The second day of the Urban Sketchers Workshop in Bothell was a beautiful sunny one. Great weather for being outside to sketch. Gabi started with watercolor demos in the classroom at Cloud 9 Art School but soon we headed out and stopped at the Clover Leaf Rebekahs No. 54 House. Some worked on the house and others chose the small house next door to draw for this exercise. The point was to take composition, line, and value and put it all together with watercolor for this sketch.

Putting it all together

First try for the day

xr2z0xb8RWK+ioMbfxPHFw.jpg — Walk-by sketch

Playing with values with only watercolor

Next we had a short 10-15 minute stop at the beaver sculptures in front of the Bothell City Hall. Gabi wanted us to draw them using only watercolor and to get a sense of shape using value. I chose the calculating looking beaver sitting up. My version had him looking a bit evil so I tried it again. They looked much better after they dried.

Then it was on to the next stop at McMenamin's Anderson School Hotel. It was a great building but given where we were - very close to it, it was challenging to draw. Finding a good, safe spot to draw was also an issue. There was a throw down but I missed the picture of it. I was impressed how much people got done on this complicated building in such a short period of time.