Lonsdale: Carisbrooke, 16th

On a sunny Remembrance Day and Diwali, my random Lonsdale block generator sent me riding way up the hill to Carisbrooke St and Carisbrooke Park, then back down to central Lonsdale.  The park is an impressive stand of big conifers, with more open grassy knolls.  I was surprised to read that it was created in 1912 - one of the oldest things on Lonsdale (I wonder when they'll convert it into condominiums?)  I saw a 1914 photograph, when it was just a muddy clearcut with a few trees planted by some foresightful people.  Apparently it was an arboretum, so I will have to go back and check the species more carefully.

I then coasted down the hill to 16th, for a little section of the collection of small stores and restaurants that I like along the commercial part of Lonsdale.  A musician was playing fabulous guitar behind me, a couple teenage girls watched me for a while quietly and with no apparent teenaged eye-rolling, and I had a conversation with an onlooker that went: "Urban?" "Yes." "Carry on."  

Concrete expressionism

Expanses of concrete or asphalt are a challenge - all that grey can kill a picture.  Fortunately, grey is just a subtler version of white, a mixture of all colours, so you can choose which ones to emphasize.  I picked purple and yellow for the tarmac at Vancouver airport on a late fall day, and blue and brown for a bird's-eye view of an alleyway descending into an early dusk in Edmonton.

People, people, people, and dessert

Some small people drawings from the last few days.  (The drawings are small, not the people.  Some of the people were very large indeed.)  First, in transit to the airport - a lady with a developmental disorder, who flashed through emotions as rapidly as the rest of us, but was honest enough to display them; and people with hats, including hats on top of hats.

At the airport, a mechanic trying to fix our plane.  I'm sure he was very good at his job, but he didn't look it.  In the end, they had to find another plane.  Being a bit tired of airports, I was at a loss for anything to draw to fill the time, until a troop of Buddhist monks showed up.  The young monks were attending a venerable elder monk, and taking occasional there-is-no-selfies on their phones.  That's the thing with sketching in public - when you think there's nothing to draw, a troop of monks will always appear, metaphorically or otherwise.

Then people hanging out at the Starbucks at the Chapters in Edmonton.  Everyone there seemed just a little bit outside of the normal range of standard humanity.  I fit right in.  (I like the way the big circular feature in the roof looks like a cartoon "thought balloon" in the drawing.  But what exactly are they thinking...?)

The table next to me at dinner had two chatty church ladies, no doubt as devoted as the monks to their faith.

On the seabus home in dark rainy Vancouver.

And a postscript: My hotel in Edmonton has complimentary wine and cheese tastings, and, on Thursdays, miraculously, chocolates.  A little dessert can cure a lot of the indignities and disappointments of travel.

 

Lonsdale Quay - early days, and late

Two lunch-time drawings from Lonsdale Quay - one in early October when there was still summer warmth in the sun, and one from the end of the month when summer is a memory already fading.  The multi-coloured school-kids eating lunch in the sun were all energy and life, but still, you remember what insecurities and jealousies can torment those early days.  The old man sitting alone looking over the grey ocean under the darkening clouds doesn't seem to support much ambiguity.  But still, that red hat!

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.