Spare moments

 I had a quick and meeting-filled trip to Edmonton.  But there are always spare minutes for drawing - waiting for airplanes, waiting for people to show up for meetings, waiting for dinner.  I carry what people think is a laptop case, but it actually contains pens, sketchbooks, watercolour paints, brushes and a little jar of water.

The fire-fighting equipment out the window at the Vancouver airport looked remarkably antique, but at least you don't have to run and find the keys when you need it in a hurry.  While I was doing the painting, one businessman looked at me and said "Now I've seen everything."  I think he might have a limited conception of "everything", but it is rare to see anyone not staring at their smart phone.

The big South Park sign is at a car dealership on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton (well, truck dealership - it's Alberta).  It's not looking its best, with peeling paint, so I'm glad to have drawn it before it disappears.

The table next to me at the Italian restaurant was clearly a family dinner.  They all had heavy dark-rimmed glasses and held their hands clasped under their chins.  None of them noticed me drawing them, because their peripheral vision was so obscured by the thick arms of their glasses.

Three sisters

No, not a Dr Sketchy's gimmick. The Navajo Three Sisters are corn, squash and beans.  These ones are from Kelly's Edible Garden Project sharing garden.  Besides making a complete protein, the three grow together in mutual harmony.  The corn stalks provide a pole for the beans to climb, the squash covers everyone's feet to keep them moist, and the beans fix nitrogen to feed the other two.  They also make a nice palette of colours for an early autumn drawing.

Dr Sketchy's steamy punk and ... theft!

I haven't been drawing much lately - my free time and energy is being spent on the cabin.  But I did get to Dr. Sketchy's for their steam punk themed night, with Ann Narky.  Ms. Narky had a lovely costume, which she was too eager to get rid of.  I couldn't do justice to the complicated dress, monocle and other steam punk accoutrements in 2 minute poses.  We decided that the models should put more of their costumes on as the poses get longer later in the night.

In other news, I had my first art theft.  That is, the first thing I've made that was stolen.  (As opposed to me stealing art.  That's where the Vermeer I have hidden in the basement comes from.)  I made a simple Sears-Roebuck-type leaded-glass window for a local store.  It had been there for a year or so, then someone broke in in the night, unscrewed the window and took it.  Nothing else was stolen.  I figure it must have been a commissioned theft for some unscrupulous collector, or maybe it's being used as collateral for some underworld dealing?  So, something I have in common with Rembrandt, van Gogh and Munch.

Needle Peak

I joined my friend Russ for a hike up Needle Peak, near the Coquihalla summit and about halfway between his home in Kamloops and mine in Vancouver.  It's a great hike, with the first half hour or so on a steep forested slope, but then the rest of the day in rocky subalpine and alpine.  A little scramble took us to the summit, which looks like it should take a lot more climbing to get there.  The drawing has Needle Peak in the background of an alpine tarn on Flatiron mountain, the next peak over, and an easy part of the same day's walk.

Hollyburn cabin

We are working on disassembling an old abandoned cabin in the Hollyburn Ridge area, and eventually rebuilding it.  The cabin dates from the 1920's or 30's and is called The Viking, for reasons lost in antiquity but presumably involving a Scandinavian.  It spent part of its life bright pink, apparently as a protest against some restriction imposed by the municipality that administers the land.  Some of the purlins are an orange that must have come from the 1970's.  So far we have removed a large amount of junk that accumulated in and around the cabin, braced the supports so that it doesn't fall down while we're working on it, removed the metal and shake roofs, and pulled out windows and a framed porch.  The yellow cedar logs will start coming down next.  I did also find some time in there to hike up to the peak.  It was covered in fog, but the bumper crop of huckleberries and blueberries more than made up for the lack of view.

The Q

The Q at Lonsdale Quay is a prominent feature of the North Vancouver waterfront.  It would probably be really annoying if you had a thing against Q's.  I don't, but I had still never drawn it before today.  I went down to the adjacent pier to do a painting in the "Realistic Abstract" style: based on a real scene, but with much of the interest coming from the paint itself - the shapes, colours, patterns, composition.  It was an immediate disaster - a crumple-up-and-throw-in-the-ocean disaster (except that I took it home to the well-used crumpled-up-paper recycling).  So I reverted to my pen-and-watercolour standard.  Then at home I tried again for a more abstract version based on my memory of the scene.  It's much simpler, but still far more to the "realistic" end of the scale than I intended (except for the horrible white "reflections" in the water).  Practice, practice, practice...

Seton Portage paintage

Back to Seton Portage for a few days.  This time I tried to do all my sketches in paint, or at least starting with the paint and only adding pen lines if I felt desperate.  I was concentrating on values - the darks and lights that make paintings convincing, and which I often make wishy-washy when I'm colouring in pen drawings.  They range from 20-minute to 1-hour efforts.  And then a quick value-scribble of the setting sun with my pen, which was feeling neglected.