Portland & Sun Prints

Oodles of doodles or noodles?

Sep 18, 2023

Last month, my partner, Garrett, and I went to Portland, Oregon for a 3-day weekend. I’d been wanting to take one of Rita Sabler’s workshops and he’d never been to the city so it was a perfect little weekend getaway!

Burmese food from Top Burmese. Orange Olive Oil doughnut and Lemon Poppy Old-Fashioned doughnut from Blue Star! Also shoutout to my cousin, Marje and her partner Earvin for putting me onto Burmese food!! And Mrs. Garrett’s mom (still don’t know what to call my partner’s parents lol) for telling us to try out Blue Star.

The drawing workshop was fun! I learned a lot of good information and we tried to implement it all the next day when we went to the Japanese garden. I think Garrett had a breakthrough in his work…I kinda just sketched how I usually do *oops*.

If anyone is interested, my main takeaways were:

Write down 3 adjectives about your subject (creepy, old, sinister, etc.)
Note visual impressions about the subject that reinforce the adjectives you came up with, including details and colors (e.g. cobwebs under the roof and weathered walls make the building look creepy and old)
Edit the things that don’t reinforce the adjectives (the door is actually newly painted, but no one has to know…)
Anthropomorphize the subject (what kind of person does it look like? maybe a Victorian governess or a witch?)

It was super helpful stuff! Challenging to implement though, especially when you’ve been stuck drawing a certain way and you’re usually mindless about it.

Didn’t include any drawings from the class since they need a lot of work, lol…but enjoy this doodle of a tree and my beautiful boy.

Drew a bunch of these little stone houses all throughout the garden. If anyone knows what they’re called, please let me know!

We also went to a bunch of different shops. One was a secondhand craft store called Scrap, which was really awesome. They had a bunch of stuff for drawing, painting, crafts, bookbinding, and more! I got an Altoids tin and filled it with the following:

Yes, I paid for an acorn, BUT it was a REALLY good-looking acorn. Also everything only cost me $2!! I paid with cash! It was practically free. Girl math!

At a different store, I bought a small Sunprint Kit. Thought it’d be fun to try with my little cousin, Aro, once I got back home.

After the weekend, we thankfully were able to get back to LA safely. It was a bit scary because we flew in while Hurricane Hilary was happening! Shoutout to my sibling, Aria, and my mom for driving through a whole hurricane/storm situation to come get us from the airport!

Anddd finally, about a month later (a few weeks ago), Aro and I finally got to try out the sunprint kit! It was pretty easy, but probably would’ve been a lot easier if I read the instructions thoroughly…lol. I printed 4 whole prints, not realizing I hadn’t taken the protective film off of the acrylic glass that goes on top of everything you’re printing. No wonder everything was coming out so blurry! Oops. But it was smooth sailing after that!