Thoughts on Waterfalls

I went on an Urban Sketchers adventure to the Ira Keller Fountain yesterday. This hidden park in the heart of downtown Portland has an astonishing set of fountains that mimic a rugged, rocky waterfall--it's really astonishing to behold.

As I sat there, trying to capture the movement of the water with my pen and watercolors, I could clearly remember a field trip I took when I was in junior high school. We were at some natural monument with a very tall waterfall, and it was impressive to stand at the base of it and look up towards the top of the falls. The roaring noise, the dynamic and shifting patterns of water and gravity, the fresh spray on your skin, the distinct temperature difference in this misty place. I had my little tourist-camera, but it was patently clear to me that there was very little point in trying to take pictures of a waterfall--how could a still picture even come close to capturing the amazement of being there, the overwhelming multi-sensory feel of it all?

With that memory in mind, I entered into this sketch wondering if I'd be totally thwarted at trying to capture the astonishing sound, motion, and texture of this monument to falling water. I tried studying the patterns of how the water behaved at different moments in its fall, and was amazed to see how different the dynamic was on all of these surfaces. Sometimes it flows smoothly and quietly over an edge and then gradually gets more turbulent (and therefore more white and frothy) as it falls. Sometimes it makes a graceful arc that's very regular. Sometimes it dives over the edge in distinct writhing ribbons of water that meld together further down.  Sometimes it's a crazy diagonal splatter, volleys of water-blotches fired out of a machine-gun. The variety was mind-boggling.

I look at this sketch now and I know that I didn't capture it perfectly, that it's just a shadow of the multi-sensory experience of being there in person. But, sitting there and doing the sketch gave me a chance to really look, to really think, about the shapes and patterns and angles and motion. I think that my junior-high self would agree with my current self that it was well worth the time to draw the picture. I may not have been able to capture it as gloriously as I wanted, but I got to spend time really looking at the scene, and that was well worth the adventure.  

Meanwhile, on the Other Blog...

One of the exciting things about moving to Portland was being able to join the lively Urban Sketchers group in this town. There's currently a "scavenger hunt" going on where folks are trying to sketch (and post) 30 things around town by September 1st. I've gotten 12 of them done so far, yay! You can track the progress of the whole group over on the Portland Urban Sketchers blog.

(This is Scavenger Hunt Item #21: Coffee. Many, but not all, of the prompts are related to a sense of Portland's distinct identity.)

Fractal Season

New Year's Eve was a clear, nearly-sunny day in Portland. We went for a long walk in Washington Park, and I couldn't keep from admiring all the amazing patterns in the bare tree branches. Fractals, fractals, everywhere! "I love it when trees do the math for me," I declared aloud as we squelched down the muddy trails.

Japanese Garden sketch

 When we wandered through the Portland Japanese Garden, at one point I sat down and tried to capture an impression of the branches, the balance, the lovely asymmetry. It's just a simple sketch, but it did get my eye better-tuned to looking at those branch patterns.

Chinese Garden sketch

New Year's Day saw us out exploring town in the sunshine again. The Lan Su Chinese Garden was closed for the holiday, but I enjoyed sitting on a sunny bench in the entry plaza, using a tube of watercolor to sketch a fabulously eroded rock with--you guessed it--a fancy pattern of bare branches behind it.

I omitted Bill's wheelbarrow here. Gotta pick your battles sometimes.

On January 7, I met up with Urban Sketchers Portland to have a group doodling-party at a member's art studio. The shed in the yard was framed by bare tree branches, and I tried combining ink and watercolor to establish a foreground/background effect. And, as you can see, I'm starting to tackle more and more complex branch patterns. It's still very sparse compared to the detail on the real trees, of course. (See more sketches from Jan 7.)

Now, as you can tell by my weird self-portaits-while-peeking-out-from-behind-the-sketchbook, I'm having some scanner issues nowadays.We recently moved, and have not yet discovered which box holds the oh-so-precious power cord to my lovely, lovely scanner. This has me in quite a tizzy, but it's good to play with options on how to frame one's images from a sketchbook, right?

I've treated myself to a membership at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, partly so I can use their scanners until I get my own up and running again. While most of my scans on January 7 turned out fine, the scanner did have a few moments of adding random crazy orange stripes to the page.

Oh, IPRC scanner. I think these orange stripes are signs of Yeti meddling.

While this makes me flinch in a lot of ways, it also reminds me of the work of Deb Rossi, who adds big "colorblocks" of watercolor over the top of her ink sketches. Maybe the scanner artifacts are a way to start exploring that sketching approach?

It would be prettier with real watercolor, rather than Photoshop.

Hmmmm. That's the joy of sketching in groups (and wrestling with persnickety equipment)--you can find yourself exploring all new ideas.

Winter Boat Parade

Last night I finally met up with Urban Sketchers Portland! We had a nighttime sketching adventure, trying to capture the twinkling of the city during the Christmas Ship Parade.

It was certainly dark out, but the lights from the freeway helped give a general glow to our corner of the riverbank. 5 of us came out; those who were traveling by car eventually took refuge in the shelter of their automobiles to warm up, while those of us who get around on foot were happy to tough it out in the open air. (It was a lovely night, really!)

I brought a sketchbook of black paper and a tube of white acrylic paint. First sketch, above--the general view of the skyline of downtown Portland.

Second sketch: trying to capture the reflections of car headlights as they crossed the Hawthorne Bridge. (Those bridges are a terrible tangle of struts and supports, even with daylight on one's side!)

 Third sketch: one of the boats was decorated with an adorable whale. Turns out, when they left the marina and were out on the river for the parade itself, that there was a mini-whale tagging along after it!

 Last sketch of the night: buildings framed through the legs of the freeway bridge. Portland is a very sparkly town, indeed.