Cancer Survivor's Park ~ Dallas, Texas

I was in Dallas for a conference at the Sheraton for the past few days. This park -- called the Cancer's Survivor Park is just in front of the hotel. I didnt have much time to sketch so I started this on the sunny first day of the conference in a few minutes of time I had. I had to leave before I could finish and didnt get back out until early this morning when it was cloudy and rainy and the lighting was very different. It started raining pretty hard so I had to go inside to finish from a photo in the few minutes before I had to catch the shuttle to the airport. The final touches were done waiting to board the plane and then in the air on the way home. As I sat in the park I thought about my stepmom Bea Feit who died from ovarian cancer a couple of years ago. She fought the cancer for 10 years. She was a survivor. I also thought about my friend Fran's husband Bob Godlove who was her best friend and a magnificent dad to their two kids. He died years ago from sinus cancer a very painful death. He fought hard. He was a survivor. At first I didnt want to sit in the park, but it was the only place I had time to draw. I'm glad I did and now I understand the purpose of a cancer survivors park.

Stained Glass Windows at St. James Cathedral

A quick 45 or so minute sketch at the February Seattle Urban sketchcrawl at St. James Cathedral. Meditative surroundings with sketchers scattered all around the pews and almost completely silent except for someone (I'm assuming not a sketcher) snoring loudly somewhere behind me. I moved back and forth with three different Noodler pens that leaked like crazy which made my hands a black mess. I'm on an ongoing quest to figure out how to keep the pens from leaking...

Suzzallo Library - 3rd Floor Allen Stacks - HV Crime Section

When I heard that today's Seattle Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl was at Suzzallo Library, I thought I would like to do something different than I did last time when I sketched the front of the building. I thought it would be fun to go back into the stacks where I first started thinking about what would later become my career as a Criminal Justice/Criminology professor. So I found the old familiar HV section...some of the books on the shelves...The Criminal Personality, The Onion Field, Sexual Homicide Patterns and Motives, Crime and the American Dream, Punishment and Social Control, Acting Out: Maladaptive Behavior in Confinement, Letters from Attica, Life and Death in Sing Sing, Concrete Mama: Prison Profiles from Walla Walla, Using Murder: The Social Contruction of Serial Homicide, Sex Crimes, Women, Murder, and Justice, Women Serial and Mass Murderers, Evil Doers, Convicts, Profiling Violent Crimes, Techniques of Crime Scene Investigation, Postmortem...As I sat there sketching, I remembered many a day long ago lost in some of these books. A peaceful afternoon sketching down memory lane thinking about how powerful books can be in shaping the course of a person's life.

The Fraternal Urban Castle

I sketched this of my friend Patrick's living room while he was packing for his Engineers without Borders trip to Nicaragua. The place, which is otherwise known as the "Fraternal Urban Castle," has an always changing array of curious objects including rubber ducks, the nameplate from a boat he used to own, sound gadgets, light fixtures, and costume stuff. On this particular night, he also had piles of first aid stuff, tape measures, flashlights, a portable shovel, and objects I couldn't quite identify that were used for some or other sort of measurement or water purification or other task associated with his trip. I did this in about an hour or so and my biggest challenges were figuring out what I was drawing as I moved from object to object and capturing the complicated shadows that were cast psychedelically throughout the room. The top scan is closest to the original colors but I was playing around with the scan and liked how it looks with the blue-purple colors.

Seattle Art Museum Lobby during the Elles Exhibit

Seattle Art Museum Lobby during Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris. I lost track of time while sketching all of the rays coming out of the cool hanging cars in the museum lobby. It was dizzying trying to keep track of the changing colors in the light rays. After sketching, went through the Elles exhibit. Wow! My favorites were Yayoi Kusama: http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/ especially her 3-piece giant wall of polka dots that was titled something like "Life keeps going" (that's not the title and it's driving me crazy because I cant remember what it was, but something like that), the cool 70's videos from the heyday of the feminist movement, a sketch of a woman looking up to a sky of penises, and an extremely disturbing video called "Barbed Hula" by Sigalet Landau: http://www.sigalitlandau.com/. I am inspired!

A couple of sketches from recent trip to NYC

I traveled last weekend to run the NYC marathon which ended up being cancelled as soon as my plane hit the ground due to Hurricane Sandy. I was staying in Chelsea/Greenwhich Village at my brother's place so I took the opportunity to finish this sketch of a building in Greenwich Village that I started last March when I was there to run the NYC 1/2 marathon. The building was pretty much the same as when I left it except there were men's suits in the store window instead of the cute dresses that were there last spring.

The power was out at my brother's place after the hurricane and started to come on in the stores and buildings one store at a time. My brother treated me to my first-ever pedicure at Spa Belles a little shop in Chelsea that had just gotten their power back. I drew Tina while she was working on my feet. The staff there laughed at me with all of my wincing and sketching and Tina politely smiled and shook her head a little when I finished the sketch. I'm pretty sure she didnt think it looked like her.

Columbia City Theatre and Bourbon Bar

I used to live just off Rainier St on South Garden and I would drive down Rainier Ave every day on the way home from work. Somehow I didn't notice the Columbia City Theatre back then. Columbia City has come a long way in the 15+ years since I lived near there. It is beautiful with lots of colors, activity, buildings, and shops, old and new. It was a somewhat chilly day in comparison with some of the almost summertime weather we've been having which made for some quick sketch and watercolor maneuvers on my part, including spills, splotches, and huge droplets coming from the sky and landing on my page that I wasnt sure if came from the clouds or the birds. All in all, a nice day and I'm glad this crazy long summer weather is finally giving way to Fall.