Al Fresco, Urban Sketching and My Journey through the World of Art

The last few weeks have been a challenge for me in order to go out an sketch some. The weather has been cold and rainy and the work very demanding but last week I was able to take some time off and use some of that time for sketching plus I had a nice outing with my fellow Urban Sketchers. The first outing was at the Korum Nissan in Puyallup. My car needed a service that ended up being 6 hours long and as I did not have any other mode of transportation I used my time and completed two sketches.

On Saturday USk Tacoma met at the Dolce Si Sicilian Bakery and Café. Fabulous place and as they state in their web page they have “Cakes and Pies like none you’ve ever seen in Tacoma.” My, My…   They are fantastic, the employees are great and from Sicily off course and the ambiance relaxing and fun. That particular day they were celebrating a Sicilian Festival and the place was crowded with Italians speaking their tongue and the ambiance was so festive. I smile just remembering the experience. If you live in the Tacoma area I extremely recommend the place, it is worth the trip. While sketching the place was so crowded and people came and went so fast that I decided to just play with people’s silhouettes as you will see.

Nissan Korum Puyallup

Another soul waiting for six hours 😦

Dolce Si Sicilian Bakery and Café

See you next time and Happy Sketching!

Daisy

Wow, what a long name this pen has! Because there is a large variety of Sailor’s pens and this is quite unique. In my journey of experimentations with fountain pens I kept hearing that this pen was fantastic for sketching as it has a bended tip that gives you the freedom to sketch making very thin lines and transition into thicker lines. Last year I had bought one that unfortunately I ruined as I didn’t know the dos and don’ts of fountain pen handling. By know I am very happy to have a bit of knowledge in the matter thanks to my fellow urban sketchers (just a little tiny bit of knowledge mind you) and I did not ruin the pen this time by using China Ink (please never do that!). I am using Platinum Carbon Ink and that works fabulously.

This type of pen is made with a 55 degree nib and a 40 degree nib. I chose the 55 degree nib to start and later I may want to experiment with the 40 degree nib to see the difference in lines. I off course will keep you posted. This pen I have is green in color, is made of plastic, is light and easy to handle. I tried it on Friday during a quick lunch sketch and I was able to move the nib in ways that produced lines with different degrees of thickness and I enjoyed how my trees turned out. As follows I will show you a series of pictures describing the process of filling the pen with ink using a converter (this was a learning process for me) and then the sketch I did Friday using the Sailor pen along with another sketch I did before with a Micron 005 so you can compare.

Above you can see the pen and converter as it came in as well as out of the packaging along with the instructions on how to use the converter.

Above you can see that I pushed the converter inside the pen once I broke the pen apart, I twisted the converter cap clockwise until I was able to see the length of the tube through the converter and placed the pen’s nib inside the ink bottle and began to twist the converter’s cap counterclockwise to fill the converter with ink. Once that was completed I assembled the pen back together and I was ready to test it.

Above you can see that I began playing with thin and thick lines as well as thick and thin lines in one same stroke simply moving the tip of the nib. Really nice and easy to handle. Now I can see how so many Urban Sketchers love this pen. Below I will show you two sketches I did during my lunch “sketchcapades.” The first one was done with a Micron oo5 and the one below was done with the Sailor pen.

Metropolitan District Park of Tacoma

Titlow Part University Place area in Tacoma

I hope this was informative and I will be back with more sketching!

Happy Sketching you all,

Daisy

A week ago it was the month Tacoma Urban Sketchers outing. It was a very cold day and we met at a local restaurant for the meet and greet. A lot of my fellow sketchers decided to stay indoors (wise) and sketch the lively and warm atmosphere of the restaurant and others like me decided to go out and brave the cold weather. There is a mansion in downtown Puyallup that I have always wanted to sketch and visit. I was so close to it that I thought that this was my great opportunity to visit the place and sketch it maybe indoors. Unfortunately I was out of luck because it will not open until the month of March. The mansion is called The Meeker Mansion and if you would like to explore more in depth about this amazing place please visit their website @ www.meekermansion.org . The mansion is indeed beautiful from the outside, the architecture is exquisite and I can’t wait to be able to visit it once again and taking a tour. Even though it was closed that did not deter me from sketching it! Oh my it was 30 degrees and with the strength of my soul I pulled my little chair and began to draw. I immersed myself in the process and time went on to the point that I forgot the cold and that my ink was not even flowing right. I guess I reached my flow 🙂 and this is the outcome …

Until next time and Happy Sketching,

Daisy