Another trip to you-know-where

I seem to go to Edmonton a lot.  Fortunately, little drawing opportunities abound.  Here are five fairly haphazard examples from the last trip.

First, quick portraits on the seabus and sky-train to the airport.  My portrait drawing may not be getting any better, but I am learning to find people who don't move much, or get off at the next stop.  I think all three of these gentlemen may be secret agents.

Then a panorama at the airport.  I actually did the right half on a previous trip, but then I noticed that this trip's view aligned right beside the old one, so a bit of (inexpert) Photoshopping gave me a panorama.  My flight always seems to leave from the same gate, so I think I have a project for the next 10 or so trips.  (And, of course, it is always blue-sky sunny in Vancouver...)

I try to draw surreptitiously when I'm at a restaurant by myself - it passes the time three times faster than pretending to look at important things on my smart-phone.  But I was caught this time, by a lady who graciously continued to pose until her group was leaving, when she demanded to see my drawing. She continued to be gracious, despite the not entirely flattering portrait.

Many of the buildings at the University of Alberta are connected by walkways and tunnels, which are fun to explore (and practical on cold days).  You find esoteric things of interest along the way, like this dissected plane engine on an overpass through an engineering building.

And finally, a view from the hotel window, reminding this Vancouverite that it is winter in parts of Canada.

Busy places

A couple drawings in the last few weeks from busy places.  "Busy" not just in the sense of lots of people, but also busy for drawing - lots of little things, tables, shelves, bottles, doors, walls, signs, lights, pipes, wires, and, yes, people.  I like doing detailed drawings of busy places when I feel I have time, but I'd also like to figure out how to capture all that busyness quickly, for my more time-pressed moments (or just so that I can captured more of the amazing busyness of the world!).  Someone told me once that the secret to drawing hair is just to draw it.  I'm sure the same wisdom applies to drawing busy scenes quickly.  The only problem is that I'm not quite sure what they meant...

Flamenco and Cruella

 It was a weekend of life-drawing, in two venues that were about as different as could be.  First, Saturday morning at Basic Inquiry for poses by a lovely flamenco dancer.  There was a full house at the studio, with an intense, highly reverential atmosphere that was inspiring for drawing Sula's elegant and hard-working poses (You try holding your arms in the air without moving for 10 minutes).  Mind you, I do think my third drawing looks more like a Greek freedom-fighter storming the ramparts in a hail of bullets...

That was followed on Sunday night by another full house at Dr. Sketchy's, where the intense and highly irreverential atmosphere was equally inspiring for drawing the sometimes less elegant but still hard-working poses of Diamond Minx, posing as Cruella de Vil of 101 Dalmatians fame.

Which do I prefer?  A toss-up - both were great.  (Well, maybe a slight edge to Dr Sketchy, since I won the prestigious Dr Sketchy's pencil award.  But only because no one else drew the requisite number of Dalmatians.  Even though mine look more like popcorn.)

Travel - people, places (and beer)

Travel - even a mundane work trip to Edmonton - always brings a few interesting moments.  The best one on last week's trip to oil-land was on the seabus in Vancouver on my way to the airport.  I was drawing with my headphones on, and I noticed the lady beside me watching intently.  After a few minutes, she tapped on my shoulder, handed me her notebook and said "Draw me".  This was a bit stressful, especially because we were about 4 minutes from the end of the trip.  I've learned that doing small portraits in pen, it's very easy to make someone look a lot older than they are - each little line in the wrong place looks like a serious wrinkle.  I managed to do a clean, reasonably accurate 3-minute portrait (which she made me sign - you never know when I might become famous...)  She then did a portrait of me in my sketchbook, adopting a somewhat more minimalist style than I use (I made her sign it, because you never know...).  It was a fun, and rare, interaction between strangers - and less strangers now, because even three minutes of looking intently at someone tells you a bit about them, enough that I was able to recreate the portrait from memory later.

Otherwise, the usual mix of airports, a wintry-grey view from my hotel room, random people sitting places (including the Air Canada lounge at the Edmonton Airport, courtesy of a guest pass, and a Starbucks where I was briefly stranded as freezing rain made being a pedestrian a life-risking venture), and, of course, continued training for my future career as a beer illustrator.

The drawing channel

Not having a television at home, they are a novel experience when I'm in a hotel.  I found a channel that shows a continuous series of (highly oversaturated) photographs for 45 seconds each - perfect for practicing quick ink-and-watercolour sketches.  It's like circuit-training.  I drew about half of the pictures in a 30-minute show, 18 in total.  

Birdy rocks

Being a bike-rider and a bit of a birder, I keep an annual NMT bird list.  NMT = "non-motorized transport" - so, any birds you can see within walking, cycling, skiing, paddling distance of your home.  There's an astounding variety of habitats I can reach, ranging from intertidal mudflats to old-growth forest to open alpine areas, and even, if I push it, that most prized birding habitat, a sewage lagoon. 

One of the more distinctive spots is the Grebe Islets, two rocky pieces of land visible from a cliffside park in West Vancouver.  I rode there in the fog on Wednesday, timing it miraculously so that the fog was just lifting as I arrived.  All kinds of birds proceeded to pass by or pop up from the back sides of the islets, and I could paint while I waited for them.

Today I took the long way around Stanley Park on the way home from a downtown urban-sketchers meetup.  I found 28 black oystercatchers huddled on a near-shore rock - a remarkable number of these remarkable birds.  They were unfazed by a skinny-dipping couple woo-hooing loudly into the water nearby, but a passing eagle sent them into panicked flight.  The one gull remained, with a "Uh, what's happening?" look.

A bit of the Arctic in Vancouver

No, not the weather - warm, sunny and flowering bushes starting to bloom here.   But a visitor from the far north has taken up residence for the winter across the bridge in Vancouver.  The gyrfalcon is the biggest falcon, breeding on cliffs near the Arctic Ocean and hunting ducks, seabirds and the like by chasing them down in the open.  For three years now, a gyrfalcon has spent the winter in Vancouver at the Viterra grain terminal near the Second Narrows bridge - a tall, cliff-like structure right on the ocean, with open areas around, and, best of all, huge flocks of grain-fed pigeons.  It's just like home.  Except for the noise.  And the rain.  And the flowers in January.