Gerald's Sketch Journal

Here we are again, for another exciting Sketchcrawl adventure. But this time it took place in the infamous Alcatraz Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. A site occupied by Native Americans during 1969-1972, a military fortification, a lighthouse, and a former federal prison which housed famous inmates from the "Birdman" to "Al Capone".

I was truly bummed that my friend Debra could not come along for the trip. She made it as far as the ticket booth and the tickets were completely sold out. I almost didn't make it myself, but Leila posted on the Sketchcrawl forum that she had an extra ticket for the 1145am ferry. I really wanted to get the full experience riding with Erico, Ronnie, and the camera crew from Pixar. And Leila totally pulled through, I can't thank her enough.

The ferry ride was shorter than I expected and the weather was amazingly bright and sunny. I warmed up and started with a sketch of the Dock Tower. The only living thing watching from up there was a seagull.

From there I headed towards the Power House which was on the opposite side of the island. Tried to sketch the numerous pipes hanging out of the wall, but the overall composition turned out flat and uninteresting. So I scrapped it, met up with Noah and walked on down to the meeting place for lunch. I really only brought some snacks so I decided to head up to the upper level to take on my next sketch. There I found a little shack with the Telegraph Hill in the background. Spent a good hour up there before I moved on.

I eventually caught up with Ronnie and the gang in front of the Lighthouse. It was a little crowded so I continued towards the Recreation Yard. I tried my hardest to get in there, I was a Salmon swimming upstream...the traffic of people was against me. So I decided to do a 180 and head back down for one last sketch. The original red roofs were smothered with moss.

It was 3:30pm by now, so I packed it up and headed back to the Boat Dock. On the ferry ride back to the city, we exchanged sketch journals on the upper deck. If I recall correctly, I got to see the sketches of John Hoffman, Jenny Wang, Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie del Carmen, and Amelia. Everyone's illustrations were quite impressive. Heres's a link to the other sketches from other participants during the Alcatraz crawl.

The funny thing is, when I check Enrico's blog that same night, I had no clue that Tadahiro Uesugi was in our presence during the whole trip. He's the same artist along with Enrico and Ronnie that will present the "3 Trees make a Forest" show in NYC next month. His work is absolutely amazing, just incredible lighting and composition...I almost fell out of my computer chair in disbelief. Argggg! Until next month fellow sketch-crawlers.