From a Rome journal, two pages of sketches drawn during a teaching session. The first page contains explanatory sketches accompanied by bits of concise text: “Pay attention to profiles”…“Suggest details within shadows”…“Visualize shape of curves.”
The second page illustrates how to estimate proportional heights above and below an imagined horizon line.
Around ten years ago, I posted a few drawings from a journal I kept during a month’s stay in Japan in 1990. Wiley subsequently published a facsimile in 2000, Sketches from Japan, which is now out-of-print. Here are a few more pages from that journal, all drawn with a Mont Blanc fountain pen and using a contour line approach to the subject matter. The page above contains details that caught my eye as I walked the streets of O-Okayama. Below are a couple more street scenes of O-Okayama, a suburb of Tokyo where the Tokyo Institute of Technology is located.
The Seattle Urban Sketchers group met this past Sunday at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (aka Ballard Locks), which separates the fresh waters of Lake Union and Lake Washington to the east from the tidal waters of Puget Sound to the west. We’ve met here before, in August of 2019. This time, I chose to draw the larger of the two locks, beginning when it was closed and ending with it open and accepting vessels small and large, in from the west. Because of the constant movement, it was possible to merely suggest the boat traffic.
Part of the Ballard Locks complex is the Carl S. English Botanical Garden, in which is sited what is known as the Cavanaugh House, named “in honor of Colonel James B. Cavanaugh, Seattle District Engineer from August 1911 to May 1917, construction years of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks.” The house was renovated in 1966 to become the official residence of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Chief Engineer during their 3-year tenure in the Seattle District.
Looking back at a few sketches done five years ago. Above is a view of the Pier 86 Grain Terminal along the Seattle waterfront. Below are the iconic and Glass Museum and the Old City Hall in downtown Tacoma.
It has been 12 years since Gabi Campanario, the Seattle Sketcher and founder of the urban sketching movement, organized the very first meet-up of Seattle urban sketchers. To mark this anniversary, the Seattle group met again this past Sunday at Fishermen’s Terminal. It was perhaps the largest gathering we’ve ever had.
Above are two drawings that I did on Sunday, both of which I composed to include the Fishermen’s Terminal sign and tower in the background of the fishing vessels.
This is the main entrance to Powell’s City of Books, the venerable bookstore in Portland, Oregon, founded in 1971 by Walter Powell. Billing itself as the world’s largest independent bookstore, it occupies an entire city block and contains over a million volumes of new and used books over 68,000 square feet of floor area.
Looking back at sketches done ten years ago, during visits to Naples, Delft, and Mexico City. Unlike the first two experiential views, the last is conceptual in its attempt to imagine how the architect Luis Barragán fit the program for the Capilla de las Capuchinas into a tight midblock site in the historic area of Tlalpan in Mexico City.
After 14 months of individuals drawing and painting in isolation during the pandemic, the Seattle Urban Sketchers group was able to meet—finally—for a Sunday sketching session at Gas Works Park. The site on the north shore of Lake Union is a reclaimed gasification plant that operated from 1906 to 1956. Landscape architect Richard Haag designed the park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The first sketch, from within the play barn structure, looks out toward Lake Union and downtown Seattle beyond. Drawing from a dark space toward the light creates silhouettes that conceals details, which can be challenging. The second sketch was a quick study of remnants of the old plant. The geometric, primarily cylindrical forms, were drawn transparently to emphasize their volume, even though the sketch consists only of lines.
Continuing a look back over the years, these two spreads contain sketches drawn during a trip to Sicily in 2006 with my wife Deb. The first contains views of Palermo the day after our arrival; the second is of Cefalú Cathedral and a map documenting a day-trip drive with our friends Margie and Jim to the hilltowns above Cefalú.
Not quite 20 years ago, but close enough. These two pages contain the first sketches I did soon after arriving in the Eternal City in the fall of 2000 to teach in the UW’s Architecture in Rome program. Truly, a transformative experience. Wandering the area around Campo de Fiori, I sketched three churches—S. Barbara de Librari, the dome of S. Andrea della Valle, and S. Maria della Pace—as well as an ill-proportioned fragment of Bernini’s fountain in the Piazza Navona. I chose to include small plans showing the context of each in the urban fabric.