October in Galveston

Our group

Once again, Urban Sketchers Houston went to Galveston for our October sketchout. As you can see from Jeff's sketch in the header, the sight of the Carnival cruise ship peeking through the older buildings on the Strand was an irresistible sketch subject. Here's Francisco's take.

Francisco

Here's another take.

Not sure whose this is??

And then I tackled this as well.

Chris

We started the day, however, on Post Office street for a short warmup in the area.

Lucia at the Mod coffee

Richard at the Mod coffee

Martha and Joel drew a local church.

Martha

Joel

Here's our first throwdown.

Our first throwdown

From there, we moved on to the Strand. People wandered all up and down the street sketching.

Bruce

Mike S

Rachel

Heather

Andrea

Veronika

Judith

Chris

Martha

Peter

Tanya

Jeff

Lucia

Veronika

Here's our throwdown from lunchtime.

throwdown at the arts center

Next we all went to the waterfront. Some people drew boats. Some chose other subjects.

Francisco

Bee

Mike

Amber

Amber

Not sure of the artist?

Chris

And finally Richard's sketch. He stayed on to finish it. A nice historical study of the waterfront.

Richard

Here's the throwdown from the pier.

the throwdown at the pier

From there, the group split up and met up at the end of the day at a local community center for refreshments and air conditioning. (Did I mention it was HOT?)

the community center

The pictures I received from the end of the day were from the group that went to the Silk Stocking district to draw old houses.

Susan

Rachel

Tanya

Bee

Charlotte

Heather

Judith

All in all, there was a little something for everyone to sketch. I'm going to add a few more and address a topic that comes up from time to time. What do you do when you have a day like this with several venues and you don't finish your sketch?

Richard

Richard's solution is usually to take copious reference photos and finish at home. I suspect we'll see this in finished form at some point. And taking photos is just fine. Richard travels and this is a necessity for him on trips and tours.

Judith's lunch sketch

Now this black and white sketch is just fine as is, but Judith often goes back and adds color in Procreate, or a small journal entry or caption in the blank space.

Judith

Here's another one of Judith's quick sketches of details from a building. This would be a great place to paste down ephemera ( a ticket stub, a lunch menu) or add some journaling along one side. Richard did something similar in his Mod Coffee sketch. Try this the next time you run short on time.

This group always looks forward to our trip to Galveston in October. If you are new to the blog, be sure and check us out on Instagram or join our Facebook group. And check in here again for our next sketchout.

The Union Pacific Big Boy

Jeff and Mike

A real horde of train lovers showed up to see the Union Pacific Big Boy on Sunday at Amtrak station downtown. The crowd was so big, that some of us never hooked up for a throwdown. The group in the header were sketching along the track in front of the engine. Jeff, Mike, Susan and Peter were sketching alongside the train in the crowd. Heat and the crowd claimed a few of us early, but Big Boy did not disappoint as a sketching subject.

Peter

Peter arrived very early and did a couple of sketches from across the track on Dart and Elder streets. There was a fence which he artfully deleted, but no crowd. His second sketch was from the vantage point of "the most haunted building in Houston", the original Jeff Davis hospital.

Peter-Big Boy and downtown

He also did several very long views of the train. An unusual composition choice.

Peter

This view was from the station side of the track. 

Peter

Peter

A nice three-quarter view in watercolor.

Michelle and Richard were among those who chose the foreshortened head-on view. Bruce and I were there as well. Standing against the fence and a bit in front at least gave us elbow room to draw.

Bruce and Michelle

Michelle

Bruce

In both cases, they chose to go back later and add some cool text to the page.

Richard also chose this view. You don't often see Richard draw a lot of people, but the crowd was part of the story.

Richard

I anticipated a big crowd, so I worked in graphite and water-soluable graphite and kept it quick and somewhat simple.

Chris

Two new sketchers joined us. The first was Amber.

Amber

The second was Kayoko, who worked from the teeniest little Altoid palette in OILS. I think that's a first. She captured not only the engine, but the passenger cars parked in back.

Kayoko at work and with one of the "steam crew"

Kayoko- passenger car

Kayoko

I especially like the way she abstracted the crowd in front. Speaking of abstract...Carlos decided to stick to black and white too. Charcoal? Conte? I love the shapes for the crowd.

Carlos

Susan went around and got a three quarter view.

Susan

Susan is another person who likes to "compose" a page with image and text.

Mike

Jeff

Mike and Jeff were working on the other side of the station, so when they didn't find the rest of us, they had their own little throwdown.

Mike and Jeff-throw

This event was a good reminder that even under challenging conditions you can make it work.

If you are new, please join our Facebook group, check us out on Instagram or follow the blog.

For our regular members, please JOIN US in Galveston on Saturday Oct 12 for our annual Galveston sketchout.