Urban Sketchers-Tacoma Creates a PARK on International Park(ing) Day!

Tacoma participates in the annual worldwide event called Park(ing) Day. It began in 2005 in San Francisco, and is always the 3rd. Friday in September.

The format for this event: artists, designers, and citizens transform parking spots into temporary public parks, proclaiming that cities need more open, public spaces, with the hope of creating interest and dialogue on that topic.

This will be Urban Sketchers-Tacoma's first year to participate, as an Ad Hoc Sketch-outing!  Our PARK is on Pacific Ave. on the NE corner of S. 9th. and Pacific Ave. 

We'll wear red shirts, bring our sketching stools or any comfortable chair (bring extra sketching stools if you have them), sketching supplies, and Frances will bring our extra art supplies from our recent event to share with our visitors. We'll do Urban Sketches in our PARK, and also offer 5 minute portraits to visitors.

The city will provide signage and barriers to protect our space (and us).

SET-UP is from 9-10 am. BREAK-DOWN is from 2-3 pm. (Let Frances know if you have a grass-green area rug or astro-turf for our space. She will bring several umbrellas for shade.) Our PARK must be staffed at all times from 10 am-2pm. Our space is 8 ft. x 20 ft. and we must not overflow that area.

We'll be given Passports with maps of all the PARKS to give to our visitors. There will be a "DownTownOnTheGo" led walk at noon, stopping at the downtown PARKS along their route. There will be Food Trucks along Pacific between S. 11th and S. 12th. 

Our PARK has excellent, unobstructed views for Urban Sketching! (We're in the spot where the cream color car is parked.)  This should be great fun!

Sketch-outing September 22, 2016

Sept 21 outing to Theater District, Tacoma

Third Wednesday September 21 Theater District

Meet at 10 am at Tully's Coffee - Bostwick
764 Broadway, Tacoma. WA 98402
In the lower level of the unusual Bostwick building, right on the corner. 

Sketch the Theater District: Broadway between 9th and 14th

From Downtown Tacoma  
"Theater Square
Long known for its contribution to the performing arts, this district spans Broadway, from 9th to 11th, and South 9th, from Market to Commerce. With theaters like the Pantages, and the Rialto, there is always a show to see. The neighborhood also boasts fine dining, fine jewelry and art, and is the seat of Downtown’s Christmas Tree and New Years Eve Celebration, First Night."

West Coast Sketch Crawl

Urban Sketchers Tacoma hosted the 4th Annual Urban Sketchers West Coast Sketch Crawl over this past weekend, 19-21 August 2016.  The team was led by Frances Buckmaster.  Kate Buike,  Mark Ryan,Rom LaVerdiere, and Darsie Beck made up the rest of the main team.  Leading up to and during the event many of the Tacoma sketchers were volunteers.  The event could not have run so smoothly without so many pitching in to help.

The planning started in earnest about 9 months ago.  In the final week leading up to the event there were several tasks to do and several Tacoma sketchers helped.  We stuffed 200 goody bags on Monday.  Then on Thursday we set up our venues for Friday night and Saturday morning. 

The team stuffed 200 goody bags in Frances' studio on Monday: Mark, Alison, Jane, Frances, Feather, Beverly (and me, behind the camera!)  These are about half of them.

Alison & Jane do the flower arranging for the Friday evening Meet & Greet dinner.

By the numbers:  There were 153 sketchers and guests who came to dinner.  About 150 were sketching on Saturday.  They traveled from all up and down the west coast, Vancouver BC to San Diego, CA.  There were also a few from much further away:  Arizona and Missouri.

The event started with dinner at the Picasso's.  It was the ice breaker and a chance to meet people informally. After a delicious meal, we did 5 minute portrait sketches of each other.  Frances had gone above and beyond to obtain donations from sponsors for door prizes and goody bags.  After the drawing came the drawing!

The founder of the West Coast Sketch Crawl, Jim Bumgarner, welcomes the sketchers and guests.

5 minute portrait sketches

Eric won the door prize grand prize, donated by Daniel Smith Art Supplies, which was a set of all their watercolor sticks.

More photos of the Friday evening Meet & Greet
https://redharp.smugmug.com/SketchOutings/2016-0819-Meet-Greet/

The next morning our event began in earnest at 9 am.  Sketchers poured into the auditorium of the Washington State History Museum after picking up their goody bags filled with art supplies... also wrangled by Frances.

Jim's opening remarks included the hashtag for the event.

We sketched until 11:30 am when we met on the plaza near the Museum of Glass for sketch sharing and a group photo.  There were about 150 sketchers there that day.

Sketching views of the history museum and Union Station (now a court house).

Becky and others sketching on the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington (UW).

The Headquarters information table was inside the cool, air conditioned, Museum Lobby and was staffed by Tacoma volunteers.  All the locals wore red shirts.

morning sketch sharing

The 11:30 am group photo, with the Museum of Glass "hot shop" tower in the background.

We broke for lunch.  Tacoma sketchers played host and led groups of out of town sketchers to various lunch venues.  The day was very hot, by Washington standards, hitting a high of 95 degrees.  Some sketchers spent at least part of the afternoon sketching the view from inside an air conditioned location.

We met again at 4pm for more sharing, in the shade, and another group photo.



More photos of Saturday Sketching
https://redharp.smugmug.com/SketchOutings/2016-0820-Saturday-Sketch/

Sunday brought another early start with a meeting at 9 am outside the Tacoma Museum of Art.  A few announcements were followed by the founder of Urban Sketchers, Gabi Campanario (at left), joining us.

Gabi, Frances and Jim; photo by Pam Jenkins

We dispersed to sketch around the area.  This day was unseasonably chilly.  Many were not prepared for 58 degrees in the morning after yesterday's scorcher!  Again, there was sketching from inside but in this case in order to stay warm. Today I took a break from photographing the event to do one sketch.




We met at 11am at Tollefson Plaza, directly across the street from the Tacoma Art Museum.  It was announced that the 5th Annual Urban Sketchers West Coast
Sketch Crawl will be held in Vancouver, BC.  A date has not yet been set.

Becky (left), Jim and Astor announce Vancouver BC as the location for the 5th Annual West Coast Sketch Crawl!

More photos of Sunday
https://redharp.smugmug.com/2016-0821-Sunday-Sketch-Crawl/

Many accounts of the event and sketches are shared in the Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/609852259154110/  and in our flickr group:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/usktac4/

We were covered by the local newspaper:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article95466897.html
http://www.thenewstribune.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article95938312.html
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article97029992.html

Hashtag is #usktac4

See you next year, in Vancouver BC!! 

First Saturday: Sept 3 at Foss Waterway

 First Saturday:  September 3

Foss Waterway Seaport 

 705 Dock St, Tacoma, WA 98402

http://www.fosswaterwayseaport.org/

Meet at 10 am outside the front door to the Museum.  

Those who volunteered for the West Coast Sketch Crawl have guest passes.  Otherwise, Admission is $10.00 for Adults; $8.00 for Students, Military, and Seniors (62+).

Parking:  There are a few spaces at the Museum.  Otherwise, here is a map:
http://fosswaterwayseaport.org/materials/FWSParking.pdf

There are many interesting exhibits inside the Museum.  The area also has a good view of the seaport and if the weather is good there will be many sketching opportunities outside. 

Urban sketching in the south of France

Pen & ink 3.5 x 9

   Having been working in Alaska the last month or more... not sketching all that much, I came upon these postcards I drew. For this months article I decided to flashback to when I was living in Arganteau Chateau, France back before I left Alaska almost 10 years ago. Nobody talked about Urban Sketching back then yet I went out and drew my environment every chance I could knowing that drawing is drawing all all practice is good. So I drew postcards of the farm I was living on and sent them back to family in the states. This one ended up getting framed! -Feather

Ed Hume Garden Sketch Outing

A beautiful sketch outing was enjoyed by all at Ed Hume's very amazing garden. Ed was the perfect host,giving us a garden and seed company tour as well as providing coffee, snacks and plenty of Ed humor and Hume Enterprise history. I'm sure we all wished we could have stayed all day. We will have to do this again!

Ed's tour and Tacoma Urban Sketcher announcements took more time then usual but everyone got some good sketching in anyway. I ended up with about 45 minutes to sketch and finally chose the garden entry. Fine sketching when the sun was behind the clouds, not so when it was direct and I could feel my shoulders and neck burning.  Still, I wouldn't change a thing about this great sketch outing.

Background noise and the urban scene.

   Sometimes the sketch is not always about the end product but more about the process of doing it. The sights and what a person chooses to re-image fascinate me.  When attending one of these events artists sit side by side and get something completely different. Also the sounds and smells become like a hum of comfort in the background. In this example a restaurant in the middle of a frequented market area, can be distracting or comfortably enjoyable. The biggest challenge was the people that would walk through and rearrange the 2 menus on the small table beside the post. Note... one is missing in the photo. It is always an adventure when I join the Urban Sketcher group to explore new places. - Feather

Sketch outing and Art Show Reception

 by Kate Buike

This was an all day event for Urban Sketcher Tacoma.  First, we had a sketch outing in and around the main library in Tacoma.  I hung around the library and only went outside to do one sketch.  This is a small gargoyle guarding the Clock Tower Square.



As usual, we met to share sketches and have a group photo.



Then we held the opening reception for our Tacoma Urban Sketchers show in the afternoon.  There were 26 artists and 81 framed sketches! When I first walked through in the morning I was so impressed by how good it looked!  There were a number of competing events around the region but we did get a steady stream of people dropping in to look around.  Several seemed interested in joining us for sketch outings in the future.










There are lots more photos of smaller groupings of the framed prints here: 
https://redharp.smugmug.com/SketchOutings/2016-0806-Tacoma-Main-Library/