Sketching Willamette Falls from the McLoughlin Promenade

We took the public elevator that goes to the top of the bluff in Oregon City.  Along the bluff, a beautiful park, the McLaughlin Promenade, overlooks Willamette Falls and a huge complex of abandoned industrial buildings that sit below the falls.  Native maple and oak trees cling to the bluff, among massive basalt boulders.  It's a perfect place for sketching and picnicking on s sunny spring day.

Transit Gala -- Orange Line Is Open and Views to the South

My efforts from Orange Line Day yesterday:

The trains preparing to leave the Park Place station on their first run to City Center. Hundreds were waiting in line to board! Happy applause when the first one pulled out. Tri Met booth, giant oak leaf sculpture, and 2 of the 3 trains waiting. Artistic license left out the third one.

Then later, on the bluff in Oregon City, a shabby view of the West Linn Paper Mill:

One weary cyclist, I headed home around 4-ish. Thanks for sharing a day, Sketchers!

Oregon City's Carnegie Library

Oregon City's Carnegie Library:

 This is from last week. I thought I should wait for somebody else to post before I put up another one!

This is a beautiful building, still in use as a library. It was constructed with a $12,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. As for all the Carnegie libraries, the host city was required to match the construction costs and demonstrate it could fund operations. Last year the library celebrated its 100th anniversary with a delightful civic event involving the Mayor in period dress and a reference librarian who could have passed for the venerable Andrew himself. Next year the library is beginning an expansion project. The original building will remain as the front entrance to the new facility which will wing into the hillside behind.

Vegetables All over the Place!

I am a little shy to post again when no one else has filled up this space. But here I am anyway.

These are a couple of quick ones done last week. I am trying to train myself to be quicker, looser, and to evoke a sense of the thing without dwelling in fussiness. Next month we will be in Europe for a couple of weeks, and I know the sketches I do will have to be made on a time budget. I'm hoping to be competent enough to feel some pleasure in the drawings I bring back.

This is Spicer's produce market in Oregon City:

 And this one (inspired perhaps by the wonders of a produce market) is the gathering basket from the kitchen garden at home.

Both: ink and watercolor. (I love my little Micron pen!)

Historic Homes in Oregon City

It's been quite a while since I've been able to join you on a Saturday. I've so enjoyed seeing the posts of your work, though. Thought I would share a couple of things I've been doing, even though I haven't been with you all.

These are two of the historic houses in Oregon City, Dr. John McLoughlin's house on the bottom, and the Dr. Forbes Barclay house above. Both are managed by the Park Service now, as part of the Fort Vancouver interpretive site, and are open for tours:

These are Micron pen and colored pencil, with some white Signo pigment ink.

Being on a toot for historical houses, I stopped outside the Ermatinger House one afternoon. I was short on time and didn't have a sketchbook with me, but did have a Micron, so did these loose ones on a piece of manila envelope. Ermatinger is undergoing restoration, and is presently up in the air awaiting installation of a new foundation.

 

At its original location near the waterfront in Oregon City, this is the house where, in 1845, Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove tossed the fabled coin that decided the name of Portland, Oregon. Several moves over the generations have left the house unstable, hence its current surgeries. When it's put back together, I imagine it will have its flat-roofed front porch, columns and railings restored.

SusanLayne

Catch 'em while you can!

For some reason, this image wants to post sideways, but given the subject and my note on the page, I don't suppose it matters.

Working in colored pencils yesterday.

A few minutes stolen from work:

I spotted the West Linn Paper mill framed in leafy branches, and tried to capture that view. It turns out there is a lot of shrubbery around the mill itself, and I had to choose how to distinguish foreground greens from background ones.

Yesterday at the Carnegie Library event in Oregon City. The weather was lovely and the fountain was running. So were the kids. I was trying to capture their physical attitudes, which was not always successful.

Just a few minutes at the Farmer's Market in Oregon City. And then it started to rain so I folded up.

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.