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.

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!

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.

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.

Here is a view of where the Red Door used to be, just a block east at the northwest corner of Fremont Avenue North and North 34th Street, now occupied by the Epicenter Apartment Building.

Peet’s Coffee & Tea occupies the street corner while the PCC Natural Market and other retail spaces fill out the ground level. Five floors of apartments rise above, adorned by an array of welded and polished steel sculptures, Mon Sruang (Thai for “Jewelry of Heaven”), by Fremont artist Mark Stevens. The Fremont Bridge is to the left and the new location of the Red Door Ale House is down North 34th Street.

After a brief hiatus, I am continuing my series of views of the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. At the northwest corner of Evanston Avenue North and North 34th Street sits the Red Door Ale House atop a concrete parking garage. How did it get here?

The original structure was erected on the Fremont tide flats in 1900, before the Lake Washington Ship Canal was constructed. Three years later, it was moved to the northeast corner of Fremont Avenue North and North 34th Street. In 1917, the structure was raised up on stilts so that it would be level with the newly raised streets surrounding it, where it became a familiar sight as one drove across the Fremont Bridge. Originally a drugstore, it was transformed into a tavern in 1938. It is said that the original uneven floor was a sort of sobriety test for those who might have imbibed a little too much ale.

In 2001, to make room for a new mixed use development, the Red Door was relocated to its current location, which you can see in the view above. To the right is the local PCC Natural Market and in the background beyond you can see the Fremont Rocket.

Housed in an old boiler works factory in the Sodo district of Seattle, the Emerald City Trapeze Arts is a school for aspiring flying trapeze and aerial artists. The people at ECTA were nice enough to welcome the Seattle UrbanSketchers group yesterday to observe one of their classes and sketch the proceedings.

If you think drawing people is difficult, it is even more challenging trying to capture them in motion as they swing and twirl through the air thirty or forty feet above the floor. There are ample safety belts and netting for the students, but these elements made sketching the scene that much more challenging. So my approach was to begin with the structure of the old timber frame building and then merely suggest the movement of the students. You might be able to see the light strokes I used to try to capture that movement. My good friend, Frank B., helps to establish the foreground, where I was, overlooking the tall space.