Sunday Urban Sketching

This past Sunday the Seattle Urban Sketchers (http://seattle.urbansketchers.org/) hosted their monthly get-together at Hale's Ale Brew Pub, and Tina, Nicole, and I joined in the fun.  We arrived at 11am, and as it was close enough to lunch time and we were hungry, we started our sketching in the restaurant.

I couldn't see much from my seat except a family at another table, and the brewery's logo on the wall.

After eating, I abandoned Nicole and Tina, who wanted to keep sketching inside the brewery.  The sun was shining and I wanted to be outside.  I found a view of an interesting building and settled in, only to discover that sunshine does not necessarily equal warmth.  I spent about fifteen minutes on this sketch before giving up due to chilled hands.

Back inside the brewery, I found a lobby view of some beer casks next to an old British phone booth.  I think I could have done a better job of this, because I was having trouble with my materials.  I had a new sketchbook, a brand I've used before with great success, but with different pens.  The pens I tried to use on it this time were skipping a lot and I couldn't get good, strong lines.

When the sketch group finished up and Tina, Nicole and I headed over to a nearby retirement home where Tina visited her mother while Nicole and I sat in their little patio garden.  It was warmer by then, and the sunlight was making lovely highlights and nice deep shadows.  Because of my earlier frustration with the pen, this time I opted to try using my brush pen to make marks where the shadows were falling, more or less.  This is a technique I learned in the Travel Sketching class at craftsy.com:

I was happier with that drawing than anything I did at the brewery.

That was it was weekend sketching.  But wait -- there's more!  Earlier on Sunday I popped down to the Montlake Fill to try getting a better shot of the hummingbird feeding its chick.  She did not cooperate, so I walked Truman around the Loop Trail, where we saw lots of Northern Shovelers on Shoveler's Pond:

While admiring the birds, my attention was caught by a canine loping through the brushy meadow on the far side of the pond.  WHAT is that DOG doing running loose!? I thought -- until realizing that it was not a dog.

Blur E. Coyote

I haven't seen a coyote there for over a year.  It disappeared into the brush and I didn't see it again.  Typically they are skittish around people and will run off, though they've been known to defend their territory against dogs, so now I have yet another reason to tell the idiots who let their dogs go off-leash at the Fill to not do that!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rainy weather.  At least I have baseball to watch.  So if you don't see any posts here for a while, just know that I'm in a Rain Delay!