Seattle Workshop

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SeattleWorkshop2

SeattleWorkshop1

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching with Gail Wong and working with the 25 participants in the Line to Color workshop this past weekend. Beginning with a brief sketching session and pizza dinner on Friday evening, working all day Saturday in the Fremont neighborhood and at Gasworks Park, and then meeting up with the Seattle UrbanSketchers group on Sunday morning at Pike Place Market—the past three days have left me tired but also exhilarated by the energy and warmth of the group and their willingness to try out different approaches and techniques. Above is the sharing of work at Steinbrueck Park and the obligatory group photo, which includes not only the workshop participants but also members of the Seattle UrbanSketchers group.

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While I didn’t have a lot of time to sketch during the workshop, I managed to get to Pike Place Market a little early on Sunday morning to capture this view of Post Alley, and at the end to sit on the curb and quickly sketch the iconic market sign.

Porta Settimiana

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PortaSettimiana

Porta Settimiana is a gate in the Aurelian Wall on the west side of the Tiber. Marking the beginning of the Via della Lungara that leads from Trastevere to the Borgo, Porta Settimiana is a restoration of the original gate that was built in 275 AD over the Via Recta, undertaken in 1498 under the direction of Pope Alexander IV.

daGildo

Looking the other way back through the Porta at the corner where Via della Scala meets Via Benedetta is l’Antica Trattoria Da Gildo, one of my favorite little restaurants in Rome. This is where I had my first taste of Cacio e Pepe in 2000, which has not yet been surpassed. I frequent Da Gildo whenever I teach in Rome and I’m looking forward to dining there again this fall.

Fremont’s Topiary Dinosaurs

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FremontDinosaurs

It took over 12 years but the ivy has finally completely covered these steel-framed dinosaurs. In 1998, a proposal to the city—initiated by Josh Logan and John Hegeman, authored by Theresa Callahan, and supported by the Fremont Arts Council and other community groups—enabled the ARF (Artists Republic of Fremont) to purchase the dinosaurs from the Pacific Science Center for a dollar. The catch was that the steel framework, weighing five tons and measuring 66 feet in length, had to be moved in two days; with the help of several Fremont businesses, the deadline was met. Now, the mother Apatosaurus and her baby rest peacefully alongside the Burke-Gilman Trail where Phinney Avenue North meets North 34th Street.

After quickly roughing out the framework for the drawing, it took a while to scribble in the leafy texture. When covering a large shape with hatching or texture, working methodically from one end of a shape to the other can often result in unintentional banding. So I like to move around and work in different areas first and then fill the voids in between. Once I had the overall texture evenly distributed, I then went back to intensify the foliage to darken the shaded areas and give form to the dinosaurs.

I find that drawing organic forms is a lot easier than delineating geometric ones since it is easier to get away with errors in proportion. And they’re more fun to sketch!

The Big Rock

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BigRock

In the Wedgewood neighborhood of north Seattle sits this massive rock measuring 80 feet in circumference and 19 feet in height. Geologists call it a glacial erratic, meaning that its composition does not match its present surroundings. It was deposited more than 14,000 years ago by the Vashon Glacier. As the ice sheet moved inexorably from the north into the Puget Sound area, rocks, sediments and boulders such as this one were carried along by the glacier, and then were left behind when the ice retreated. Originally known as the Lone Rock when it was part of a large farmstead, this large mass is now called simply the Big Rock. It became part of a subdivision platted in the 1940s, where it remains surrounded by houses, trees and brush at the corner of 28th Avenue NE and NE 72nd Street.

This is a weird drawing in the sense that we can’t immediately recognize the Big Rock for what it is. What is that large mass of darkness? We have this yearning to know and identify what it is that we see, which is more easily satisfied when we draw buildings, people, trees and other recognizable things.

Mt. Vernon Workshop

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I want to thank all of the participants who attended Gail Wong’s and my workshop this past Saturday in Mt. Vernon. The weather could have been nicer but there was sufficient warmth, camaraderie and enthusiasm among those gathered to sketch Mt. Vernon to make up for the lack of sunlight, colors and shadows. Since I drew mainly in the sketchbooks of others, I only have these spare scribblings to share of the experience. I did these sparse drawings to illustrate how to begin a drawing by quickly blocking out the major forms of the composition, before diving into the details.

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Our Mt. Vernon workshop experience was rewarding and has helped us prepare better for the workshop Gail and I will be conducting in Seattle in a few weeks. Here’s hoping for sunshine and 70° temperatures!

Foreseeing the Future

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CanaleScheme

Stepping away from drawing from location for a while, I want to mention design drawings—drawings designers use to initiate and develop ideas and make them visible so that they can be acted upon. Whether we start with orthographic views, such as plans, elevations, and sections, before moving on to 3-dimensional views, or we begin the design process with paraline and perspective drawings, we should move back and forth from 2D to 3D and have the confidence that our visualizations are dependable predictors of future outcomes.

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CanaleBuilt

In an actual project nearing completion, it is interesting to compare a design study created in SketchUp with a photo of the constructed space. While not exactly identical, these two images are similar except for nuances of color and material. This shows the usefulness of preliminary studies to reliably foresee the result of our design decisions. Of course, these studies include not only graphic representations but also study models and prototyping. But for efficiency of time and fluency of thought, it is difficult to beat the graphic tools at our disposal.

Preparing for Mt. Vernon Workshop

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In preparing for the Mt. Vernon workshop that Gail Wong and I will be offering this Saturday, I’ve assembled a Keynote presentation to introduce participants to a few basic principles to keep in mind when drawing on location. After teaching for 40 years but continuing to discover aspects of the drawing process through my own as well as others’ observations and experiences, I find it difficult to prepare these presentations.

What I do on an intuitive level—with insights gained through practice and experience—can be difficult to condense into a few fundamental concepts. Yet, in a one-day or even a three-day workshop, one has distill drawing lessons down to a few key ideas that can be more easily digested, especially for beginners. One of these is acquiring a proper point of view, which is vital to producing a good drawing. If one’s vantage point is flawed due to an inherent imbalance of graphic elements, an unexpected or unfortunate alignment of spatial edges, or an ill-considered placement on the page, then all the skill and experience one can muster might not be enough to salvage the drawing. On the other hand, a well composed image can often survive a number of common drawing mistakes.

In each slide of the Keynote presentation, I limit myself to a maximum of three, concisely stated points. In this example, I present three keys to drawing composition.

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1. Select: Draw what interests you, what catches your eye—whether it be a detail or a fragment, an entire structure or a spatial environment—but make sure this is a conscious choice.

2. Compose: Vital to composition is walking around until one’s view of the selected subject matter holds the compositional forces that you desire. Understand whether the view is symmetrical or asymmetrical, contains the desired point or area of focus, and has the potential for conveying layers of depth.

3. Place: Understand the proportions and size of the selected image before placing it on the drawing surface or page.

There are, of course, more slides in the presentation and I look forward to seeing how effective they are in the workshop. Preparing a presentation is very much like the drawing process. One never quite knows where it will lead; one can only learn from the experience and improve at the next opportunity.

WorldWide SketchCrawl 39

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In 2004, Enrico Casarosa spent a day walking around San Francisco and recording his encounters through drawings. He enjoyed this experience so much that he turned what began as a solitary exploration into a quarterly communal event in numerous cities and towns around the world, a day when groups find an excuse to slow down, look around, and record—through drawing and writing—where they live, work and play.

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Yesterday was the 39th WorldWide SketchCrawl Day and you can view the results from around the world at <www.sketchcrawl.com> and <www.flickr.com/groups/sketchcrawl/>. To participate, a group of Seattle UrbanSketchers met yesterday at the University Village shopping center. It was so cold that I had to keep my hands moving constantly in an effort to keep my fingers warm.

I drew this scene out after moving one of the many available chairs around to get the viewpoint I wanted—the umbrella and table in the left foreground, Tokyo Sweets to the right to complete the framing, the cow, calf and tree in the middle ground, and the shops and tower in the background.

And no, that is not a real cow and calf, just metal sculptures displayed as public art for kids to climb on.

 

Surface and Depth

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DrawingMagic

We draw by dragging, pulling, or in some cases, pushing a pen, pencil, or brush across a receptive surface to make marks that represent what we see or envision. This is the magic of drawing, that the ink, graphite, or paint marks we create can call to mind what we have seen and experienced, or what we foresee as an imagined future.

Surface

Some drawings simply lay on the surface on which they are created and tend to be seen and appreciated as 2-dimensional graphics or paintings, viewed through a frame. Due to my training as an architect, however, my personal challenge has always been to overcome the flatness of the drawing surface and create the illusion of space and depth on the 2-dimensional plane.

Depth

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There are a host of visual depth cues, such as overlapping shapes and size differentiation, that I spoke of in a post from July of last year. Even when drawing 2-dimensional plans, sections, or elevations, we can use contrasting line weights, tonal values, or level of detail to imply depth.

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Of course, when drawing experiential views on location, we rely heavily on linear perspective to create the illusion of spatial depth. The convergence of parallel lines, along with the associated principles of size and texture perspective are powerful devices that convince that we are seeing through the paper surface into the depth of a drawing.

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