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.

Sketchcrawl - River Valley

Muttart Conservatory, painted from the Shaw Conference Center.  Now that I'm looking at it, it could have used some ink.

Oh well, all this stuff is still there, it's just covered in snow.  Next year I'll snap a photo and use this as the basis for a proper painting.

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 - Dancer

I managed to catch one of the girls in ethnic dancing gear still for long enough for me to sketch her.  These were all done from life, no photos.  I believe this was one of the Croatian dancers.  They wore jingling coin vests for one of the dances.

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 - Garage

From the Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl at the University Farm.  I used to go by this old garage nearly every day on my way to work.  One of these days I should go out there and paint it before it falls down completely.

Sketchcrawl - Lantern

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

Sketchcrawl - Space Science Centre 2

I didn't have much time left after the last sketch so I threw this one together.  The perspective worked out not so badly but in hindsight I should have stuck to the B&W version.  Oh well, there's only so much one can do with crap pencil crayons.  I might neaten up the windows and the grass a bit.

Sketchcrawl - Space Science Centre

The Urban Sketchers sketchcrawl at the Space Science Centre.  This was a fun building to draw, and this sketch turned out well.

What you can't see is a faint yellow mist surrounding everything, composed of pollen from all the evergreens.  Ick.

Sketchcrawl - Steeps

Sketchcrawl - Government House

I only had time for one sketch on our last outing, so I tried to make it nice and detailed.  I'm going to have to visit again to see what the inside of it is like.  Maybe next weekend?

Done in orange PITT pen.

Journal - Book Desk

There was a desk with books on its legs at City Hall.  Mystifying.

Journal - City Market

Journal - Sculptures

I just couldn't get behind the HUB sketchcrawl.  I'm in HUB like... once a week anyway.  So I circled around some of the surrounding buildings looking at stuff I don't usually get to look at.  This was a sculpture display in the Fine Arts Building.

Journal - Planter

From this month's Sketchcrawl.  I was going to sketch the giant aloes they had in the pedway between HUB Mall and Rutherford Library, but they were removed.  Instead the planters were filled with ordinary tropical plants, but some of the planters had plaster heads in them.

See, this is why I support public art.  I don't want to live in a world without weird surprises.

Sketchcrawl - Vendor

One of the vendors at the market.  Can't remember what she was selling, but as my view of her booth was blocked every 10 seconds, she was probably doing well.