Monday, July 28, 2014

Travels to Northampton MA


Visiting with friends....got a chance to do some sketches of a fabulous church in the center of town that has been decommissioned. My friend says that it is lovely inside too but this is a view of the back from the street below. 
The other is of the Main Street looking up towards Smith College.






Saturday, July 26, 2014

St. John's - 3rd Saturday Sketch Crawl - August 16


Next Sketchcrawl: Saturday, August 16. Let's crawl St. John's!

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Sellwood Park

I forgot my watercolors last Saturday, but I didn't mind too much, as the wonderfully tall oaks had such great shapes even without the color of their leaves and bark.
 I found a quiet corner of the park, and spent a lovely hour or so in the shade, listening to birds and trying to capture the wonderful movement of the trunk and branches.
 And I made it back to the main part of the park in time to do a quick sketch of this little one napping.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

2nd annual west coast Sketchcrawl

I came into town to attend the Sketchcrawl just for a couple of hours (it had been nearly a year since I last joined the group!).
My husband took our son to the farmers market so I could sketch. 
I managed a few sketches, but this one was by far my favorite of the bunch!

Sellwood Park sketches


 It was a beautiful day to be in the park, with good company. Here's a quick watercolor sketch of the Sellwood pool. Lots of people moving about made it a tough study!


The small building in the trees looks like it was some sort of refreshment stand in the past, now seems to be unused.  Sketched it with pencil, ink & color pencil.

2nd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers








Here are some sketches from the Friday night gathering at Ringlers along with my Saturday afternoon attempt to sketch the yoga in the Park Blocks with Teddy Roosevelt statue and Portland Art Museum in the background.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Saturday - Sellwood Park

The sketchcrawl started at Blue Kangaroo Coffee Shop.  Love the name and the coffee was good too.  This here is Ellie - it was a pleasure to meet you Ellie.


Next we walked over to Sellwood Park.  We all sought seating in the shade and luckily there was plenty of it.  This here is the building that goes with the swimming pool.


This here is a view of a couple of gigantic trees, a flagpole, a light post, sketchers, and tennis players.  Imagine a bouncy castle to the right of me, and Katura and a sweet baby making sweet baby sounds to the left. Oh I almost forgot to tell you how Kalina saved this drawing.  It was a chaotic mess until I added those swoopy black brush pen strokes that I always love in Kalina's drawings.


 We had lunch at Muddy Rudder.  Andrew was sitting across from me.  And this guy beyond our group had fun hair.


Friday, July 18, 2014

2nd Annual Sketch Crawl

The bottom sketch was done at the Friday night Portrait Party of Kutura and Magpie, the middle one was one at the Saturday Market, every time I looked up the still life changed, the cabbage and zucchini were flying off the table, the beets, not so much.  The top sketch is one of the Aristide Maillol sculpture outside the Portland Art Museum. 

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Next Sketchcrawl: 7/19 at Sellwood Park

Next Sketchcrawl: Saturday, July 19. Let's explore Sellwood Park and the surrounding area!




The Sellwood Pool has open swim from 1-5 pm on Saturdays, $4 drop-in fee. Just so you know.

In August, we're planning to head to North Portland and explore the St. John's neighborhood. Stay tuned for more details!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

New Mastheads, inspired by WCsketch

Big thanks to Melissa Binder at the Oregonian for giving us permission to use her photo of the sketchbook sharing table at the 2nd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl! It's now gracing the headers of our blog, our Twitter account, and our Facebook page.



You can see her article and the full set of photos on the Oregonian website, here.

Meanwhile, up in Seattle...



Our friend Mike Porter attended the sketching workshop in Seattle last weekend with Shari Blaukopf. He sends along this photo gallery of his adventures, which includes a series of photos showing how Shari does a value sketch then does her water color sketch, as well as samples the work that the workshop participants produced.

Check it out at this *updated* link!

Monday, July 14, 2014

WCSketch - watercolor

Here are my sketches from Saturday - one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Sitting in the shade, the heat wasn't too bad.

Here's some lively Farmer's Market.


And this is Lincoln Hall, also at PSU.


I loved this beautiful day.  Thanks to all of you beautiful people for joining us!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

#WCSKETCH, Part Two: Park Blocks Ahoy!

On the second day of the 2nd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl, I was impressed by how many early birds were ready to go--easels and everything!--first thing in the morning.




















I tried a second view of our friend Teddy Roosevelt, back-lit by the glare off the skyscraper...





















And ultimately flopped in the shady park for a while, watching the art babies make friends with each other.




















I'll toss a few spare sketches from the day onto my own blog, http://katura-art.blogspot.com/, in case anyone is craving more. Such fun! Eager to see what everyone else drew--I feel like I didn't get to absorb enough skechbooks in person during the sharing sessions, there was just so much to look at.

Portrait Party

I had such a great time at our USk sketchcrawl this weekend, meeting and sketching with so many friendly and avid sketchers. I think I did more talking than sketching, but I have no regrets! Thank you all to my fellow sketchers for making it such a fun and inspiring event.

 Here are a few of the quick portraits I did at Ringlers during our portrait party.




On the day of the sketchcrawl, knowing that I was too restless to do a lot of detailed drawing, I started with color and added ink at the end. (This is a method I learned from Marina and Inma at last summer's symposium.) I don't know who was on the patio of the Historical Society, but I'm pretty sure it was a sketcher.



From my session at base camp, I got a partial sketch of the Lichtenstein sculpture.


I have more portraits and sketchcrawl sketches on my blog, if you're interested. 
Thanks again, everyone, for a wonderful time.
I'm already hoping I can make it to the next annual sketch crawl!


Urban Sketchers in the Oregonian! #WCsketch

Hooray! The Oregonian sent out a reporter and photographer to cover the 2nd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl this past Saturday, and they have a lovely photo gallery of the event on their website.

Check it out at this link!


#WCSKETCH--Round one of my doodles

Well, at first it didn't feel like I got much sketching done during the gloriously fun 2nd Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl on July 11 and 12. But now that I'm sitting down to scan my sketchbook, there's kind of a lot of stuff in there!

Here's a cleaner version of my pre-crawl doodle of Teddy on his horse...


And these are the erratic scribbles I pulled off during the Friday portrait party at the pub.




Not bad, considering that squirmy baby in my lap! It was great fun meeting so many new people, wish there had been time to chat with everyone much longer.


Sideshow Bob's younger brother

I was intrigued by this young man's amazing hair!

Near the PSU farmers market

I found a shady spot to get an overview of the farmers market


What an amazing day with so many things happening in the downtown area!

Saturday, July 12, 2014

2nd annual west coast urbansketchers sketchcrawl

Well...it was a fantastic! I heard over 100 sketchers participated....wow!

I am off to the east coast early tomorrow so I thought it would be good to get this post off asap.
 Here are my sketches and some random photos of the sketchbook sharing at the Portland Art Museum courtyard.


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Thank you to our 2nd annual west coast urbansketchers sketchcrawl committee for a wonderful day