Bird Song and Bricks

The sketchcrawl at the University of Portland today was just lovely. Nice weather, good group (at least a dozen folks if not more?), and such a tranquil setting to wander and draw.

My friend Clare came along for her first Urban Sketching adventure. She was busy disassembling a bike wheel at the start of the meetup, and it was fun to try to capture the crazy angles of all the spokes.

We moved from the posh interior of the dining commons to the bluff overlooking the docks. I was intimidated by the profusion of cranes and other industrial equipment, but the color scheme of the Overseas Martinez did remind me that I had a brick-colored pencil in my kit...

Which came in very handy when I shifted my attention to bell towers and madrone bark.

By this point I was getting rather distracted by the profusion of bird songs, wanting to identify the second species of hummingbird that I had spotted among the madrone flowers, and wondering if I could fit into the hollow space in this maple tree's trunk. (I totally did go stand inside it, and it was so great.) So the composition here is a little scatterbrained, but only because I was enjoying the day so much!

Had to leave a little early but was really thrilled to see how absorbed folks were in the fountain pen discussions. Hope we keep that momentum on discussing materials and techniques going in future events.