Drawn the Road Again

Category: Hometown Tourist

  • Putting the “win” in “window”

    Putting the “win” in “window”

    Window dressing, I am sorry to say, is a dying art. There are still so many old storefront buildings in the U.S. with massive display windows. And so, so few of them still use those windows to display anything, let alone create an imaginative world in still life. Whenever I find an exception, a holdout…

  • Bright and early

    Bright and early

    I’m generally a morning person—especially when it comes to sketching. But I live at 47 degrees north latitude, where for months at a time, being a morning person means spending a lot of time in the dark. Right now I’m still shaking off that lazy Northwest winter-mode version of “early,” where 8 am still feels…

  • Calligraphic cobblestones

    Calligraphic cobblestones

    Roche Harbor is a hidden little pocket on San Juan Island, with impeccably preserved turn-of-the-century buildings, picturesque lime kiln ruins, a pristine saltwater inlet, and wharf buildings that hearken back to some (perhaps slightly revisionist) halcyon era gone by. Yet I had to force myself to even look at those things, let alone sketch them—because…

  • Fishlass

    Fishlass

    You know, Salmon Beach is already a kind of mythical place, the kind of hidden world you read about in nautical legends. So it was completely fitting to follow the boardwalk path around a curve and suddenly find a siren* waiting on the rocks below. *sculpture by Marilyn Mahoney

  • Above the clouds

    Above the clouds

    One of my favorite things about living in the Northwest is how everything seems here seems to exist in its own microcosm. How you can be socked in a gray pall, nothing but pearly fog in every direction—unless you find a tall enough hill to climb. As you near the top, the light changes, sun…

  • Living library

    Living library

    I love sketching wildflowers and other plants—but unfortunately, I’m really not great at identifying them. Of course, sketching is an excellent way to cement the information into your brain, but it doesn’t help much when you’re not sure what you’re looking at. I’m not a fan of standing there, juggling sketchbook and guidebook, trying to…

  • 12th Night

    12th Night

    I’m not really a fan of American football, but I do love seeing (and sketching!) a city transformed by a rare event. And I have to admit, it was pretty hard not to get swept up by all the excitement humming in Seattle’s very bones this weekend. So I’ll go ahead and add my voice…

  • Night and day

    Night and day

    Speaking of neon signs, this might not be a sketchbook post, but I figured it wasn’t too far off-topic. For those of you who might find yourselves in the Pacific Northwest this year, I’ve got a solo exhibit opening tomorrow, right here on my home turf. The show is called You’ll Like Tacoma, and features…

  • Get a shovel

    Get a shovel

    I don’t know about you, but I’m always tempted to let my New Year’s resolutions pile up as high as the snowbanks at Mt. Rainier. Of course, it’s much harder to fulfill them than make them, but I know there’s at least one that I’ll have no problem keeping: Just keep sketching.

  • Tabula rasa

    Tabula rasa

    We don’t get a lot of snow in my part of Washington. So if I want to see winter weather, I usually have to do some traveling first. I always seem to feel this urge right around now, the first of the year. Maybe it’s just the white of the snow—or the hush of winter—but…