Georgetown Trailer Mall

The July sketch outing for Seattle Urban sketchers was in Georgetown, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Seattle to sketch. It was the weekend of the Georgetown Garden Tour. However it was also just a few weeks before the Urban Sketchers Symposium and Gail Wong wanted to run through her Expressive Watercolor workshop. So we headed over to the Georgetown Trailer Mall, a favorite spot of color in the urban brick industrial neighborhood. 

This sketch deviates a bit from my usual style. we used a bit of pencil first then laid in big washes of water color in strong juicy layers. It was fun to try to catch up with the washes and work with light and water. 

More New York Sketches

My daughter picked me up at the Newark airport early on June 10. As we drove in to Brooklyn my fingers were itching to start. Here's the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) about 8:00 A.M.

 

I had come to New York to participate in the Big Apple BBQ (BABBQ) in Madison Park. Our first stop, however was Red Hook, Brooklyn.  Hometown BBQ owned by our son-in-law, Billy Durney is, in fact, the reason that I came to New York -- to work the Hometown booth at BABBQ.

The weekend and the days leading up to it were focused on the BBQ event. You can read about that here.

After the weekend I had time to explore a bit. So I took the subway to Manhattan: 

I wound my way around the lower east side till I came upon Washington Square. Last fall I took an online class with Melanie Reim, an urban sketcher and illustration teacher at the Fashion Institute. She did a video demonstration of her process as she drew at Washington Square. I call this : Thinking of Melanie Reim.

I was heading to the High Line and the New Whitney Museum located at the southern end of the Highline in the Meatpacking District.  The new Whitney, designed, as was the old Whitney, by Renzo Piano. I was quite impressed with the building and would have loved to sketch longer to get a sketch with more clarity, but I also wanted to see the inside. I was not disappointed. They had an impressive inaugural exhibition: America is Hard to See - which covered several stories and spanned a century of American art.

 

My last day in the NYC area, I re-visited Jaralemon Street in the Willowtown section of Brooklyn Heights. I've stayed in this neighborhood a few times and love this particular set of brick row houses - all painted pastel. 

 

As I waited to board my departure, I sketched these folks who were also waiting. 

At that point I checked my bag for my IPad only to discover I had left it in the Security Station. 

I literally ran back to security and thankfully they still had it. All's well that ends well. It was a fun trip.