Coffee Shops and Parks

Two things Portland has plenty of are parks and coffee shops.  These are recent sketches I've done in each category.  We had our last sketch crawl near Jamison Park, which is in the middle of a busy section of downtown and surrounded by tall buildings.  On nice days it is always filled with families and groups of friends enjoying the outdoors--children climb on a series of boulders, adults play bocci on an expanse of gravel, older folks watch all the activity on chairs that are provided for the public. It's a very user friendly, pleasant space.

I did this last sketch at the Concordia Coffee shop, which has a Dr. Who theme. The coffee shop was suitably funky and even had a Tardis (my husband, the erstwhile Dr Who aficionado, explained that it is a time machine disguised as a British police call box).  We had a nice relaxing time sketching and reading, and I was grateful that a student was engrossed enough in her studies to sit still while a sketched her.  I think she suspected that something fishy was going on though.