SketchCrawl #30 South Seattle

This one got confusing. Drawn from the top floor balcony looking south through the girders (?) to the city stadiums and Georgetown. What a great place to draw in the winter time.

Worldwide SketchCrawl #30 Seattle Public Library

Met with the Seattle Urban Sketchers at the Seattle Public Library for a morning of sketching. The Library is a futuristic looking all-glass building that takes some navigational skills if your trying to get back to the lobby.

Seattle Urban Sketchers - January

We got together Sunday morning at the Bauhaus Coffee Co. (E. Pine) to do the 'Coffee Culture' of the neighborhood. Good coffee can be had at seemingly every corner in the area - and there's an art supply store across the street.... I had the foresight to forgo watching the Seahawks-Bears game in order to join the sketch group, good choice it turns out.

Homework - Digital Photography

Taking a digital photography class this quarter and I plan on posting some of the shots I think are above average - that's the beauty of digital, you can fire away and delete later.....

New Year's Day - South Park, Seattle

To start the new year off right, I headed out to spend this beautiful day sketching. I ended up in South Park and found this great industrial site just off the Duwamish waterway. The barge in the middle ground is the Gold Seeker out of Ketchikan, Alaska.

It was eerie how quiet it was because of the holiday, I've been down here on a work day and there is no way one could set up and sketch without being in someone's way.

Pen and ink, watercolor in the Marty Book.

Anderson Island Ferry Parking

Ok, not very glamorous, but it was cold and damp and I did this from Tom and Jackie's deck (but then again, from my deck you see the cul-de-sac in all it's glory). McNeil Island is the land mass behind the trucks.
FYI - A cul-de-sac (literally "bottom of bag") is a word of French origin referring to a dead end, closed, no through road (UK, Australian and Canadian English). -Wikipedia.

Yea, that's right I had to look it up to make sure I spelled it right, thought I'd pass along a bit of useless information.

Pen and ink, watercolor in the Marty sketchbook.

Lake Washington Seattle View

A couple of days before New Years I hiked out to the Lake Washington Boathouse. The view is looking Northwest to downtown Seattle (Mercer Island is on the right). I'm amazed at how much the end of the lake has filled in with sand, soil and debris. It's not seen during the summer months and I wonder if it is dredged annually. You can just see the Columbia Tower and a couple of other tall buildings peeking over the ridge and the Olympic Mountains were in crisp view.

This was a very cold day and the sketching was fast. Pen and ink with watercolor.

Pacific Science Center

On a rare driving trip into Seattle (we were a large group) with family to see the Harry Potter Exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. The show was pretty slick, though as I noted, would have been too expensive (for what you experienced) if paying the non-member price. We got there an hour early which gave me time to sketch in the warmth of one of the other exhibits.

Urban Sketch Gathering - December

Pacific Place was decked out for the holiday season, they also had a fundraiser going on where artists embellished the Nutcracker theme with the large pieces to be sold at auction. The sketch above is of Jimmy H the nutcracker (I didn't check to see who the artist was).

2010 Ryan Christmas Card

Since my wife, 81 year old father and I are gymrats and get together every week to play hoops, this seemed like an appropriate card for the season.

Happy Holidays everyone.