One Sunny Day

In the midst of the gray and the gloom and the rain which has plagued Seattle for the past what -- week?  two weeks?  three? -- there appeared one lone glorious sunny day.  Ironically, it was "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving when crazy people line up at midnight to batter each other senseless in order to buy a bigger, better TV at the Lowest Price This Year.

No, thank you.

Luckily, the Seattle Urban Sketch group met up that day to draw at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, so Tina and I headed over that way to embrace Sunny Blue Friday instead.

The conservatory was decked out with holiday displays, including this Christmas village with train:

The plants, as always, were gorgeous:

I staked out my sketching spot in the succulent room, which is my favorite.

While they are certainly complex plants, I find them easier to draw them ones with tons of little leaves.

It must have been around eighty degrees inside, and after an hour that was a bit too much for me, plus families with shouting children arrived to see the train, which was also a bit too much for me.  So I headed outside to the park, where I found a sunny spot to draw.

This "donut" sculpture, with its view of downtown Seattle, is one I've wanted to sketch for a long time and it was nice to get a chance to do so on a day when there weren't a ton of people climbing all around it as they usually do.  I guess they were all out shopping.

The next day we returned to the gray and the gloom and the rain.  If you don't see many updates here for a while, you'll know why!