Granville Island: Bird poop and a super cute stranger

We had a morning meet-up at Granville Island, thanks to Lea, who knows the coolest things.  I was there early, so I went to get coffee at the Railspur cafe, but there was a huge line-up.  I decided to skip the coffee and do my groceries instead - a fateful decision, as it turned out.  I bought my cucumber, tomato, bun and tofu salami-substitute.  I usually like the smells in the market, but today, caffeine-less, none appealed.  Even a super cute stranger passing by didn't inspire me.  I decided to head home and make a sandwich.  When I got there, the misery of my loneliness grew, until, despondent, I headed to a nearby park and threw myself off a cliff into the ocean.  At the last moment, a remarkable delegation of geese, pigeons and crows picked me up and carried me off, leaving me one last glimpse of the lovely hair of the stranger.

Wait, no, that's not how it was meant to end.  I didn't actually throw myself off the cliff, or even go home to make a sandwich.  I decided to find true love and went searching the island for the stranger, super cute as she was.  I even went so far as to look in Woofles, the pet treat bakery.  Alas, the gods of romantic love chose to punish me for perceived past transgressions, and covered me in avian effluvia before I encountered the object of my ardour.  She disappeared.  Resigned to my misery, I decided to flee the island - running right across a busy street.  Remarkably though I went right over the cars, becoming lighter and lighter as I ran, until finally I literally flew home.

~ The End ~

Choose your adventure(s) story courtesy of Active Fiction (http://activefictionproject.com/), at locations around Granville Island during the Vancouver Writer's Festival.

Two more Lonsdale

Another two installments of draw-every-block-on-Lonsdale.  I now realize that there are quite a few boring blocks on Lonsdale.  In retrospect, I should have decided to draw every block of, say, the Champs Elysee.  But, here I am on Lonsdale.  The upper block at St. James featured a west coast house with the obligatory Rona fence panels and dark brooding conifers.  But it was exciting to draw, because the much-heralded remnants of Hurricane Oho were arriving, with gusty wind, rushing clouds and the first rain starting as I finished.  The lower block between 4th and 5th "featured" beige apartment buildings.  I used the desperate move of including a tree branch in the foreground to try to make it more interesting.  The most exciting part of that sketch was when I sat down under the oak tree - in what turned out to be a very prickly shrub.

Lonsdale - Upper Levels Highway

With a couple hours free on a lovely early fall afternoon, I finally returned to my project to draw all the blocks on Lonsdale.  My random number generator sent me to the block where Lonsdale passes over the Upper Levels Highway, so I was able to capture one of the great cultural treasures of North Vancouver - the hours-long traffic jam that extends across the whole city every day as people try to get to the Second Narrows Bridge.  It was a fairly intense drawing experience on the bridge, with traffic roaring up Lonsdale behind me, and traffic going nowhere beneath me.  I did remember one essential drawing tool - noise-cancelling headphones.  That made it quite bearable, and I was thankful that I didn't have to draw that block on a rainy evening in November.

Spare moments

Motivated by starting a new mini-sketchbook, I found some good sketching moments on this week's work trip to Edmonton.  It seems there's a lot more time for drawing than you would think, if you don't do silly things like work all the time...

Fun challenge - try to find Satan in the drawings below.  Hint: He's playing a stringed instrument.  He actually seemed to be a cheerful fellow, but pens slip sometimes.  Or maybe the Guinness let me see through to his true nature?

Flamenco opening tonight

A group show of flamenco-themed art "Arte y Pasion" is opening tonight at Basic Inquiry - 1011 Main Street, Vancouver (across the street and just north of the Via and Greyhound station).  Everyone is invited to the opening, 7-10pm.  It should be exciting - there are 80 works from 27 artists plus unframed sketches, and there will be flamenco guitar music and dancing courtesy of Flamenco Roasario.  I have 4 pictures in the show and a handful of sketches.

An eve with Adam

Adam was our model at Simply Drawing on Thursday evening.  (As an unfigleafed model, he's probably a bit tired of the Garden of Eden allusions, but I couldn't resist).  Having done a fair amount of life drawing, there's some trepidation walking into a session, knowing that it's going to be three hours of struggle.  So it's a relief to see a model with features that make the drawing easier - wrinkles, ample curves, well-defined muscles, quirky faces, or ... dreadlocks!  Lots of big dreadlocks!  And a dreadbeard!  (If that's a thing.)  Adam was a joy to draw, especially when I remembered wise words that Shari Blaukopf said in a workshop "You can make your lines and washes accurate or not - that's up to you.  But you have to make them interesting."  Drawing or painting every dreadstrand was out of the question, so I worked on interesting, or at least fun.

As an aside, I've been busy with work recently, mostly pushing artistic endeavours aside.  But tonight I saw a picture on the internet painted in 1943, an urban-sketch of Marakesh.  It was by an amateur artist, name of Winston Churchill.  I understand that he too had a pressing day-job at the time.  But he didn't let it get completely in the way of what was important...

 

Dr Tiki

Dr Sketchy returned to a cafe, after the no-fun-loving City of Vancouver shut down the show at the Wallflower Cafe - some licence technicality about not allowing women on stage where good food is served and no gang members are present.  A venue up the street - which should probably remain nameless, because you never know when a Vancouver municipal employee might read my blog - hosted the event, with Lydia deCarlo as Cheeky Tiki.  She had the '60's housewife "exotica" look down pat, with the yellow dress, the hair, and, of course, the leopard-print underwear.  And the cool music to go with it all.  I forgot how much I missed Dr Sketchy nights.  I'll be following it around to its future clandestine locations - until the City of Vancouver shuts it down again, for illegal use of a giant clam shell or simply for being too much fun.