I’ve lived in Chicago, and called it home for 15 years. I dig the city. Aside from the extreme flatness, I’ve found it to be very engaging. From the tremendously expansive skies, the magnificence of the lake it builds up to, it’s architectural significance, the food, the people, and even the weather. I stay pretty engage here. It has considerable extremes, big disparity in income and opportunities. The weather, not it’s biggest selling point, can be oppressively hot and stifling then shatteringly frigid. It’s a city that I’ve described as grand but not pretty. Large tracts of it could be said to be blunt. And wealth is evident. No surprise, city amenities and services follow the bucks. It was a big blue collar town but it has been developing more and more to the needs and nods of a white collar work force. The areas of this city that don’t have deep pockets can be quite brutal. In the 15 years I’ve lived here, and the 6 years prior to that during which I would come and visit my friend Tony Fitzpatrick, the city has seen very evident changes, not just in the profile and elevation of the city’s skyline, but in the taming of several rugged neighborhoods. A process some refer to as gentrification.
I will say that the previous administration made real effort to glamorize the urban experience in parts. And while in the minds of many, mine included, the previous mayor may have had a fondness for arboreal development, large floral planters along some of the boulevards, rooftop gardens and showy park improvements, he went out a cad for a truly miserable and suspect privatization of the city’s parking meters. His record on public schools was nothing to mention on a resume either. The dreadful misadventures of meters and schools aside, the city has some neighborhoods with real gracious amenities. And some sections of the city enjoy being extremely engaging and beautiful urban habitats. Might even call some areas pretty at long last. The campus of Loyola in Rogers Park has seen a remarkable turnaround from one of the country’s bleakest campuses to a thoughtful and more bucolic public space that takes full advantage of it’s choice lakeside plot.
  
 
 
 
Continuing to make extensive use of white on toned paper, be it the Pitt Big Brush Pen or White China Marker, sometimes combining both. I like laying one or both down as a base over which I can add color to spike it’s luminosity and achieve a cleaner hue. I do wish I could get a starker black on the toned paper. It seems to me that it softens or dulls the pitch thru absorption and contrast perhaps. Fountain pens don’t produce as crisp an edge in these books either.
 
 
 
Shot out to the Big Apple where I took in a little action at Belmont race track. Pretty slim crowd. But enjoyed hanging with Rob & Barney-G. We dined on deli take out, whitefish salad out by the paddocks.
Following 3 drawings done in Chicago just before heading off to NYC & Portland, Oregon.
  
 
 View of Edgewater and downtown sky scrappers from my back porch during a neighborhood blackout.
Heading out from O’Hare, did the above sweep of the boarding area. I seldom seem to settle into these air terminal transit drawings.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
While I was drawing the statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Portland Museum of Art, I heard a scuffle develop behind me and turned in time to see 3 men tumble to the pavement. A couple of cops had just taken down the man depicted above in light pans and racing striped jacket. Cops came flooding into the area and grabbed and cuffed another fellow from a nearby bench.
 
 
The above drawing is a clear example of why I invest a little more in some drawings. The multiple light sources was so compelling and challenging and made the drawing more specific to character, time of day, mood, and an effect some landscape architects might call “light pollution”.
 
 
 
 
Life drawings from the Palette & Chisel 12 hour life drawing marathon.
Drawings done in Utrecht & Strathmore toned paper sketchbooks, Moleskine watercolor pad, with Pitt Artist Pens, Pelikan M215 & Visconti Rembrandt fountain pens using Platinum Carbon ink, and White China marker grease pencil.
I was walking about downtown St. Paul with artist Ken Avidor and we happened upon a police crime scene 1 block from the hotel I was staying at. We both drew the event and you can see the witness still sitting in the transit kiosk.
After we finished, we went back to Ken’s place to post the drawings on an Urban Sketchers’ site. I left there near midnight and returned to the hotel I was staying at where I showed the night front desk clerk the sketch. Turns out, a fellow connected with the event had snuck into the lobby and was hiding in the lobby balcony. The night clerk could here him wheezing and panting and then told him he had to leave, to which the fellow responded he wasn’t going back out because, “they were going to kill me”.
Woke early and drew, from my hotel room window, the transit kiosk where the victim, who made it to the hospital ER alive, collapsed.
Top drawing done with fountain pen, and Pitt Artist Pens in Molskine watercolor notebook.
Middle drawing, fp, PAP, and Pitt Artist Pen white in a Strathmore toned sketchbook.
Bottom drawing, fp filled with Noodlers Ottoman Blue and PAPs in Moleskine.
 
 
Working in a Stillman & Birn Delta series spiral watercolor pad and combining fountain pens ( Graf von Faber-Castell Guilloche Chevron and Pelikan M215, both broad nibs) juiced with Platinum Carbon ink and Faber-Castell Aquarelle graphite pencils and Pitt Artist Pens.
