Snowy day

It doesn't snow often in Vancouver, but when it does, it does it well.  This weekend had a solid 20cm in North Vancouver.  I did one sketch in the cafe down the street.  People there should really get more fresh air, or maybe I should change the colours I use for skin tones. Then I spent the rest of the day thinking that I should draw the snow itself before the inevitable slushy melt. I thought so long about doing that that it was late dusk before I managed a quick watercolour sketch out the window, trying to get the impression of the snow on the deck railing, tree and neighbour's roof.

Ecuador - Rio Napo II

Last of the Ecuador trip pictures - one of the amazingly huge rainforest trees, a kapok maybe.  I decided that the only way to draw the immensely complicated tangle of understory, midstory and canopy was not to, but to focus on the gradient from almost twilight conditions at the ground through green leaves to the upper layers catching the sunlight, and then the branches of the emergent tree against the blue sky.

Then the boat trip back to the harbour on the river at Coca, and the sweltering wait in small airport at Coca, before the long journey north.  The headline in the paper in Quito on the way back translated as "Canada gripped by icy cold".  You expect the weather to be a bit colder in Canada in January than in the Amazon, but not international-headline-worthy colder...

Ecuador - Rio Napo I

 The last part of our trip to Ecuador took us by plane to Coca, along the Rio Napo, a main tributary of the Amazon.  Coca is the Fort MacMurray of Ecuador, a not-very-pleasant oil boomtown - except that it is +40C at this time of year, not -40.  From there, we went 2 hours downstream in a motorized canoe, then into Sacha Lodge on a blackwater lagoon in the rain forest.  It is a lovely lodge, the height of rustic luxury in the middle of the jungle (mind you, anywhere that provides a waterproof roof and cold beer in the Amazon would qualify as luxury to me).

Plants were a big part of my drawing there, because, of course, that's the whole point of a jungle, but also because I love the old botanical drawings, particularly from the tropics.  Unfortunately, my tropical botany doesn't extend much past the level of "big leaf", "funny-looking red flowers" and "sap-green-with-a-bit-of-Hooker's-green stem".  The lodge owns a big reserve of forest with a network of trails, as well as towers that let you hang out in the canopy with the monkeys and birds (even if you don't have a prehensile tail).

The birds are so diverse, and the lodge's guides so good, that my bird list for two days filled most of a page, although I managed to fit in a quick drawing of an extremely odd sunset that we saw over the lagoon - a great place for a swim, unless you get unlucky with one of the many piranhas, caimans or electric eels that you are sharing it with.

Ecuador - Quito II

Quito sprawls right below a volcano, with a gondola going up to one of its ridges at 4050m elevation.  We walked from the gondola station through the beautiful grassy paramo - open alpine meadows - up to about 4250m, stopping to breathe every 100 steps.  I drew the peak, by far my highest-elevation on-the-ground drawing.

Back in the city, we climbed up the huge basilica.  It's not a good idea for people who are afraid of heights, because the last part of the climb is on a set of rickety ladders on the outside of the top of the tower.  But it has a great view of the old part of Quito.  Instead of gargoyles, the gothic cathedral has parrots, penguins, boobies, frigatebirds, toads, and, at the top, condors.  A church for naturalists.  Many parts of the adornments on the building seem to be missing, presumably cast down by God to smite passing sinners.  The architecture is immensely elaborate - the only way to cope with drawing all that complexity from the top of one of the towers is to do it really quickly.

Ecuador - Quito I

Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is in a high central valley in the Andes.  It sprawls 30km north-south but is only a few km wide, with barrios heading up the hills on each side.  The old colonial part of town is a lovely chaos of narrow streets, open plazas, some grand buildings, innumerable tiny stores and restaurants, street vendors, and far more people walking than driving.  We stayed at an old family home in the centre of the old town, with a beautiful courtyard, original nineteenth century furniture, eclectic modern art, and an incredibly friendly and helpful family running it - all for 1/4 the price I pay to stay in Edmonton.  The view is of Panecillo ("little bun") a prominent hill with a huge angel statue that can be seen from all over the city, which helps get you home when you are disoriented in the twisting streets.

Quito has a reputation as a dangerous city, although we had no problems at all using basic common sense about watching packs and pockets, avoiding empty streets (which would be hard to find anyway), and looking like we knew what we were doing.  But even more so, there were police everywhere.  When I was drawing in a busy street, 5 of them ending up standing around me watching me draw - couldn't have been safer! 

Ecuador - Papallacta

From Mindo on the west slope of the Andes, we went up, back through the crazy labyrinth of Quito (where people stand in busy intersections selling newspapers, flowers, tamales, inflatable penguins and charged cell-phone batteries), and over Papallacta Pass to the top of the east slope.  The destination was the village of Papallacta, just below the pass.  It's a stormy place, where the hot humid tropical air meets the cold alpine.  Thus, "Andes at Papallacta, storm coming up from the Amazon" - not quite Church's Heart of the Andes, but dramatic enough when I was drawing in the cold wind with the black clouds piling up in all directions.

A local man I talked to there said (I think) "Everything you see here will be gone one day" - which is true of everything, but more imminently in Papallacta, built right below the big, active volcano Antisana.  The upside is that the valley is full of hot springs in the meantime, including a relatively swishy "resort" that was our destination.  You can sit in lovely pools among the strange subalpine vegetation, right beside the rushing mountain stream that is the very start of the Amazon (or one of many very starts, anyway). It's all quite relaxing - until you get on the bus back to Quito, with its failing brakes and very much not-failing sound system playing Funkytown, along with the usual lurid poster of Jesus, Mary and Little Bo Peep(? - my Catholic theology is a bit weak).

Silver Star

An intermission from Ecuador drawings, for a long-weekend trip to Silver Star ski resort, near Vernon.  It was too cold for lift-skiing, but great for cross-country and snowshoeing.  And, of course, for drawing.  One of the mornings had a cold clear sky, but all kinds of sunrise colours on the clouds low down in the valley.  The village at Silver Star has a western-mining-town/Victorian theme going, so many of the houses are cheerfully coloured and ornate.  I drew the yellow house standing outside at -15C, getting increasingly frantic as I tried to get the details down before I lost all feeling in my hand.  I can't seem to draw with any kind of glove on - which is good for speeding up the sketches, not so good for retaining a full set of fingers.  I added the colour in front of the fire.  There was a snow-sculpture contest going on in the village, fortunately visible from a cafe window.  I'm not sure if the standing fellow was one of the snow-carvers, an artistic director, or a model - the sculpture ended up looking a lot like him. Interestingly, an avant-garde abstract snow sculpture won the competition.