THE POST

 

The Group

Downtown's newest attraction is the renovated old main Post Office building, now known as Post Houston. The inside of the building was gutted right down to the concrete supports and turned into an indoor shopping and entertainment venue with a lovely rooftop garden. This outing drew our largest group yet- over 20 sketchers showed up!

As you might have guessed from this month's header, we were also treated to a celebration of the Lunar New Year. A local troupe did the lion dance all through the food court of the mall and Juliette captured that in a sketch. Her unusual perspective and spare colors make for a very graphic image. She also used her skills in ProCreate to draw one of the restaurant kitchens.

Juliette

In fact, restaurant kitchens was one of the favorite themes for sketchers. Bruce used ink and watercolor for his.

Bruce

Shaw picked a similar view, but her focus on the bright, red stools makes her drawing pop.

Shaw

Peggy liked the architecture and the unique graphics.

Peggy

Judith moved back and took a more expansive view of the cooks bustling around the kitchen. Simple pen and ink at the scene, but she added a few pops of color later.

Judith

And Thomas looked up to draw the large expanse of the entire food court with tables of people below. The builder added skylights and you can get the sense of sun pouring through them into the court.

Thomas

Francisco caught a family having a meal together.

Francisco

During the renovation, several unusual staircases were installed between the first and second floor. Several people took these on as a drawing challenge. And a challenge they were!

Mary M

Mary McJunkin took on the spiral stair with the clear panels. Those would complicate any drawing! She kept the color minimal and used it to define light and shadow.

Michelle took on the staircase which crosses itself in a series of X shapes. She opted for plain graphite. Her patience paid off.

Michelle

Barbara liked this staircase as well. Simple shading in pencil and colored pencil give her drawing nice volume and clarify the shapes.

Barbara

But of course the idea of a roof garden with views made many of us very happy. For years, one of the postal workers maintained a garden on the plaza in front of the post office. Now the garden is on the roof....and oh! the views!

Michael went right to work on his easel with gouache. He likes that you can just paint right over your mistakes in gouache.

Michael

Here's Jeff Mills sitting happily in the sun on the lawn drawing what he sees all around him. Jeff and his family were first-time sketchers. Welcome!

Arthur prefers to work large and in water-soluble graphite. He says he would "clean up" this sketch later in his studio. I think what many of us liked were the unusual views of downtown. These are not the postcard skylines!

Arthur

Liz took a similar approach. I believe that's the U of H downtown Bayou Building.

Liz

I also went over to the far edge of the roof to draw the north end of downtown. You can just see the Nellie Esperson building peeking through.

Chris

Francisco's skyline is just slightly to the right of mine. That's the back of the Wortham on the right. Like me, he enjoys ink and watercolor.

Francisco

Becky and Amy both focused on the garden itself and kept the skyline as a backdrop. People and activity are part of the scene, but the garden is the focus.

Becky

Amy

The pressing crowds and congestion made our traditional lunch impossible, but we all sampled the food court,  watched the Lion Dance and drummers and did our throwdown.

The throwdown

Here is a small sample of the entertainment we enjoyed.

I hope many more people who have been following us on Facebook and here on the blog will join us on our next sketchout.  

"The act of sketching makes you an urban sketcher, not the results. " -Nishant Jain -The Sneaky Art Podcast.