As part of Gabi Campanario’s Drawn to Seattle exhibit at the Museum of History and Industry, individual members of the Seattle Urban Sketchers have been spending Saturday afternoons as an “Urban Sketcher in Residence,” demonstrating and sharing their sketching techniques. Yesterday was my opportunity. After a few warm, sunny days, it turned cool and rainy again and so I had to draw from inside MOHAI. The first view is of the Duwamish, built in 1909 and the second oldest fireboat in the U.S., being retired in 1985 and now moored at the Historic Ships Wharf just north of the museum on Lake Union.

The second “drawing” consists of just three lines, but they represent for me the broad outline of the following sketch, drawn from the second floor Walker Gallery, where Gabi’s exhibit was located. With those three lines, I establish the overall composition of the view and the scale and position of the bridge, which is the focus of the drawing.

This is a view of the now abandoned Elks Club at Broadway and 7th and Broadway in Tacoma, where the Seattle Urban Sketchers joined the Tacoma group for their monthly meeting. While the weather was chilly but sunny, it soon began to sprinkle. You can see the raindrops that began falling as I was doing this sketch.

When the rain turned to hail and got blustery, I retreated to Tully’s Coffee at 9th and Broadway and found myself a spot in the corner offering this view of the Rialto Theater. I began by drawing the frame of the window, Tina Koyama drawing on my left, the Tully’s sign above, and a couple of coffee cups in the foreground. Then I moved to what I saw through the window, starting with the tree trunk and planting area and then moving back to the Rialto Theater itself. The vertical white banding is my effort to erase the gray shadows that appear in the binding when I scan my sketches.

To celebrate the arrival of spring and warm, sunny weather here in Seattle, I offer this 2010 view of the quad on the UW campus with the cherry trees in full blossom.

Also, to recognize the UW’s Suzzallo Library being recognized as “one of the coolest college libraries in the country,” here are two views of the Collegiate Gothic structure, designed by Seattle architects Carl F. Gould, Sr. and Charles H. Bebb in 1923.

For the monthly meeting of the Seattle Urban Sketchers group yesterday, we met in the International District of Seattle. I caught the bus downtown and as soon as I got off, I confronted this view of King Street Station with Century Link Field in the background and a maze of overhead wires in the foreground. I just had to draw it while standing under the awning in front of 308 4th Avenue South.

Thinking about what to sketch in the ID district, I was convinced I had to document Kau Kau, which, as the sign on its awning says, is home of the best BBQ (char siu) in Seattle. So tender and juicy. You can see the effect of raindrops on the page.

Finally, to get out the rain and damp cold, I joined a few others in the tea shop housed in the Panama Hotel. Designed by Japanese American architect Sabro Ozasa, who was a graduate of the University of Washington, the hotel opened in the summer of 1910 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006. In the basement is the best surviving example of an urban-style Japanese bathhouse in the U.S.