Barbara Walker Bridge

From the top this time.

Bridge Party

I got up early this morning to walk to Burnside, to join the people milling around waiting to parade up to the new bridge on the Wildwood Trail.  We were led by an honor guard of elders from a few nearby-ish tribes, followed by a marching band (who started with a song called, appropriately enough, 'Walking').


The parade ended with a party under the bridge, with pancakes and coffee.  And no actual access to the bridge itself.  The portions of the trail that used to come down to the roadway have been excised - blocked off, draped in burlap and covered with branches.  So I parked myself underneath the bridge and sketched it from below.



I'm not happy with the result.  But I'm not going to throw it away.  Cause I'll never get another chance sketching from the middle of Burnside.

Broadway Bridge

Deb had wrangled permission to use the parking garage near the train station.  I found a spot partway up the stairway and did a sketch from there.



By the time I'd finished that, it was dry - sunny even - and I thought I'd chance another one from the pedestrian bridge on other side of the train station.  But, of course, it started raining by the time I got there.  I looked for shelter nearby, and ended up under the bridge, looking up at it.

Balch Creek Sketchcrawl

I walked a laborious two blocks to meet a bunch of other sketchers at the Macleay Park Trailhead.






I found a vantage point to do the underside of the bridge, with a simplification of the trusses that hold it up.












And then walked up the trail to do the waterfall, where I got some relief from the all-encompassing green around me.



I stood on the footbridge that spans the creek.  Which bounces when people are walking on it.  Good thing I didn't need to draw any straight lines.

Albina Sketchcrawl

I started out by wandering to the north from the meeting place, to get a good view of the tangle of on-ramps and off-ramps that connect I5 to the Fremont Bridge.

And then walked up the hill to Emmanuel Hospital, to the top of a parking garage there, where I found a view of the bridge itself, bracketed by a couple of evergreen trees.

NW Alexandra Ave Bridge

Fremont Bridge again

I walked down to the site of the road construction under the ramp up to the Fremont Bridge.  Thurman is open to car traffic again, but there's still a lot of work yet to be done.  But no construction today, seeing as it's Sunday.

I found some good views of the Steel and Broadway bridges, from the Willamette Greenway Trail.

And in the next section, upstream of the Broadway Bridge, I found a spot where I had a good view of the Steel Bridge.  And of a great blue heron

And at this point, I had a problem.  The McCormick Pier Condos have had problems with homeless people on the trail.  They even tried to close the trail a while back, to keep them out.  The city made them reopen it, so they came up with another solution.  Now you're allowed to walk or run along the river, but you can't stop.  A polite security guard came by to tell me to move along.

Sketchcrawl at Cathedral Park

Getting to St Johns on transit from my house is a bit awkward.  You either take one of the few 15's that goes past Montgomery Park to the end of the line, then get off and wait for 40 minutes for a 16 to pick you up for the rest of the way, or you go the other way and cross the Steel or Morrison bridges, and then transfer to a bus that makes the long trek up into the peninsula.  But I decided to be clever and concocted a direct route without a long layover.  It involved riding an orange bike to the hub outside of Schoolhouse Electric, then crossing the railroad tracks to catch a 16 on Front.

But there was a catch.

 That being a freight train parked on the crossing.  And extending as far as I could see in both directions. I settled in to wait, to see if by chance it would get out of the way before my bus arrived.  And sketched until I heard it go by on the other side of the train.

Then I checked the bus schedule, and decided that taking the bus in an hour wouldn't make me too late, and decided to try the new coffee shop in Schoolhouse Electric.  Had a latte and a croissant and read the Willamette Week from cover to cover.  And, eventually, the train started up and rolled away, and I was able to get to Front and catch my bus.

I'd missed the pre-sketching gathering, so I headed straight down into Cathedral Park and worked my way down the hill until I found a spot in the shade with a good view up at the bridge.

And then headed down to the river, where a stern-wheeler was passing.  I watched it go by downriver, and spied a mysterious ship off in the distance.  So I worked my way along the river to find a better view of it.

Yet More Bridges

I joined up with yesterday's sketchcrawl at Reed College.  I started out by heading down to Reed Lake and sketching the bridge from underneath, to get a workout in doing curvy things in perspective.

Then I went on a stroll around the lake, stopping once to do a study of a tree trunk.

I couldn't stay for lunch, but had to run to Union Station. But before my train left I had time for a quick sketch of the pedestrian bridge behind the station.

And then, this afternoon, I had a little bit of time to spare at King Street Station in Seattle.  I wanted to do its pedestrian bridge, but couldn't find a good view of it, so I strolled around the stadium complex.  And found a section of the Alaska Way Viaduct still standing.  With a marvelous little wedge of a historical (unreinforced masonary) building in front of it.

Seattle

I was in Seattle over the weekend, and decided to do a quick browse of the U-District Street-Fair on the way to the train station.  And stumbled upon a sketchcrawl.  That I hadn't noticed on the calendar when I made my travel plans.

I stuck around long enough to sketch one of the other sketchers, and then walked down along Lake Union, stopping to do a sketch of the Aurora Bridge behind Gasworks Park.

And then I had to hustle to get downtown in time to make my train.

Sellwood Bridge

This was actually the first time I'd seen the new bridge.  I started out on the east side, but couldn't find a good vantage point.  So I crossed the bridge and did this from the ped/bike ramp on the west side.

Hawthorne Bridge from the Esplanade

Actually, four bridges: the Hawthorne, the Marquam, the Tilikum and the Ross Island, all in a row.  Done from the dock below the fire station.


Then I walked back up to the bank and found a good view of Big Pink, framed between two trees.


Kay had given me a brush/stylus.  That worked pretty well for doing the tree bark.

Not a Bridge.... Yet

The section of the Wildwood Trail that crosses Burnside is set to be closed later this month, so they can start building the piers that the bridge is going to rest on.  I decided to head up the trail one last time before that happens to get a 'before' sketch in.



This woman showed up soon after I did. She looked left, and then right, swiveling back and forth until she saw an opportunity to run to my side of the road.  At least a dozen more people made the mad dash across while I was sketching.  And sometimes drivers, bless their hearts, would stop to let the hikers cross.

Fremont Bridge, again

From the other side this time.  I did some serious telescoping of space to fit downtown in with the bridge.

And this is it from the under side.

Bridges in Seattle

I was in Seattle over the weekend, and decided to walk to the train station this morning, figuring that I could work in a few bridges.

This is the I-5 bridge over the ship canal.



And this is, or rather was, the Alaska Way Viaduct.  Which is quickly turning into a pile of rubble. I was surprised to see them working on a Sunday.  But I suppose Snowmagedon threw a monkey wrench into their schedule, and they're trying to catch up.

Another Bridge in Lan Su Garden

I took advantage of a sunny day in February to visit the Chinese Garden.

They haven't taken the lanterns down from Chinese New Year yet.  One of them even fell down when I was half-way through this sketch.

Sketchcrawl on Pill Hill

With more bridges

We started out in a solid fog.  That came and went, with buildings and views appearing and then fading away again.

I started out with the skybridge, standing near the entrance to Doernbecher.

When I first started, the bridge disappeared into the mist.  But as I worked a ghostly image of the VA hospital emerged behind it.

When I got done with that I emerged from the other end of Doernbecher and wandered off in search of other bridges.  I found one that led to an elevator to a parking lot and, looking back at Doernbecher, realized that its entrance, where I'd stood and sketched the skybridge, was yet another bridge.  So I sketched that bridge, from this bridge.



And then headed down to the top of the parking garage to sketch this bridge.


Bridge over Balch Creek

The middle one on the Lower Macleay Trail.  The one that spans the waterfall.

Fremont Bridge

I ran out of my preferred breakfast tea in the morning.  And decided to run down to the shop where I buy it in the morning, before the rain that was supposed to show up around noon.  And, seeing how the shop is down on Thurman, not far from the Fremont Bridge, I took my tablet and sat down on the steps of the Montessori school to do a sketch.