2nd sketch from UVillage 39 WW Sketchcrawl

Looking back past Elemental Wood Fire Pizza Restaurant at U Village.

39th World Wide Sketchcrawl @ UVillage

Saturday Seattle Urban Sketchers gathered for the 39th WW Sketchcrawl, an event happening globally where people take a day to sketch their town or any place they happen to be.  We chose UVillage because we were not quite sure the weather would be with us and there are a lot of overhangs to protect us from the rain.  It was dry but very cold and hard to stay outside with freezing fingers.  We all hung in there.  Here is a sketch from that day and a picture of the group (I will add that later).

Practice 3 Sky

Another 30 minute watercolor practice sketch of sky, clouds and water.  This was done on paper with a little tooth you can see how different the water color takes to the paper if you compare this one with the watercolor practice 2.  Practice 2 was done on paper with a very smooth surface.  Compare this sky with the sky in practice 1.  Practice 1 started with a wash of clear water and then color was added over the wet wash.  Practice 3 sky was done on dry paper giving the hard edges of the clouds.  Additional color was added to give a wet gradation in the under side of the clouds.  I also lifted off color with paper towel to soften the edges at certain places.  The reflection on the beach was done with a clear wash first and then laying in color.

Practice 2 Landscape

Found a small watercolor book at Half Price books. It goes through step by step exercises on building up watercolor landscape paintings in around 20-30 minutes.  I did this one last night.  It took around 30 minutes.  Simple shapes but effective.  Working with loose washes from light to dark and hitting shadow patterns by adding a little indigo to the watercolor to create a darker value of the color.

Practicing

I am reading a watercolor book by watercolorist Robert Wade.  He recommends practicing pages and pages of cloud/sky studies. Here is my first.  Using a wet on wet technique in the cloud area.  Ultramarine blue and a mix of ultramarine blue and quinacridone sienna for the dark area.  This only took 5 minutes total.  Of course there was a wait time between letting the clouds completely dry before putting in  the hills in the foreground.

Urban Farming in Seattle

Getting ready for our trip to Granada and Barcelona, I have been walking through our hilly neighborhood and happened upon this idyllic scene.  On the hill overlooking the Japanese Tea Garden is this quaint urban farm..someones personal vegetable garden.  It is rare to see this much open land in such a dense part of the city.  It was such a nice sunny Easter day, I just had to take a walk and capture this.