Gold Medal Park

Monday evening I had the opportunity to get together with the Visual Journal Collective through the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts. The event for the evening was sketching outside on site (a personal favorite), in preparation for a Minnesota State Fair sketching get together. The sketch location was Gold Medal Park right next to the Guthrie on the Mississippi River. Above is my sketch for the evening.

Sitting at the top of the park I almost forget how much of Minneapolis is really visible. With the Mississippi River, the Stone Arch Bridge, the Guthrie, and a park setting, it was hard to decide what to draw for the night. While walking around the park, my eye caught sight of this old building across the river.  I really wish I knew what it is. Please do let me know if you get a chance, so I can add a name to my sketchbook.

I did want to take a few seconds here and talk about process, as everything takes time and thought to develop and unfold.

1. This is what I was able to draw by the end of the gathering (by the time it got dark).  In general I like to make a bunch of quick pencil lines to get an overall idea of perspective, scale, proportions, and composition. At this point I try to not get too carried away in details.  Once I got home and looked at the sketch again, I decided to add the bold boarder.

2. Erase all those pencil lines! Graphite never really stays on paper anyways. Once everything had been inked over, I erased all the pencil lines and started to add color with the sky.

3. Hmmm... more color and more detail.  Windows always seem to be worth the effort in drawing every little mullion. From here I kept adding more layers of color and then decided how to do shade and shadow (or just shade in this case).

If you get the chance to compare the end image to the photo, there are two key things that were intentionally changed to create a more interesting image.  One being a more exaggerated perspective (from my view the perspective was too flat, I thought something a bit more dynamic might be more interesting), and I changed the direction the sun was coming from to let the light façade lead the eye across the page.

Seriously though, what is the name of this building?