More cats

Doodles to come up with a cartoon likeness of Jade.

PAM

Yet another sketching group.  (Which might fold into the local chapter of urban sketchers)  We met at the art museum.  We were going to meet outside, and then switched to meeting inside, in the face of the predicted monster storm.

But the day started out sunny and warm, so I started out outside, doing one of the sculptures in front of the museum.  But from the back, so it was difficult to make out exactly what the shapes were.

It was still dry when I finished that, but the wind had picked up, so I shifted to the sculpture garden.  I bought a coffee and a scone and then sat down at one of the outside tables and sketched a couple of flower pots, playing around with different brushes to add splotches of color.

Then, from the same spot,  I started a study in shading.  That quickly turned into a study on reflections, and how rain runs down a vertical surface.

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.

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Good Morning, Miss America, at CoHo