Sunday, January 22, 2012

Portlandia

Portland Urban Sketchers met downtown at SW 2nd and SW Taylor at a Starbucks. Downtown on a Saturday morning is a quiet place-- great for focusing on urban landscape without the distraction of traffic and pedestrians.

Twelve sketchers showed up on this cold, damp day. The sun kept teasing us, but the rain still fell.
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I did some warm up drawings of my fellow sketchers & pasted in a map of the area,


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we did venture outside, under a sheltered area that also had tables. I managed to mostly avoid drawing buildings. I just wasn't feeling in the mood to work on perspective. In the background, you can see something with the letter E on it. Electric cars can park in two parking spots for as long as they want, as long as they are charging up their vehicles.


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I attempted to figure out the lines of a bicycle locked to a bike rack. Not only is a bike difficult to draw, but the bike rack it self, had odd curved metal that confused my eye and my pen.

Huddled back in the warmth of the cafe, I couldn't resist trying to draw this mural on the side of a building.


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Our next stop was supposed to be Steamer's for lunch, but since it was closed, we went to Seattle's Best. We had lunch there and tried to sketch the Portlandia statue from the window. I couldn't get a good view without taking over someone else's chair, so I decided I'd draw the sketchers sketching the Portlandia statue. You can see below, on Kalina's sketchbook the trident that Portlandia is holding.
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One of these days, I will attempt to draw the Portlandia statue.

We shared our sketchbooks and then parted ways.




2 comments:

  1. A great story of the day! I especially like the sketch of Marco and Chantel, although the map gave Marco some interesting markings in the other one.
    I should have gotten out of your way so you could draw Portlandia, because I didn't do much with her anyway. What a difficult perspective!
    Thanks again to you and Kalina for organizing this sketchcrawl.

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  2. I agree there were some challenges in the view of the Portlandia statue. Your choice to sketch the sketchers really worked though...I like that you kept the chairs in front without color.

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