Worldwide Sketchcrawl Today!

If you are in the Portland area and you want to participate in the worldwide sketchcrawl here are your options:
1. Sketch where you're at today.
2. Anytime today, come on downtown and sketch in and around The Pearl and the Burnside area....

either way, you are invited to PNCA at 5pm for a closing reception of the Urban Sketchers Symposium. Participants will show off the work they've done these past few days and will, no doubt, be talking pens and brushes and paper.

If you come on down, I'd love to meet you! (You'll have to try and find me, as there are lots of people that I haven't yet met participating in the symposium, too!)

DayTwo

Ran into Linda Daily today and saw her sketches..... nice one of the Skidmore Fountain area..

Then I saw Gail Vines. 

She was very happy with her morning session and her food stand sketch...

I love the presenters sketchbook area, really great to see these in person.
Carrie H.

Vicky and Linda

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Originally uploaded by Urban Sketchers

Portland Sketching

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Originally uploaded by Urban Sketchers

Sketchers in Action!

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Originally uploaded by Urban Sketchers

Urban Sketching

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Originally uploaded by Urban Sketchers

The symposium is bringing together folks from all over the world, including Australia, Japan, Singapore and Italy!

Lapin sketching

Lapin sketching
Originally uploaded by Elizabeth Alley

Lapin in Portland! It has been such an honor to meet my sketching idols in person! Such fun!

urban line field sketching

urban line field sketching
Originally uploaded by Elizabeth Alley

Thanks again to Elizabeth Alley's photos on the urban sketchers flickr page!

At the Symposium

great art deco building
Originally uploaded by Elizabeth Alley

Deb sketching a great art deco building, captured by participant Elizabeth Alley.

Day one of the Urban Sketchers Symposium

Today was the beginning of the Urban Sketchers Symposium.

it was pretty exciting to check in and get our goodie bags and see people i've known in the blogosphere!

I started with the Urban People session with Veronica Lawlor and we talked about the importance of thumbnail sketches.


we went in to Powell's where you can always find lots of people, even at 9 am on a Thursday morning.



robbie and i got caught sketching


and as you can tell, we're all bloggers around these parts!




My second session was architecture with Simo Capecchi


many of us took refuge in the shade


until we went up on the roof of the ecotrust building!

Stay tuned...more symposium fun to come!

Urban Sketchers Symposium

Hello! Tomorrow is the Urban Sketchers Symposium, which we at USP  are really excited about! We will be happily sketching around Portland  so we may be MIA for a bit. Symposium participants are invited to post on the Symposium blog or the Flickr pool and of course, Portland folks can post here.

Happy Sketching everyone!

alanna's recent sketches

I am so excited about the upcoming symposium. I may be a little apprehensive, though. Okay, I am definitely apprehensive because I have a secret. I don't think I can sketch buildings. They're hard. And they have windows. Lots of them. So, I'm nervous about sketching alongside really great architects and artists and then here i'll be. But, the good thing is that I have the desire and the courage to get out there and sketch! so my plan is to just do what I like to do. Get out there and put pen to paper and see what happens. Maybe I'll even vary it up and use pencil or other fun tools!

I did this quick sketch of a statue that the pigeons really like during a sketchcrawl downtown in the park.

quick warm up sketch of the First Presbyterian Church

I tried another pen and different focus area. It was so windy and hot the watercolors dried upon contact with the paper.

have you ever been stuck in rush hour traffic and thought, ugh! if only I could sketch? Well, since we weren't moving, I pulled out my sketchbook and pen. I admit, it did not meet my need for calm, relaxation and a true sketching experience.

Sketching at the Lone Fir Cemetery

I spent the major part of Saturday at The Lone Fir Cemetery in SE Portland. Some regular sketch crawlers  arrived just before 10 am and fanned out for a couple hours till they met at the Soldiers Monument to show their results. Celeste, Dave and I took a lunch break and returned for fresh inspiration. I abandoned the larger format morning watercolor for sketchbook and some simple observation.  The afternoon brought many more visitors to different plots, path groomers and grounds keepers; then volunteers with tables, fliers, and such  for the evenings festivities. We were approached by a volunteer tour guide willing to share his historical knowledge and photos from his research over the last decade, probably the same info Kalina picked up from one of the monthly tours.   The Lone Fir Cemetery website is worth a look; lots of info on the self guided tour and  zip files you can download to your computer.  You can enter between Stark and Morrison on 26th,  open 365 days a year.Thank you Kalina for setting the date and place to sketch Saturday. I hope everyone else will be adding their sketches. The sketch above was completed with watercolor, elegant writer and an old stick dipped into a bottle of ink.

......

On the Bluff Over Oregon City

Willamette Falls and Locks were behind us, looking this direction you could float the river right through Portland if you had a few hours (or more) and a canoe.It's 26 miles from the 'Falls' Where the Willamette River empties into the Columbia. Portland is about halfway, quite a fun experience. This sketch is a medium point Pitt pen and watercolor.

First Presbyterian Church - SW 12th & Morrison

The First Presbyterian Church has a fascinating garden situated in front of an intriguingly detailed church building. A few of us gathered there to draw on a warm but windy Wednesday evening.

I've been in need of a good go-to line drawing tool until recently, when another urban sketcher very kindly gifted me with an "extra" Lamy Safari. I'm enjoying it a lot, but am still getting used to this kind of drawing. The view below provided several visual problems to solve & was quite a learning experience. I'd do it differently next time! Colored with M. Graham watercolors and a grey Kuretake brush pen.



Brush pen is my favorite for drawing people and nature, but I've often hit a wall (ha, ha) when trying to capture buildings. Recently my faith was renewed by the urban sketching of Sketch Windsor, who uses a Pentel Pocket Brush and a Hand Book (same as mine). Therefore, I returned to brush pen for the following studies.

Portland - Downtown and Around

Summer's here, break out the Tevas.  I know a few folks who wear these sandals year 'round.

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Rose Garden playing & flailing

At 10am, four of us met up, including a newbie - welcome Andrea! Unfortunately my camera is broken and I didn't manage to get sketchbook shots.

I spent much of the day feeling like drawing was a big struggle, but apparently that leads me to keep doing it - at the end of the day, I had filled a lot of pages.

What intrigues me most about the Rose Garden as a sketching location is the depth of the view; you can often see many rows of roses, then trees, more trees, downtown buildings, forested suburb, hills, Mt. Hood. I started with a quick sketch to try to figure it out, then started working on capturing the textures of the foliage using brush pen. Here's my first try at a full scene...

I played around with materials a lot - this is a Kuretake gray brush pen, and then a bunch of colored Pilot Hi-Tec-C's.

In the afternoon, we parted ways. I went to the zoo, but never paid admission - just hung out around the front, and headed home on MAX before the crowds drove me too crazy.

This guy at the very bottom wasn't on the train, he's a character in a comic book I've been working on, and lately he turns up on most of my pages!

Sketching at the Rose Garden 7-3-10

After a few bad starts sketching at the Rose Garden
I eventually got it together somewhat thanks to suggestions and input from Kalina and Bill...thanks