A bit of the Arctic in Vancouver

No, not the weather - warm, sunny and flowering bushes starting to bloom here.   But a visitor from the far north has taken up residence for the winter across the bridge in Vancouver.  The gyrfalcon is the biggest falcon, breeding on cliffs near the Arctic Ocean and hunting ducks, seabirds and the like by chasing them down in the open.  For three years now, a gyrfalcon has spent the winter in Vancouver at the Viterra grain terminal near the Second Narrows bridge - a tall, cliff-like structure right on the ocean, with open areas around, and, best of all, huge flocks of grain-fed pigeons.  It's just like home.  Except for the noise.  And the rain.  And the flowers in January.

Chinese art at the Vancouver Art Gallery

The Vancouver Art Gallery hosted an impressive show of art from the Forbidden City in Beijing.  I went there with the Vancouver Urban Sketchers on the last weekend of the show, which was also the last weekend of the holidays.  Half the population of Vancouver realized that this meant it was the last chance to see the exhibits.  My gallery membership paid for itself in the pleasure of being able to walk right by the line-up that stretched out the door.  There were many groups of elderly Chinese people, probably the generation who migrated here and who would never have had a chance to see the emperors' collections, along with their children, who were translating the information signs for their parents.  The younger generation was struggling with the Mandarin, asking each other "What's the word for..." - I guess you don't get many opportunities to say "Sedan chair for carrying the emperor around" or "Empress' ceremonial coat" too often in Canada.

There was also an accompanying exhibition of some contemporary Chinese art.  I didn't get a chance to see too much of it, mainly because - like half the other sketchers - I was captivated by trying to draw Ai WeiWei's installation of a room full of traditional three-legged stools, all joined together in higgledy-piggledy ways to form soaring arches and swooping caverns.  Most sketchers sensibly focused on a small part, but I foolishly tried to draw all 886 stools.  That show is on for a few more months, so I'll get back to fill in any of the 2,658 legs I missed, and see the rest of the art.

Giving houses for Christmas

A gift hint for urban sketchers - you can give people a drawing of their house, even if they live on the other side of the country.  You don't have to be there, because Google Streetview almost certainly has been.  I was actually at my sister's red-brick house in Kingston this fall, but didn't think to take a picture.  So, the all-seeing eye of Google to the rescue...

The other little house is The Viking cabin at Hollyburn, in the hey-day of its pink phase, long before Google.  The cabin, we are told, was painted pink by a former owner as a protest against some restriction placed on his architectural ambitions by the municipality.  When we acquired it last summer, it was an inglorious brown, and on - or mostly fallen off - its last legs.  Fortunately a few old photos and a bit of imagination let me restore it, at least in the drawing for Kelly.  The real cabin we had to disassemble, salvaging non-rotten logs, hauling painted parts down the trail and to the landfill, and burning the unusable clean wood.  Next summer, we'll build a very similar replacement.  But not pink.  Purple maybe?  Chartreuse?  Or perhaps just natural unpainted wood...

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.