Monday, December 7, 2015

Another place to sketch when it rains

It rained a lot this weekend, especially on Saturday, when Tina and I wanted to go out sketching, so once again we had to brainstorm on good locations for bad weather.  We wound up at Swanson's Nursery in Ballard, which has several large buildings with covered walkways between.

The main attraction was a camel named Curly (yes, a real live camel). There were two reindeer as well, and all three were relaxing in roomy pens, munching away on hay.  We managed to find space between the hordes of excited children to do a few sketches.



There were also lots of children admiring a miniature village with a train rolling round it -- I tried to sketch the train, but it went around so quickly that I could only get little bits each time, and eventually I gave up that endeavor and just drew a section of the village instead.


Then I found a quieter spot in another building, by a koi pond.  No children were teeming around the pond -- it was ever so pleasant.


Zooming in for a close-up:


Not a bad outing at all.  Afterwards we stopped in at a coffee house (One Cup Coffee in Shoreline) where we've sketched before, though I was more interested in drinking hot cocoa than drawing.  We discovered the owner allows dogs inside!  Not just service dogs, ANY dog.  I could bring Truman there -- it is always wonderful to find places I can go with Tru.  I may be spending more time there in retirement.

3 comments:

  1. Nice sketching. I'm hoping the temperature wasn't quite as low as your day at the zoo. It was great to find somewhere you can take Truman in the future, that doesn't happen too often in coffee shops. To change the subject a bit, I saw something for Truman the other day. I was watching a trailer for The Secret Life of Pets, if you haven't seen it you should look it up. I loved a bit they showed with a mixer, might give Truman ideas when you're not home. Also saw a pic on Facebook that I wanted to send you but figured it won't appear in the comments box.

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    1. I did see most of the Secret Life of Pets -- great program. I just got on Facebook after many years of ignoring it, you can friend me there if you can find the right Alex MacKenzie in Seattle. The raccoon painting I did recently is my profile picture.

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  2. I really like the last sketch, although all of them are lovely. It's nice to be able to take pets places. Sometimes I wish I could bring my cat to work LOL. They have cat cafes popping up everywhere - why not dogs?

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