Vancouver Island Sketches

In May we went to visit family on Vancouver Island.

Here's a sketch from Vancouver Airport.  The island terminal is pretty tiny, and the planes are all propellor planes.  I said that if the flight took more than 15 minutes I'd be disappointed, and it took 13.

Once on the island I found it hard to get out and sketch.  When you're there with someone it's rather boring for them to sit around for hours.  We did a lot of hiking and birdwatching, but I did manage to get a few things done.

Here are some little sailboats at the Nanaimo Yacht Club.

This was painted on a hike around Englishman River Falls near Qualicum Beach.  I did a quick sketch of the falls.  The day was overcast and the birding wasn't all that great.  Apparently I had a Steller's iay hopping in a tree over my head the whole time.  I get a lot of blue jays in my yard so I was keen to see the Steller's but they just weren't cooperating.  I got a bare glimpse of the one above me just before it flew away.

But at least I got some kind of painting out of the deal.

I set aside a bit more time for sketching in downtown Nanaimo.  I got both these buildings on the same day.  It was tough.  I was bitten by ants.  Don't sit too close to an anthill while sketching, kids.

I got a chance to sketch a few people, too.  A couple at Penny's Palapa in Nanaimo, and a few people in Victoria.  We didn't spend very much time in Victoria.  We meant to do more than we did, but we didn't realize that Tofino was so far from Nanaimo and that all the activities we were planning for required more preparation.

Oh well, we go back to see family every couple of years, next time we'll hit the west end of the island and do some canoeing.  In the meantime I did do a ton of birdwatching and we saw some very neat species that I never would have noticed otherwise.  Also, turtles!  It has been a dream of mine to see pond turtles ever since I started hiking, and now I have.  We saw a whole row of them sunning themselves on logs.

Next time my run-down on Art Walk and paintings.

Sketchdump

Woof.  It's been a while!  One gets busy and goes on vacation and the garden starts sprouting and before you know it it's mid-June.  As always I go out with the local Urban Sketchers on the first Saturday of every month.  It's nice to chat with other artists and get to draw somewhere where I don't usually draw.

The weather finally warmed up in April so we were able to start sketching outside.  Our first trip out was to Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton.

The Art Gallery of Alberta:

What a weird building this is.  It makes me thing of the time that I had to design a building for an illustration and I scribbled random shapes until they looked futuristic.  The client liked it.  I think this is how they design buildings now.  (Of course my random shapes did not have to stand up and not fall on people so I am not going to knock the difficulties of actually making one of these things.  I'm just knocking the concept process.)

A guy having coffee with his friend in the square.  His friend kept moving, though, so I had to leave it at this guy.

 City Market is always a good bet for drawing:

 A singer and a vendor.  The singer was really good!

The girl I sketched on the LRT.  The guy was a friend of one of the sketchers and he had such a great face that I was requested to draw him.

That was it for April.  I sketched a couple things from life in between.  I want to finish that dang sketchbook so that I can start a new journal book.

This was a hare we caught napping in our yard.

We named it Loafcake for a number of reasons.  If it seems like it's listing to one side, that's because it was.  I'm astonished it didn't fall over.

My shoes, for Everday Matters Challenge #1:

These may be the coolest shoes that I own.  They remind me of my mom, who had great taste in shoes.

May's Sketchout was at  Jackson Power Gallery, where one of our sketchers had an exhibition.  It was quite interesting.  She does encaustic, primarily, and transfers photographs that she has found in the provincial archives onto various materials.  This exhibition was about pioneer women and included excerpts from letters that they had written to friends and relatives.  They were often very isolated and lived in very primitive conditions.  It was very cool to experience a bit of history.

This was a clothesline strung with photographs transferred onto cloth.  The objects beneath were related to pioneer women's life somehow -- there were broken teacups, surgical instruments, medicine bottles and dried bean pods.  Fans made the cloth flutter and the objects tinkle.

This was an industrial building seen from the window of the gallery.  (It was kind of a nasty day for sketching outdoors.)

This lamp was part of another, related exhibit by another artist.  He had recreated his grandmother's parlour using old family furniture.  It was a tiny room and there were four or five sketchers crammed into it at any one time since it had both knickknacks and comfy chairs.

"Lamp" was the second challenge for Everyday Matters, though, so I had to come back and draw it.

Later in the month I got a chance to sketch this girl on the LRT.  I love finding neat people to draw on the train.  I wish I rode it more often.

And that's it for the last couple months of sketching.  Next up some miscalleneous art, and then my sketches from Vancouver Island and then a boatload of paintings.

March Sketchout

The Urban Sketchers March Sketch-out was at the Royal Alberta Museum. The day was awfully cold (-29C on March 1st? Really Mother Nature? REALLY?) and I wasn't sure whether I was going to go, but in the end I did and I was glad that I went.  I expected the museum to be empty, but the cheap admission and cold weather lured quite a few families out.  So much so that the cafeteria kitchen was actually closed at one when our group tried to get lunch there!  I had to settle for a slightly stale cinnamon bun.  Some 20 minutes later some of the other girls were able to get salads and sandwiches but the grill was so far behind that it had to stay closed.

Still, it was a fun time.  Next time I will bring Neil, who had been hoping to come along but found himself feeling sick all weekend.

The museum has an extensive collection of animals (mostly stuffed, obviously, except for the bugs which skitter around in all their multilegged glory), which are fun to draw. Mostly I try to draw animals from life, which is challenging because they are almost always moving.  Last year I became interested in bird watching, so I had a great time seeing their bird collection and trying to identify some of the birds I had seen but not confirmed.

For the first half hour I actually found myself trapped in the crafts area with a group of children who were doing a bird-colouring workshop.  I had been lured in by the owl and snow bunting, neither of which I've seen in the wild, and they closed the door on me!  The kids have a much shorter attention span than I do, though, and they were done with their birds long before I was done with mine.

 

Afterwards I wandered over to the First Nations Exhibit, which has some interesting tools and clothing.  I wish I had had more time to spend there, but by that point the museum was getting quite busy.  We'll be going back soon, though, and I'm hoping to have a chance to look closer at the areas I ended up rushing through.

This jingle dress is from the early 1990s.  It reminds me of my school days, when we would occasionally have native dancers at the school assemblies.

 

After lunch I took another turn through the nature dioramas, which I had also rushed through at the beginning.  The part that I like the best is that the paintings behind the dioramas all come from real places around Alberta.  It makes me want to fly out to Fort Smith and hike the Slave Rapids Trail.  There's a lot of stuff up north that I would love to see, with a little bit of camping know-how and a lot of bug spray.

Anyway, I had to draw a mountain goat for Neil:

We've only seen mountain goats once in real life, driving somewhere along the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff.  We got really lucky that time because they were right by the side of the road, there was a herd of them, and they had kids with them.  And then... nothing.  You can always see bighorn sheep, but good luck seeing a goat.

Fun fact: mountain goats are not actually closely related to true goats.  They have their own genus within the goat-antelope family.

I also sketched some mule deer.

Bonus sketche: a few days later I was hanging around the house and wanted to draw some still life.  This is a pair of salt and pepper shakers Neil's parents gave us for Christmas.  They are very silly!  Also, rather challenging to sketch.

Hopefully I can get a few more journal sketches done this month.  I am also copying from Bridgman, which takes up a good deal of time (about one seventh of the way through!) and working on a series of children's illustrations.  So far March has been decently productive and I'd like to keep it that way!

February Sketchcrawl

 I ended January feeling like I was coming down with a cold, and Neil and I ended up postponing our anniversary dinner on Friday.  I wasn't sure whether I would be up for everything I had planned for February 1st.  I did really want to do Hourly Comics Day, though, and it is rather boring drawing comics about how you lay around all day reading books.  And I felt all right on Saturday morning so I decided to go out sketching after all.

The Muttart conservatory is always a neat place to sketch.  The last few times I went I concentrated on the show pavilion because they always have something new on display.  This time they had it set up for Chinese New Year.

I sketched this little foo dog sculpture, which someone had decorated with a wilted azalea flower.

 

After the foo dog I had just enough time to sketch this neat lily-like plant I found in the tropical pavilion:

Then we had a break for lunch and showing off sketches.  We had a nice turnout and several new sketchers.  I especially like the work that some of our watercolourists do.  It's quite lovely.  There are so many interesting, different styles represented.

After we finished I still had some time before evening festivities, so I went back and sketched one of the bonsai trees set up in the show pavilion.

It was a nicely productive sketch-out, but a very busy day overall.  Next time I'll post the hourly comic I made of this whole experience.

Portraits

I love drawing portraits.  Faces are one of my favourite things to draw.  I could be an awfully happy portrait artist except that I hate to approach people and ask them to model.  I think I ended up a landscape artist at least partly because you never have to ask a tree whether you can draw it.

So most of the time I end up either using photos, or quickly scribbling people in the wild.

Well, for the January Sketchout someone in our sketch group suggested that we have a portrait party and it has been one of my favourite sketchouts so far.  I had two wonderful hours of indulging in my usually furtive hobby, then I had a spectacular omelette, and then we may have converted the waitress.  I'll have to keep an eye out for her at the next meeting.

Anyway, here are two of my fellow sketchers:

About a week after that I ended up at a board game cafe and sketched some patrons while people got caught up on gossip and decided on which game to play.  These were random people at other tables:

I think the girls were playing Cards Against Humanity, which is horrible and wonderful and if you have a black sense of humour and some friends you should totally play it.

I think that one of my resolutions at some point should be to start asking people to model for sketch portraits more often.  Every day do something that scares you, right?

Sketchcrawl - Bison Sculpture

After the Urban Sketchers group had lunch, a couple of us went back for another round of sketching.  We wanted to draw this crazy bison sculpture.  I don't know why I thought it would be a brilliant idea, in general trying to make art of other different art is a mistake.  Still, I'm glad I went back to get some more practice.

Sketchcrawl - Great Ape

Our Urban Sketchers group went to the Shaw Conference Centre the weekend after Hallowe'en.  While I was painting on the second level, a crew was preparing the hall behind me for some sort of party happening later that evening.  Eventually they dragged this plaster statue of King Kong (I assume) out of the hall and put it smack in the middle of the floor.  After I finished my watercolour sketch I had to draw the monkey.

Inktober - Cement Truck

Went out for lunch with a friend, and when we finished I sketched some construction equipment across from her workplace.  This is a composite of two trucks because of course you can't start sketching anything without it buggering off halfway through the drawing.  And my small camera is broken so I never bother to bring it along when I'm biking around.

Inktober - Going Away Party

Some friends at a farewell pub bash for an old friend.

Inktober - Sofa

My living room sofa, from life.

Inktober - Philodendron

This Inktober thing could easily become Draw My Plants month.  I think I could draw a different indoor plant every day for a month without leaving my house.

Inktober - Tea and Coffee

I don't know if I'm going to do all of Inktober, since I have a pile of illustrations and paintings to finish, but I like ink and I've been thinking of doing more drawings.  Also after a summer of biking and gardening I am trying to get back into a more productive schedule.  It's not that I haven't been drawing, I've just been so awful about scanning any of it.  As I am writing this I am a month behind on my blog posts.

Anyway.  Here's a sketch to celebrate the start of hot drink season.  Kettle, teapot, and coffee grinder.

Journal Sketches - Airport

A man at one of the airports we went through on the way home.  I was experimenting with something here and I'm not sure it worked.

Journal Sketches - Cafe Plume

It was a chilly morning in Montreal and we rode our rented bikes to Cafe Plume for coffee.  It was busy and we didn't stay there long, just long enough to inhale a couple of lattes and for me to sketch this guy.  I liked how he was framed by the window and the plant.

Journal Sketches - Miso Ya

The weather turned cool suddenly.  I wanted to go downtown and sketch some of the architecture but we had to find a place where Neil could sit and work while I sketched, where I wouldn't freeze, and where interesting architecture could be seen.  We ended up in a lounge on the second floor of one of the Concordia University buildings.  Good old school campuses, they never let you down.

My brother went to Concordia and it was interesting seeing his school.

Journal Sketch - Parc La Fontaine

Back in Montreal, this time to see my brother get married.  We rented bikes again and revisited all our favourite places from the last trip.  Here we spent an afternoon at Parc La Fontaine before heading out to a BBQ with our new sister-in-law's family.

I forgot half my usual entertainment for the trip so I spent every morning reading Stapleton Kearns's blog at breakfast.  Here there was nothing to work with but trees, so I played around with the design a bit.  I quite like the shapes of all the trunks, except that big black one on the right.  I should have removed that big left branch.

While we were sitting by the pond looking at the trees, an older couple sat at a bench near us and started feeding ducks.  Very soon we were on the periphery of a large flock of quacking ducks (all mallards, damn their beady eyes) and some seagulls.  It was entertaining.

Sketchcrawl - Old Train Interior

Our September Sketchcrawl actually happened a week early so that we could visit the Alberta Railway Museum before it closed down for the fall. It was a lovely day for it and the train cars were very interesting, but my trip was plagued by disaster.  I had wandered around some of the cars and settled down to sketching this antique smoking car when I realized that my water bottle had come undone and was leaking into my bag.  Unfortunately my bag is water resistant and my camera was swimming in a small pool of water contained by the bag.  I had to take immediate action.

I removed the camera and my soggy wallet and dumped the rest of the water outside.  Then I had to slog back to my car, damp things in hand.  I left my drawing stool and water bottle behind.  I spread out all the wet things in my trunk to dry out, switched all the non-wet things to my backpack, and then went to the washroom to collect some paper towels so I could clean up the spill.

Then I lost the train I had been drawing in.  I spent half an hour wandering in and out of all the cars trying to find my folding stool.  There are four different sets of cars and I had not taken any special pains to remember which one I had exited because I assumed I would find my things when I got back.

So... the last train in the row of trains is longer than all the others and it runs behind a little warehouse.  The end of it is some ways down the road.  In my preoccupation I hadn't noted that I was passing the warehouse, so I was searching all the short trains, convinced that someone had taken my things.

Eventually I decided to backtrack more systematically and I discovered my mistake.  Everything was exactly where I had left it, except the puddle of water which people had tracked all over the room.  Sigh.

After that I didn't have a lot of time to sketch and my inks were shaky anyway.  I gave up a bit early and after our group dispersed I went back on the rural roads, parked by a little church and had a calm couple of hours painting beside a duck pond.

Sketchcrawl - Mango Peelers

The last sketch from the Heritage Festival.  I believe this was behind the Guatemala Pavilion, which always has Mangos Locos -- mangos on a stick rolled in chili and lime.  This is one of the more popular items at the festival, and they have piles and piles and piles of mango boxes in the back and obviously a dedicated (if small) cadre of mango preppers.

Sketchcrawl - Heritage Festival

The August Sketchcrawl was held on the first day of the Edmonton Heritage Festival.  I always do a bit of sketching there but this time I had a couple hours to wander around and sketch random people.  Here are a couple stilt-walkers and a lady wearing a bright butterfly caftan, tidying up the dresses in one of the African tents.

The best thing about the stilt-walkers was that the stilts all had baby shoes on the bottom.  I saw them again the next day and they were wearing completely different costumes.

Sketchcrawl - Lantern

From my sketchgroup's visit to the ALES Museum at the University farm.  They have a lot of neat farm stuff.