I went to Seattle over the weekend to attend an Urban Sketchers workshop on drawing city skylines. This is a subject I tend to avoid as I find it a very complex scene, but the teacher, Sue Heston, made it seem very easy.
Being Seattle (with rain 9 months of the year), we had to find an indoor spot that would give us a good view of downtown. Sue took us up to the atrium at the top of the Convention Center. It had glass walls on 3 sides and an outdoor garden called "Freeway Park" (which a few people tried, but gave up when they got too wet).
This was the teacher's demo drawing looking out the window. She'd actually drawn it the day before so had time to add a light blue watercolor wash over the buildings. I thought it was a nice effect, especially since Seattle is so gray this time of year.
This was some of the student work from our class (mine is on the left). I never use paper quite this large (9" x 12"), but it's what the teacher asked us to bring. I thought it was "clever" of others (including the teacher) to outline a much smaller rectangle in the middle of the page before drawing their skylines (it takes a LONG time to fill such a large page, especially with a fine tip black pen). The class was really very good and I look forward to trying out this technique at home. Hopefully, there's a Starbucks downtown with a large window, since it's getting too cold to sit outdoors.
And, of course, I couldn't go to Seattle without having dinner with Brian and Amber. We met at my favorite Mexican restaurant, Fogon's.
Afterwards, we went across the street to Gamma Ray Games and played a couple rounds of
7 Wonders. I'd never played it before, but I was looking for a new option that was similar to the
Splendor game I've been playing with my teacher friends. I thought it was fairly easy to learn and I even came close to beating Brian the second hand (I only lost by 1 point!).
