Drawn the Road Again

Tag: San Juan Islands

  • Fox tales

    Fox tales

    Every time I visit San Juan Island, my collection of fox sketches grows. They’re inescapable there, as much a part of the landscape now as the treeless prairies they prowl at Cattle Point. They’re not native to the island, though. In the 1890s, settlers introduced rabbits here for game, and apparently failed to foresee the…

  • Seaside splendor

    Seaside splendor

    You already know that San Juan Island is perhaps my favorite place on earth, and the California poppies that grow wild at Cattle Point are just one of the many reasons why. I actually started this sketch on an earlier trip, and came back to this spot exactly one year later to finish it. And…

  • Purple haze

    Purple haze

    Here in the Northwest, we’re in the thick of my favorite season right now. I don’t mean summer, per se, but lavender season. Our climate is pretty much perfectly suited to growing lavender, so other than maybe the south of France, there’s no better place to stand on a purple hillside, awash in scent.

  • From a certain angle

    From a certain angle

    Lime Kiln Point is one of Washington’s best state parks. For one thing, it’s on my favorite island (and since I love all of Washington’s islands with a mad passion, that’s saying something). For another, it’s got a great lighthouse—which is something for which I’ll always come running. Best of all, if you happen to…

  • Porch perch

    Porch perch

    Sometimes one’s point of view can make or break a picture. The jury is still out on this one, as far as I’m concerned. This was such a weird vantage point for sketching—between the location high up on a hill, the wide-angle view of the rest of the porch, the water and ferry landing below,…

  • Four-legged harbormaster

    Four-legged harbormaster

    When I sat on the pier to do this sketch, I only meant to draw the boats—I’m a sucker for bunches of masts and linear elements like tielines. To make sure I could fit the whole mast in the picture plane, I started at the top and worked my way down. It wasn’t until I…

  • Blue islands

    Blue islands

    Speaking of indigo, I think I go through more blue paint when I’m in the San Juans than I do anywhere else. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere that has so many different shades and hues of blue in one place. Capturing anything that comes remotely close to what I see there is a big…

  • Pining for the fjords

    Pining for the fjords

    Every time I’ve been on Orcas Island, I’ve felt a twinge of envy for the folks who live there. Because I tell you what: this is a view I could get used to.

  • Stay away, Paul

    Stay away, Paul

    You know, as much I love Paul Bunyan and his mighty axe, I’m breathing a sigh of relief that he and his ilk haven’t gotten to every bit of forest on the continent. Because far better than any lumberjack (even a mythical one) is a patch of virgin, old growth forest. Thankfully, the only folks…

  • 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…