A week of Christmas drawings

My Old Year's Resolution: Do a drawing a day for the rest of the year.  Which shouldn't be so difficult, starting as I did on December 22.  

Beer and pretzels

Continued development of my alternative career as a beer illustrator.  And, because man cannot live on beer alone, pretzels.

Nine ladies dancing

Well, three ladies, but multiple drawings of each.  And they weren't really dancing, they were posing.  But there was music involved.  Two from Dr Sketchy's - Lola Frost in "Frost Bite" and Sweet Virginia in "The Gibson Girl" (Dr Sketchy regulars will be able to figure out what the competition was in the second picture, involving a Victorian hairbrush) - and a flamenco dancer at Basic Inquiry.  Coming next, 10 lords a'leaping.  Or maybe 5 golden rings, that would be easier.

December in Edmonton and Vancouver

I met fellow urbansketcher Fei at the Chapters on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, a good refuge for winter sketching.  The main challenge is that it is dark so early.  I tried to capture the contrast between the late afternoon cold outside the window and the warmly lit interior - not totally successfully, but I like the yellow-purple combination.

The Edmonton airport is mostly quite awful, but there were a few nice things to draw, including an impressive two-story green wall.

Back in Vancouver, the meet-up group went to the Santa Claus parade.  It was a strange event.  The crowd - all dressed in black - was surly when I tried to pass through to get to the meetup; the "floats" seemed to be dominated by various police, fire and military vehicles, which didn't really seem festive; there was a cacophony of sirens, horns, bagpipes, and some kind of mournful wailing (a good thing was that the noise drowned out any Christmas carols - we've already had a month of those).  Or maybe I was just being a scrooge...

Fortunately, being Vancouver, there also happened to be an anime convention nearby, which attracted a large group of cosplay people.  They were cheerful, friendly, and, best of all, colourful.  The drawing reminds me of elves I used to draw on Christmas cards 40 years ago.