The Ugly Buildings of Washington, DC.

Washington, DC has many internationally-known landmarks, which draw visitors from all over the world, and are the subjects of countless photos, sketches, paintings, and gaudy tourist souvenirs. A quick mental flash of our city brings to mind grand Presidential monuments, gleaming government buildings, and a big spire in the middle towering over all of it. However, being a day-to-day local, the touristy structures of DC are common place for me, as opposed to their complete opposites; the ugly buildings of Washington, DC.

Here is one of them, located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. You'll never see it on a postcard, but walk past it every day, and you'll notice the bright red pipe running up the side of this building, matched by the big red sign at the bottom, all set against an otherwise white building with a subtle windowed-grid of dark browns and dusty blues. I was hoping to color this all in, but I sketched it with a cheap gel pen, and coloring over the lines with markers on a humid summer day here in DC would have turned this all into one big smear-fest!

USk Barcelona

I just returned from the 4th International Urban Sketching Symposium in Barcelona. I had a really wonderful time there: I got to meet (and learn from) many artists whose work I'd been following online for years, and got to sketch in a beautiful city. I filled several sketchbooks, and this is only just a small sample: the curious can find the rest on Flickr.
While the city has some amazing architecture, and I learned a lot from the workshops, I think my favorite sketches were the informal ones where we sketched each other between (and during) sessions.

And now that I'm back home, I'm looking forward to going out and practicing what I learned here in my own city.

4th At Lake Tahoe

I missed the fireworks.

 No affiliation.

 

Buds

  Cabin view

Gratis

 

Untitled

 

 

Mt. Top

 

Window

Eli's Kosher Deli

This is Eli's Kosher Deli, located here in the DuPont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. Eli's is DC's best, and only, kosher restaurant. Not to belittle Eli's, though; the food is quite good and the staff very friendly. I eat there often, and never leave disappointed. Eli's is housed in a building architecturally typical of the neighborhood's homes and businesses, and from the urban sketching point of view, presents tons of lines, shapes, and details to work with. I was hoping to capture the whole building and then color it in, but I work with a tiny 4" x 6" sketchbook and a cheap gel pen, so not only did the actual restaurant on the ground floor not fit onto the page, coloring over the lines with my markers would have turned this into a major smudged ink-fest.