Bunny Town

brown fountain pen and watercolor in Travelogue sketchbook

Langley on Whidbey Island is a pretty little North Puget Sound town with colorful buildings, views of the snow covered Cascades and the art/restaurant/shopping scene tourists like. But my favorite was the omnipresence of bunnies cavorting everywhere like they own the place! And not just the little brown bunnies that populate our lawns now in Olympia, but a smattering of other breeds of different sizes and colors and fur types. Like these above. And the story goes that the 4H’ers had a show in town and somehow the bunnies got loose and did what bunnies to so well to populate the town with their offspring. Reminded me of the bunnies we raised when my boys were little. I’ve forgotten their names but remember the soft twitchy trembly-ness of holding them on your lap.

From Whidbey we took the half hour ferry back to Port Townsend and then the two hour ride home. Port Townsend, another colorful sea town with its own character, preserving its 19th century history of glorious and sometimes ornate downtown buildings. I got greedy trying to fit as much as possible into the one sketch I had time for.

Now I’m back in Olympia and staying local for a while. People here are complaining about the record breaking cold wet spring this year. I gotta say though, when the sun shines like it did all day yesterday, and with the exuberant blooming and birdsong, it seems worth the wait!

I’m even considering joining the #30X30DirectWatercolor challenge this month. It’s become a yearly tradition now among Urban Sketchers and other folks and I have not participated for a while. But I think I’ll give it a try. Marc Taro Holmes and Uma Kelkar are both inspired artists and teachers and the founders , offering lots of coaching and ideas for exploring your own artistic goals. Check it out!

https://citizensketcher.com/30x30directwatercolor/

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More Sparks Lit on Spark!

A busy city scene is probably the most challenging subject for an urban sketcher, especially for one like me who has lived in the countryside for the past two decades. But oh, I can’t resist the challenge. It would be marvelous to go out each day and practice in a busy location, but winter temps here in the Pacific Northwest are not amenable to on location sketching, especially in the time of Covid. So what better time to learn some new skills, sketching along on Zoom with people who excel at capturing the lively city! 

(The art shown here is my student work.)

Jedidiah Dore is a New York City artist and passionate urban sketcher/reportager who teaches a series now on Sketchbook Skool’s Spark platform called Creative Urban Sketching. 

Creative Urban Sketching with Jedidiah Dore: a street scene in New Orleans

One lesson was about editing a complex scene – deciding before putting pen to paper what should be included and what left out. And the scene was one I remembered well and loved from a sketch trip to New Orleans almost two years ago now!

Let’s Figure it Out with Jedidiah Dore

In another class titled: Let’s Figure it Out: Drawing People, we were timed and coached in a way to simulate live action scenes and draw decisively. Continuous line gestural drawing, while looking more at a subject, who will move at any moment, than at the paper. This is from Jedidiah’s photograph, but in the spirit of live action.

We all want to “get it right” and know we can’t possibly succeed at that with a moving scene. So it takes a certain practiced surrender to let go enough to set the hand loose from the thinking mind.  A lifetime of practice surely. Works for me, because it’s such a high to be able stop the mind for a while. Most sketchers would agree.

And I took another fun urban sketch class on Spark with someone whose style many of you will recognize instantly – Ian Fennelly! Lots of patterned pen work and zany watercolor washes which I dutifully tried. It’s not my style, but I wanted to play with different pens and was happy to go wild with it and even get tangled up in all the patterns. Such a fun way to tell a story of a time and place!

In the Home of the Beatles with Ian Fennelly

So much of what I’ve learned about drawing and painting and dancing and playing music has been a process of imagining myself in the body of the master . . . trying to hold a pen or leg or hand in the same way, watching and feeling and listening from the inside. Almost an Alice in Wonderland leap into another perception.

One of my current master teachers is a two year old boy across the street who soaks up everything in his environment, interacts with it, seeks to understand it with all his senses, and never seems to worry about getting it wrong. So I’ll take my cues from him, and above all keep it fun!

Found Them!

I got a couple of pictures after all! They were hiding in my camera. (see previous post). Pictures by Cammie and Haley.