Last week I met up with the Urban Sketchers group at Volunteer Park. It was an unseasonably sunny and warm weekday—I was glad I had arranged my schedule so I could attend.
One of the challenges at these events, is quickly deciding what you want to sketch and then finding the angle or perspective to work from. Since the weather was so amazing, I knew I wanted to sketch outside, and directly across from the Seattle Asian Arts Museum is one of my all-time, favorite sculptures. It was an easy choice. Isamu Noguchi’s Black Sun is iconic in its design and placement, looking out over the Seattle skyline. Its fame has been mistakenly amplified, as the reference for Sound Garden’s famous song, Black Hole Sun.
It’s hard to describe the satisfying assembly of soft curves and polished facets of the statue. It was carved in Japan from a single piece of Brazilian black granite. The color appears black from a distance, but as you get close, it is super nuanced, with speckles of green, brown and golden tones. I wanted to emphasize the color variation, so I added layer after layer of color washes as I built up the value. The skyline in the background helped tell the story of where this is in Seattle, but I wanted to keep the focus on the sculpture, so I left it more suggestive and less saturated. I’m grateful to have spent a warm day in the park with my fellow sketchers and to have a page in my sketchbook dedicated to the Black Sun.
Noguchi’s Black Sun sculpture in Volunteer Park.
