Month: March 2024

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Marin County Civic Center

I have had the opportunity to sketch a few of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings but I have alway wanted to sketch his biggest public project: the Marin County Civic Center.

Construction started in 1957, and Wright never saw the building completed, he died August 9, 1959. The building was completed in 1962.

The civic center is constructed in two long wings, one three stories and the other four with a combined length of 1,460 feet, which is almost five football fields. This futuristic space ship is longer than the Titanic by 578 feet!

I have driven by the Marin County Civic Center many times and I have even attempted to sketch the large building before without success. The building always looks like a space ship that somehow fits in with the rolling oak-studded hills.

The building is so futuristic looking that George Lucas used the building as a filming location in his first feature film: THX 1138 (1971).

On a wet Saturday morning I knew I was going to add the iconic building into my panoramic sketchbook. I just needed to find the right angle. This is challenging because the building is so large and trees have grown up around the center.

When I arrived it was raining with the sun breaking through the clouds creating a rainbow above the building. I pulled off and parked and although the building was partially obscured by trees, from my perspective I could sketch the 172 foot gold spire and the distinctive arches of the Civic Center.

The final sketch looks like a forest of tree’s occasionally interrupted by a futuristic civic center.

The gold spire is used as a radio transmitter and a boiler chimney.
I have been inside the Civic Center once when I was fighting a traffic ticket. The interior reminded me of a dated shopping mall.
Historical Landmark No. 999.
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Continuous Line Sketching

I have always wanted to loosen up my sketching so I did a sunrise sketch at the Santa Cruz Harbor mouth to try and keep it loose.

I started with a basic pencil sketch and then chose my Pigma Graphic 1 pen. I figured thicker lines would work best.

To sketch loose, it helps to change your grip on your drawing implement. Most of us hold a pen or pencil like we were taught in school: close to the tip with a firm grip. This is a grip for writing.

To loosen up my line I hold the pen away from the tip near the opposite end. This means sometimes I lack the precise control in my drawing but then it provides the sense of improvisation with my line.

The other way I try to loosen up my sketching is continuous line drawing. To sketch this way you draw without lifting your pen or stopping. I rendered the rocks in the levy with a continuous line sketch.

Sunrise sketch looking south towards Monterey Bay. I chose to leave the dredging barge out of the sketch.
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Polar Explorer and Golden Gate Park

I recently found an interesting connection between a Norwegian Polar explorer, an Oslo maritime museum, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

The Norwegian explorer was Roald Amundsen.

The plaque under the monument reads:

Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian polar explorer, was the first to locate the magnetic North Pole and to navigate the Northwest Passage, the Arctic water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He left Norway with a crew of six on June 16, 1903 in a 69-foot-long converted herring boat named Gjoa. Amundsen spent three years on the perilous journey. The Gjoa continued on, sailing through the Bering Straits and anchored off Point Bonita, outside the Golden Gate, on October 19, 1906. The San Francisco Norwegian community purchased the Gjoa from Amundsen and donated the ship to the people of San Francisco in 1909. In 1911, Amundsen became the first explorer to reach the South Pole. The Gjoaremained on this site at the western end of Golden Gate Park until 1972, when it was returned to Norway. The restored ship is now on display at the Maritime Museum in Oslo. 

The Amundsen monument is a bauta, or stone shaft, or Norwegian granite which was donated by Bay Area Norwegians, March 1, 1930.

I headed west to the end of Golden Gate Park to do an afterwork sketch of the monument that sits in the parking lot just north of the Beach Chalet.

I look forward to sketching the ship that was once on display near this location, it’s bow facing the Pacific Ocean. The Gjoa is now on display at the Fram Museum in Oslo.

The Gjoa was at the western edge of Golden Gate Park until 1970. The elements took their toll on the static Polar ship and rot and vandalism tarnished this once proud and pioneering ship. She was donated to Norway and headed back to her homeland.

A sketch from a c1910 postcard view from Ocean Beach looking east towards the Gjoa and the Dutch Windmill. While the Gjoa is gone, the windmill remains.

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Polar Ship Fram

Another Norwegian ship on my sketch list is across the car park from the Kon-Tiki Museum. It is a 15 minute ferry ride from Oslo City Center to the Bygoy Peninsula.

This is the three A-frame buildings that comprises the Fram Museum. Under the largest A-frame is the Polar ship Fram (Norwegian for “forward”).

The Fram is the most rugged, toughest, and most durable wooden ship ever built. It was built to explore the Polar regions.

The Fram was built in Norway as the first ship designed for the rigors of Polar research.

The Fram was used in three important Polar Expeditions. In 1910-12, explorer Roald Amundsen sailed to Antarctica for his South Pole expedition.

One of the ships also on display at the Fram Museum is the Polar Ship Gjoa. This is the first ship that sailed through the entire Northwest Passage, going from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. And I found out that the Gjoa had an interesting San Francisco connection.

More about this in the next post.

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Kon-Tiki

Rafts, boats, and ships.

Things that float (sans Titanic).

How about a balsa wood raft? How about sailing it across the Southern Pacific Ocean?

Is this the definition of insanity? Well not if you’re a Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer named Thor Heyerdahl.

Thor was a boss, a man with vision, a man who looked in the face of reason and “truth” and created his own truth. He will always be a visionary that is blessed to us once in a generation; if we’re lucky.

To prove that Polynesia could have been colonized from South America, in 1947, Heyerdahl and five others (including a parrot named Lorita), sailed a balsa wood raft over 4,000 miles across the Pacific. The raft was named the Kon-Tiki.

The expedition set off from Callao, Peru on April 28, 1947. The raft sailed for 101 days covering 4,300 miles. The journey ended as the craft smashed into a reef at Raroia on August 7, 1947.

The Kon-Tiki is now displayed at the Kon-Tiki Museum on the Bydoy Peninsula in Oslo, Norway. The Kon-Tiki is one of my top sketching targets on my summer trip to Norway.

I find it serendipitous that the best way to get a museum dedicated to an epic sea voyage is by ferry. Also on the Bydoy Peninsula are the Vikingskipshuset, the Norwegian Martine Museum, and the Fram Museum

I did a sketch of Thor, wearing the Tiki mask that is painted on Kon-Tiki’s sail. I sketched with a bamboo dip pen and I’m pleased with the rustic, and sometimes uncontrollable looking lines.