September was a busy month for sketch meetups. I went to both Boulder meets in addition to the Fort Collins one since they didn't overlap this time! I keep telling myself I'm going to discuss each of these outings in separate posts and never do, so I'm throwing them into one post so I can stop being so behind. The overarching theme was cool buildings.

The first Boulder meetup was on Labor Day weekend. The rest of the group hung around the brick buildings in the main neighborhood, but I went to go check out the new branch of the Boulder library nearby. It's a fascinating building that is basically a bunch of metal prisms stuck together. The front side has a big wood accent wall, but I was more interested in the back because there's a big yellow slide coming off it. On top of that, the playground looks like a mini-forest made up of a bunch of wooden "tree trunk" structures. The whole thing is very strange and nothing should work as well as it does. Big fan.

I drew the building in pencil from the xeriscape garden next to the playground, then finished with paint and ink on one of the tables closer to the building. This was not the smartest move because it was a hot day and the table was hotter. The "umbrellas" shading the table were also metal, so they didn't help too much.

The week after that, I went to the September meet for the Fort Collins group. We were at the CSU Trial Gardens, and the flowers were flourishing despite the hot and dry summer we've had. This time there were more kids and more dogs!

I've drawn the flowers at the trial garden many times, so once again I left the group and set up camp at a house across the street. I've thought about drawing it every time I see it, so it was finally time to do something about that. The house is currently CSU property and I'm not entirely sure what it's used for. All I can find online is that it's used for employee training, the nature of which is unclear.

According to The Coloradoan, the house was built in 1929 and is the former home of the Delta Delta Delta sorority (Δ³??), then the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, and then various other unnamed frats until the school bought it.

Anyway, it's a cool house! The brick is in great shape and much of it is engulfed in vegetation, which is always a positive for me. There's also a huge tree in the front. Getting this building on paper was an interesting experience because my first attempt was pretty bad and I burned an hour on it. I got too ambitious and tried to fit the entire house into the spread, and I didn't have a good plan for the color palette. The good thing is I had a much more focused vision the second time.

Speaking of frats, there's still an active frat house across the street. I shouldn't have been surprised since I see high school boys every day, but I was still amazed at how much noise a bunch of teenage and early 20-something boys can make on a Saturday morning.

I made my way out to see the Boulder group again the next week because the meet was in Longmont, which is more convenient for me to get to than Boulder is. I've been meaning to spend more time in Longmont anyway, so this was a good excuse!

I got comfortable on a bench across the street from the Dickens Opera House on Main Street because it's a very eye-catching building. I love the contrast of the black and cream with the brick. It has its own Wikipedia page and is in the National Register of Historic Places! It was built in 1881, then received an expansion in 1905. It has had many different tenants in addition to the original opera house. The building was restored in 1985-1986 after sitting vacant for 10 years.

I decided I would try really hard to finish the painting without putting pen on top as usual. I messed with no-pen paintings in Washington when I visited Curi, but that was limited to mostly plants/trees and not an entire street with actual buildings AND A CAR.

I also finally convinced my mom to come out and draw! Exciting! She keeps telling me she didn't like doing still life drawings in college. I had to convince her this is way more fun than fruit. She ended up drawing (fake) fruit anyway.