  According to current convention they have almond-shaped eyes.  More like the shape a real cat's eye has.  But the irises and pupils are still round, like a human's.  And they have both, while boy cats only have a single dark round orb for both.

An even bushier tail, thicker brows and darker eyelashes.  And possibly a bow or flowers.  Although I couldn't bring myself to add that.

A 'realistic' cat.  Only slightly.  The tail now looks like a normal cat tail.  And the head is shaped more or less like a real cat's.  But it's still oversized.  The eyes are shaped better, but the pupils are still all wrong.  And I have never seen a cat with human-looking eyebrows.

Took that drawing and tried coloring it, first for a tuxedo cat, and then for a Siamese.

A Himalayan.  First a realistic rendering.  And a cuter cartoon one.  And then an even cuter one.

Party

Two of them, actually.  First, a PDXWiT happy hour at a place that does mapping.

They scan the ground with a camera and processor (from an airplane I presume) and it uses lidar to produce maps with contour lines on the fly.











Slipped out of that early, just after the speechifying started, and headed across Burnside to the satellite UO campus, to see the culmination of a journalism class project - a series of short films about various pedestrians in Portland.  A variety of classes, colors, and locations, and a couple of people that I recognized from seeing them on the street.  I was watching the backgrounds, trying to place each location, when I suddenly recognized MCC, shot from the bus stop that I seldom use anymore.

Cherry Blossoms in Seattle

I'd been through the quad on the UW campus exactly a week ago, and saw nothing.  But today....

...and just about everyone in town had come out to view them.

Headed down to Red Square on my way to the Link station.

There were people in the square as well, but I ran out of time and didn't add them in.

Concert

The Fairy Queen
Seattle Baroque Orchestra
The pre-concert tuning of the harpsichord.

Lan Su Garden

A quick visit, tucked in between a sketchcrawl at the waterfront (and the following lunch in Old Town) and a train trip to Seattle.

Cherry Blossoms in Portland

A sketchcrawl at Waterfront Park, (mis)timed to catch the cherry blossoms.

Unfortunately, they weren't out yet.  Not really.  There was a promise of pink, but the reality was of green and gray.   But the Steel Bridge was floating prettily above the trees.  So I did that scene, sneaking in the blossoms that I knew would soon show up.

 Then I turned my attention on the people...

UW, Seattle

On my way back to King Street Station I stopped to sketch the old observatory on the UW campus.

My host had suggested going through the quad, to check out the cherry blossoms.  They were only just starting to bud out, leaving only the gnarly trees showing.

Georgetown Steam Plant, Seattle

Just like yesterday, I caught a train and a bus to Georgetown, this time to meet a huge group of sketchers at the old steamplant, backed up against Boeing Field.









There was an immense amount of machinery inside the plant.  To keep from getting overwhelmed, I perched myself beside one of the giant flywheels and used it to frame the scene, seeing, mostly, the next flywheel over, and a shifting group of people playing with toy steam engines.  Like my brothers and I had when we were kids.











Then I looked to my right and did a... whatever this thingy is.













Unkinked myself and found the stairs to the second floor.  And a corridor between the fireboxes.  One woman had sat down in the only beam of sun in the place and was intent on sketching.

Finally, I went outside into the chilly sun and did one last sketch of Rainier, with the tailfin of a 767 in front of it.



Dress rehearsal

The Medieval Women's Choir.

Cartoon puppy-dog eyes