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...