Sketching at the 'Fields' in NW Portland

Am trying to get out as much as possible to sketch and squash down those feelings of envy viewing the posts from Paraty (usk symposium in Brazil)....Vicky and I met at the Fields in the Pearl for a morning of sketchng.
It is a great spot with all of the construction going on and those ubiquitous cranes in the air...love it!

Watercolor and non waterproof ink

playing around with this split panoramic view- watercolor and non waterproof ink

 Not sure what Vicky meant about comparing the scenes since we all know that no two sketchers ever do the same scene alike! And that is the fun of it.


 The next day I was in Portland again. Checked out the setting up at the Art in the Pearl and did a couple of sketches around there.

watercolor and non waterproof ink

Non waterproof ink and waterbrush

There are a couple more sketches from these two days on my blog.
http://www.reason2draw.blogspot.com

Portlands South Waterfront

I elected to stay below and not travel up the tram to OHSU. I had been on the previous visit to this site last year and was interested in concentrating on all of the cranes and industrial paraphenalia there.

In addition Kalina lent me a couple of pens to experiment with and play....

These first are using the HERO M86 (with a distinctive bend at the tip of the nib) and some watercolor pencils for more color. I liked the thick and thin line that I was able to get using this pen. And an added bonus was that the pen had some old red ink that Kalina loaded with newer black...which resulted in this lovely reddish wash when water was added.

The other pen to try was a TOMBOW Brush pen. This one was fun to work with...easy to get those thick and thin lines. The added color was from some of the sample watercolor pencils I got at the Art Materials Extravaganza & demonstrations in Milwaukie last Wednesday. These were a DERWENT watercolor in blue and a DERWENT Inktense in chartruse and my standby grey toned PITT pens.

OHSU Tram & SW Waterfront

OHSU Tram and Pedestrian Bridge

Our Saturday sketchcrawl in the SW Waterfront area started out cold with some drizzle and pretty grey.  My attempt at the Tram structure was challenging with lots of angled shapes. It was filled with all kinds of stuff and part of the challenge was to try for it all to make some sense in the drawing.

View from the Pedestrian Bridge looking east with the Ross Island Bridge on the left and McLoughlin Blvd on the east side of the Willamette River.

Later I walked up the Pedestrian Bridge to get an overall view of the area along the SW Waterfront. The crane structure in the foreground was a formidable structure and I thought interesting enough to attempt to draw it. Again there were a lot of other things going on and the trick was to try to make it 'read' well....I kind of lost the river in there...but there is always an opportunity to try again. The Pedestrian Bridge was a great viewing place for this busy area!