Weekend Scavenging

Saturday morning was perfect weather for sketching with the Urban Sketchers.

I sat down low by the Ira Keller Fountain, close enough to feel the cool air from 

the falling water. The last time I sketched this was with Tia at the 2010 Symposium 

and I was reminded of her saying, "Add brown to those greens in the trees."

 Here's my latest attempt.

There was a Benson Bubbler right across the street, so that sketch knocked off another

 scavenger hunt item. I wish I had been quick enough to sketch the crow that dunked

 his bread in the water.

I started drawing the elk after lunch, but he looked like a cartoon, so I'll need to

 revisit him another day.

On Sunday, my husband and I rode the aerial tram up to OHSU. (Sunday is a good day 

to go because it isn't very busy.) The ride was quick, but fun and the views were great, 

even on a cloudy day. Drawing the tram is very tricky, because it's only still for a matter

 of moments. I drew the dock first and then raced to get the tram in before it disappeared.

Here's another view of the tram dock.

"Pill Hill" would be a terrific place to practice perspective drawing because you 

can see so many different views of buildings and passageways. Here's a one-point 

view that I took from the skybridge to the Veteran's Hospital. I'm glad it's not on the 

scavenger hunt list!

Scavenger Hunt Tally: bubbler, tram 14

Youthful Helpers

Biking through Ladd's Addition after work tonight, I pulled over because I heard the sound of banjos from the center of the grassy circle. Sure enough, the weather is nice enough for the tradition of the Wednesday night bluegrass jam session to be back in action--I counted about 12 musicians with either fiddles, banjos, or guitars playing and singing together.

My first instinct was to sketch the musicians, but the nearby boy holding his poodle's leash immediately struck up a conversation once I busted out the watercolor kit, so I went ahead and decided it was time to tackle Item Number 10: Dog and its Owner. (The poodle got some wonderful back-scratching from my sweetie while she posed.)

The sketch is somewhat peculiar, largely because more and more kids got interested in what I was doing as the work progressed. The adorable crawling baby was handily (and repeatedly) intercepted before she got into the paints, but a nearby adorable toddler and the older sister of the boy with the poodle were eager to either give advice, or grab a brush and help paint! I quickly wrapped this sketch up and flipped to a "sacrificial" page of the sketchbook so I could let the kids have a turn--which happened to be an incomplete sketch of a Benson Bubbler (Scavenger Hunt Item #18).

The pen work had been abandoned because I was drawing while waiting for the bus, and voila! The bus came! (Funny how that works.) So it was really generous of the kids to help me finish the piece. The 9-ish girl was choosing colors carefully and placing them very deliberately in order to flesh out the shape of the fountain and show the water squirting out, while the 2-ish toddler used my mop brush to swirl all the paint around on the page like mad. I really adore how it looks. So dynamic! Hooray for collaborative artworks.