Portland Art Museum

With these cold days my sketching has turned to some nice, inviting, and warm indoor spaces....one of my favorite is the art museum.
These sketches were done on several of those visits.

Native American Art - the work of Lillian Pitt, room 301

Top sketch-sculpture in the Northwest Art, room 303. Bottom sketch-view to outside courtyard from the museum cafe.

Calder mobile and unidentified sculpture in the Modern Building- viewed from a gallery above.

Director Park and Drink and Draw

These big chess pieces are fun to draw.

 

The building under construction doesn't look that big when there's all these trees around.

This is a sketch from the Portland Art Museum 2nd floor.

I'm making my way through all the sculptures I can catch from sitting on a bench.  Forgot my stool - whoopsie.

Lan Su (wtih bonus Samurai!)

Lan Su was very chilly when we visited last week. I picked a spot to sit that was sunny and then started looking for something to draw--the fabulous rockwork that made up the floor of the plaza was an excellent warm-up for my brain.

Grey and black brush pens can give a sense of depth quickly and efficiently.

Drawing other sketchers can make a scene more fancy!

Coincidentally, my friend Violeta happened to bring her kids to the garden that same morning. She took some snapshots of sketchers in action--and gave me permission to share them here.

The black brush pen has been super useful when out sketching with the baby, because I can get interesting lines down fast while standing, rocking, or bouncing with the darling little wiggler. Here are a few quick sketches from the Samurai exhibit at the Portland Art Museum as a little bonus!

Body Beautiful, by blacklight

It was a treat meeting up with the Urban Sketchers to draw at the Bacchanal Ballroom event at the Portland Art Museum. It's a real challenge drawing by black-light, with lasers and smoke machines and strobe lights! I tried to capture the strange light effects in my sketch of the DJ. You have to imagine that his toga was glowing in a slightly spooky way here. * Que divertido fue, asistir al evento de "Bacchanal Ballroom" en el museo de arte de Portland con los Urban Sketchers. Es bien difícil dibujar en un cuarto con luz negra, láseres, efectos estroboscópicos, y una máquina de humo. El dibujo del DJ captura un poco de estos efectos, pero tienes que imaginar que su toga esta brillando con una luz casi supernatural.

Watercolor painting by blacklight is strange. I ended up leaning heavily on a few colors that I could most easily identify in the dark--blue, brown, red--and figured that I'd just see how it turned out by the light of day. * Bajo la luz negra, pintar con acuarela es un reto interesante. Pude identificar algunos colores (cafe, rojo, azul) y utilizé estos tanto como posible. Es divertido ver el resultado en la luz natural.

 

The models changed positions quite frequently. Sometimes I'd follow them around, trying to add a few more details from whatever their new pose was. Other times, I would draw other artists in the crowd, since they kept a lot more still than the models did! * Los modelos cambiaron la posición con alta frequencia. A veces yo les seguí, tratando de añadir detalles desde el nuevo ángulo.  Pero otras veces, decidí dibujar otras artistas en la audiencia, ¡porque se mantenieron más inmoviles que los modelos!

The artist with the excellent mohawk is named Grace, and we had a nice time chatting with her. She moved to Portland pretty recently, and is excited to start coming to Urban Sketchers events! She had cool face paint on as well as fantastic hair. Hope to see her at the next sketchcrawl! * La artista con el pelo parado como un peinacho se llama Grace, y es muy amable. Se mudó a Portland hace un año, ¡y tiene interés en juntarse con los Urban Sketchers! Grace se había pintado la cara para el evento, muy divertida. Bienvenida, Grace.

I had been looking at the faces and hair all this time, thinking about how odd it was to have faux-hawks and false eyelashes combined with the ancient Greek motifs. Wasn't until the last sketch that I started studying the abdominal muscles of one of the models. And then it clicked--despite the silly costumes, the idealized shapes of strong, muscular bodies really do resonate between ancient sculpture and modern-day athletes. * Había sido distraída por el cabello y el maquillaje en las caras, y casí no presté attención a los musculos del cuerpo hasta mi último dibujo. Y de repente, ví la conneción--disfraces chistosos no obstante, el forma de un cuerpo fuerte y muscular de hoy en día tiene mucho en común con las esculturas antiguas.

We had to play in the photobooth, of course. A well-armed warrior in tennis shoes is no match for 5 sketchers with sharpened pencils!  I got in a little stabbing practice as well to finish off the evening. * No podiamos resistir la oportunidad de jugar en la cabina de fotos. ¡Un guerrero anciano no puede resistir las lápices agudos de 5 artistas!  Y yo practiqué mi tecnica de apuñalar para terminar la noche.

Bacchanal Ballroom at PDX Art Museum

This was a repeat of an event held at an earlier date (Kalina posted her drawings from that previous night) and not as well attended but still fun (and challenging) for sketchers.
This first drawing is the 'quiet time' before the models came on and we had some time to adjust to the scene.

The challenge came on later when the dancers struck poses on top of pedestals...their poses were great and there were several models to choose from which was part of my dilemma. My eye was moving all around the room and sometimes I merely had time to put down a line or two before the model changed pose. Later on in the evening the poses got really complicated and acrobatic with multiple people. Wow!

the same model moving through various poses

I think we all had a great time and I hope that the other sketchers post their drawings too to see how we all approached this demanding (but fun!) session.
I'll close with something I did before I met up with everyone else at the Bacchanal Ballroom.

They at least stayed still!

Lines

I was inspired by Andrea's beautiful line drawings to use mostly line when I sketched at the art museum today. I bypassed the Body Beautiful exhibit and sketched in the Native American wing, where it was pretty peaceful and quiet, even with the Friday field trips. The sketches are of clay sculptures by Glenn La'Fontaine.  I added the color at home.

The next sketches are leftovers from our sketchcrawl at Stumptown Annex. The first I drew from the window, looking out at Jane, who was more adventurous than I was on that rainy day. 

And the last was done at Sunnyside Piazza, in one of the happiest neighborhoods in Portland.

 I painted on site, but went over the pencil lines and colors at home, in the comfort of my dry house.

The Body Beautiful...at PDX Art Museum

Talk about challenging......so here I am sitting among what is considered by all to be the epitome of beauty in art...and attempting to imitate that in a sketch! Or to at least sketch it to have the look of something recognizable. Does this seem reasonable? What was I thinking??

Anyway, here are my attempts. I eventually got to the point where it turned fun and the evening turned out pretty well overall.

A potpourri of images

The quintessential beautiful male body

I was intrigued by the simple line work of the Amphoras

I really liked this image of 'the body beautiful' from 2600-2400 BC ...I felt it put it all in place for the other works in the exhibit.

The information in the galleries was well presented but there was so much to take in.....it will need another session.

Art Museum and the Group Sketchbook

During the sketchcrawl, I took the opportunity to go to the art museum to finish my pages in the group sketchbook. It took another day to go back and get the colors.These were some sketches from the sculpture garden.

Now the sketchbook will get passed on. I have some more sketches from the Portland Urban Sketching events on my blog: draw2c.blogspot.com, and there are a lot because we've been getting out frequently. It's always a pleasure to see everyone and look at the wonderful variety of sketches.