Alton Baker Park

Last weekend I stopped by to visit the annual picnic of the Philippine American Association in Eugene, Oregon. The picnic was in lovely Alton Baker Park, with a stunning view of the river. Since I was running early, I paused to sketch the river flowing behind the fountain at EWEB Plaza.

I was initially quite focused on getting the angles of all those jets of water without drawing anything out in pencil first. But when I reached the end of the sketch, I realized I had forgotten to add the segment of the watery cascade where each of the parabolas meets in the middle and falls back down to earth. Whoops! It should probably have looked something like this instead:

Ah well. I hiked across the pedestrian bridge and plugged myself into the picnic, and had a lovely time sketching the pig roasting on the spit! Tricky timing challenge to throw down more paint every time the pig rotated to this angle, but it was a fun challenge.

I had some lovely conversations about art and art education with folks at the picnic while I sketched. One fellow, who had been a professor of art before retirement, introduced me to a very insightful quote from James Johnson Sweeney:

"Creativity, in both science and art, is the ability to find new relationships between things that hadn't previously existed. It's the relationships, not the things, that are interesting." 

Mobile Cannery, Tall Lungwort

Spent last weekend in lovely Eugene, Oregon. We stopped by the Center for Appropriate Transport on Saturday to check out their 20th Anniversary Party; had a great time watching folks test-ride ingenious bikes.

Sunday was the Wildflower Festival out at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. As usual, there were so many old friends to catch up with that I didn't end up having a lot of time to sketch the amazing display of flowers; but I did jot down a few doodles of some especially pretty and interesting specimens. 

Had a great chat with a friend who is studying environmental education about how sketching is such a good way to slow down and be present in the moment, and to really spend time observing--even if the final drawing is not especially great, the act of having been there LOOKING is rewarding. She called this "finding a sit-spot," and I like that concept quite a bit!