A GLEAMING sailboat named Happy is making a stop at the Port of Edmonds after a speedy sail at 11.2 knots from Bainbridge. It doesn’t take long for the sleek Moody Decksaloon 45, a German-built vessel owned by Hugh and…
June 13, 2021. This morning the @uskseattle group gathered to sketch in person for the first time in 16 months. It was a typical June-gloomy day of drizzle and clouds but everyone seemed really excited for the return of the regular monthly…
“THIS IS GOING to be quick. Just take a deep breath.” HealthPoint worker Bao-Yen Tran must have repeated those words dozens of times today. She is part of a team of health professionals administering a second dose of the Pfizer…
THE VULCAN, one of three floating machine shops built for the U.S. Army in the 1950s, still is filled with old tools that were used to repair Army patrol boats during the Vietnam War. The bulky barge has been permanently…
BACK IN EARLY June, the old building that houses the Seattle Police Department East Precinct on Capitol Hill became a focal point of protests after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. I remember sketching protesters when the whole area looked…
A TEAM OF ABOUT 20 medical assistants staffs a busy COVID-19 testing site in Renton on a recent soggy morning. Like a fly on the wall, I’m standing between the lanes of the former vehicle-emissions station to sketch the scene.…
I can’t believe it took me so long to try a cream-cheese-slathered “Seattle dog” from Betty Aklilu’s Deez Dogz stand at Fifth Avenue and Pike Street in downtown Seattle. Read the full column: For the owner of Deez Dogz, it’s…
THE TOASTED BUN is slathered with cream cheese, and the hot dog is split in half and covered with sauteed onions. “That’s the Seattle Dog,” says Betty Aklilu, the friendly food vendor at Deez Dogz on Fifth and Pike. At…
I often hesitate to use watercolor outdoors when the weather is cold —the washes take too long to dry. But the late afternoon scene by the Elliott Bay Trail the other day was too painterly for a line or tonal…
If you aim to make ink sketches with a certain degree of accuracy, it helps to block out the composition in light pencil first. I like to use an H pencil for that part of the process. The pencil marks…
These are some demo sketches from an online class I taught last month through Seattle’s internationally-known Gage Academy of Art. For the winter quarter I’m planning a new class (also via Zoom) devoted to “Pen and Wash” sketching. Would you…
THE POOR PINK Elephant. It doesn’t spin all the way around anymore. It just nudges back and forth with the wind. As dusk begins to set in, I notice that half of its neon tubes are dark. But the day…