Sea to sky to station to symphony

I covered a bit of ground in Vancouver recently.  The highlight was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's reading of a piece by Glenn Sutherland - a biologist friend and erstwhile urban-sketcher, who composes VSO-level music in his spare time.  The piece "To See Again with Spirit Eyes", and music by five other composers, was amazing.  It is well beyond my ability to even think of composing music, let alone for 55 or so top-level professional musicians.  And watching the symphony perform a piece basically on sight, then go through it with the conductor pointing out improvements was incredible.  He would say things like "OK, let's start at bar 75" and off they would go, completely in synch (to my non-expert ear).  My drawing fell short in comparison - I didn't catch the main essence of a theatre, with is how the lighting makes the performers look more real than life, while the (highly ornate) Orpheum Theatre itself just provides an elegant but dark frame.  Maybe I'll get it right when I go listen to Glenn's full Symphony #1 next year.

Mudflats may not be exactly what most people would expect to follow the Orpheum Theatre.  I could make up something about the theatre of life playing out on the ecological stage, but really, it's just a place that I like and it's where I went next.

Following the Sea to Sky motto used excessively around here, my next drawing was done sitting in 2 meters of snow at Unknown Lake, up Hollyburn mountain.  It's in the cross-country ski area, where, despite perfect snow and spring weather, it was just me, a curious raven, a lusty sapsucker (my interpretation of his or her persistent drumming) and an irate squirrel.

And then, because in Vancouver you are supposed to ski and golf in the same day, and I don't golf, a quick trip over town to the Vancouver Urbansketchers 3rd anniversary meet-up at the train station, where it all started.  I just caught the tail end of the meet-up, so did my own quick sketch afterwards.  I sat at a bus stop with a talkative old man (language spoken not entirely certain) and two Canada geese.  I didn't find out why the geese were waiting at a bus stop.

Lonsdale contrasts

Three Lonsdale blocks over three weeks - a warm sunny day, two cold wet ones, but one of those under cover of a bus shelter.  There was as much contrast in the subjects - modest old and somewhat decrepit houses on the upper part of Lonsdale; humble but cheerful businesses in the laundromat - vacuum cleaners - shoe repair - clogs - naturopath - Luigi's barbershop block of central Lonsdale; and the new luxury condo buildings going up at 13th.  I also had a contrast in my company on each block - two men doing some kind of clandestine business deal that I tried not to notice in a truck right in front of me in upper Lonsdale; sullen teenagers studiously avoiding eye contact with anything non-electronic at the 17th street bus shelter; a friendly and interesting lady, and two old men speaking an incomprehensible Spanish dialect at 13th St.  And, of course, that variety is really the nub of urban-sketching.

Big trees

Two hemlocks from Hollyburn, and an arbutus from Mayne Island.  One mountain hemlock standing tall on the edge of our cabin clearing, as winter dusk falls quickly in the forest behind.  The other hemlock, on a warm drippy day as the snowpack recedes, revealing the world at the base of its truck.  And the giant arbutus on Mayne Island, strong enough that it can be whatever shape it wants to be, thank you very much.

Mayne Island

We went to Mayne Island in the Gulf Islands last weekend for a career retrospective show by Kelly's aunt, Sarah Landry.  Sally is a biological illustrator and artist, who did famous drawings for biologist E.O. Wilson's books (she calls him "Ed"; that's like calling Obama "Barry"), Peterson field guides, large-scale murals at aquariums, and many stand-alone works.  It was amazing to see the assembled collection, and realize how much painstaking effort was required to produce so many drawings that are accurate, detailed and beautifully nuanced.  And at the other end of the scale, here are some of my drawings...

A couple very quick sketches from the ferry.  There are two types of people in the world - those who stand outside on the ferry, regardless of cold, wind, rain and sleet, and those who don't.  In other words, there's me and the rest of the world.  The first was done in blowing rain - definitely "wet on wet" technique -, the second in sleet during the brief stop at Galliano Island, sheltering the page with my body so I could use my water-soluble pen.

Then another quick drawing between rainstorms and in-law family events, from Canada's newest national park, which is scattered across the southern Gulf Islands.

And a couple somewhat more leisurely drawings on the sunny following day, at the Georgina Pt. lighthouse, with either Galliano Island or the mainland in the background.

Finally, on the return journey, I joined the sensible majority for at least part of the trip, and drew Mt Baker and surroundings through the ferry window, as storm clouds gathered again.

Up and down a sunny Lonsdale

Warm sunny holiday Mondays don't happen very often in February, so you have to pack a lot in, including 3 blocks of Lonsdale sketching.  I did all three in water-soluble pen and watercolour - a combination always right on the edge of big-black-blob disaster, but it forces me to keep the lines simple and it's just not an option to overwork the watercolour.  I got all three done within two hours, including riding time.

The top of the three was above 29th St, home of the Queen's Cross pub.  It's mentioned in Spirit of the West's The Crawl, so the verbal part of my mind was "We're good old boys, we come from the North Shore..." the whole time.

Then ten blocks down to 19th, where there are - remarkably for North Vancouver - five restaurants in a row without a single sushi place. Just Thai, Szechuan, pizza, candy (not really a restaurant, and for lease - it will probably become a sushi place) and Malaysian.

And all the way down the hill to the block above Esplanade.  Aldo Leopold wrote "The sadness discernible in some marshes arises, perhaps, from their once having harbored cranes."  The sadness discernible in this building arises from it once having harboured Paine's Hardware, a place with as much history as the rest of North Vancouver, and which always had the obscure bolt you needed, on the top of a shelf in the basement, where it had been waiting for you for 50 years.  It burned down (accidentally?) several years ago, and is now just a facade in front of condos, with a spa and an "integrative pharmacy."

Cafe captures

Cafes are like zoos for people - there's a variety of creatures, and they don't move around much.  Perfect for drawing!

Seven more days

I've kept up the drawing-a-day thing for January.  Besides feeling guilty if I don't draw, this lets me try more new things.  These two drawings were about quickness - I used a timer for the pen and the watercolour stages, for a total of 8 minutes (excluding the time to drop my brush off the porch and crawl through wet shrubbery to retrieve it):

These ones were about liveliness.  I channeled my inner Don McNulty for the street scene, done while I waited for Kelly to grab something from her office:

This one was character-building - could I stand to draw the parking lot outside the supermarket from my car?  (Just barely):

And two having fun with shapes of snow-covered things up the mountain, and trying to represent the background forest without actually drawing any of it:

[An observant observer will note that those are only 7 drawings over 11 days.  They don't all work.  If you don't fall, you're not skiing hard enough.  Or, as Orville and Wilbur said, you can't learn to fly without crashing a few times.]