Urban Sketcher

Posted on May 22, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

Vancouver Art Gallery patio. That’s the rooftop of the Hotel Vancouver in the background. As usual, I had not looked at all those different gargoyles closely before.

One of my favourite patios in town is the Gallery Cafe at the Vancouver Art Gallery. You don’t have to be a ticket-holding gallery visitor to access this cafe. It’s got a cafeteria-style counter with reasonably-priced food and drinks, and a large outdoor patio with lots of green plants, flowers, and umbrellas.

I held an impromptu Meetup sketching session here on May 16, and two lively women joined me: Marie-Pierre and Cindy. These two are full of personality, they both like to ham it up. We had a great time and spent about 2 1/2 hours there. The sun came out right on time, and we coasted from the lunch rush through to some people’s early stages of Happy Hour. Cindy furtively sketched an English tourist who caught on to her and asked to see his picture, then got his wife to photograph him, Cindy, and the drawing. Turns out his wife is an urban sketcher too! I should have asked for her blog or flickr — it seems all of us have them.

Mom, dad — I’m going into urban sketching

Right after this sketching session, I had a meeting with the Dean of Continuing Studies at VCC to discuss having me teach some courses related to graphic design. I showed her my sketchbook and she got all excited about having me teach a course in urban sketching! Who knows if that will happen, but just the idea of it is more than I had ever imagined would result from this hobby of mine. And so much has already happened.

Posted on May 20, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

At the end of a good day, we had this paella dinner at friends, one of whom is an amazing cook. It tasted as good as it looks. Saffron is a key ingredient. Whenever I have saffron, I think, “I should eat saffron more often.”

This would have been worth a drawing too, but not at the expense of my social life. Most dishes are best eaten while warm and at the same time as one’s friends.

Posted on May 20, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

I set up an urban sketching meetup at the Public Library downtown on May 11.

It turned out to be warm enough to draw outside, and a group of us actually stayed close together and talked as we sketched. The rest of the group came to join us at the end and I felt a really good vibe of people enjoying themselves, which made me very happy.

Vancouver Public Library exterior. One of the other sketchers, Manish, sat down after I had done most of the sketch, but it’s fun to deal with additions. Constant changes in people and cars and weather is what you have to count on when you sketch on location.

I came back alone a few days later to also sketch the Vancouver Public Library atrium. I didn’t like this building years ago when it was first presented to the public in a preview. I thought the Colosseum-like structure was too derivative. But now I really like this building, the huge, covered interior atrium is perfect for our rainy climate, and it adds variety to the uniform glass-and-steel look that is typical for Vancouver.

Vancouver Public Library outside view.

Vancouver Public Library atrium view.

Posted on May 14, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

Dr. Sketchy Vancouver featured a fun model wearing a hazmat suit to go with a “Breaking Bad” theme — a TV show I am not familiar with. But since I am not big on crime shows, I think I like the burlesque version better.

This was fun! On May 5, one of the urban sketchers, Dino, from the Meetup group joined me at Dr. Sketchy and we sketched up a storm in order to keep up with this model. I animated some of my 1-minute sketches here. Check out Dino’s lively drawings which don’t need animation.

Posted on May 9, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

Actually, “spring” is a lie. Look at the date on the sketch. I started drawing this in August 2011, and I finally went back there on May 4, 2013 to finish this drawing. It was a summer-like weekend, this past May 4/5. I rode my bike to Kits Beach, on a mission to finish this one thing.

These people in the foreground were there 2 years ago, but they must have left in the meantime to work or live or something, because they were no longer there. But what is time anyway? Does it really matter whether a sketch is completed in 20 minutes or in 2 years?

Posted on May 8, 2013 in Vancouver | 1 comment

Another successful outing with the Vancouver Urban Sketchers Meetup group that I run. About 7 or 8 of us sketched around the SeaBus terminal/Waterfront Station on a gorgeous, summer-like May 5.

I even waited around until the SeaBus arrived at its dock (far left) to add it to the drawing. The long bridge and passage way shows people walking from downtown across the rail tracks to the SeaBus.

I have worked in the downtown core of Vancouver for about 7 years of my life, in 4 different offices, and have looked at this view many times before, but never saw it as I did now. Funny, how once you really start looking at something, almost everything turns out to be interesting.

Posted on May 7, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

The weather was cold and wet, so our workshop had a low turnout. But we went outside as planned, and about half of us quickly retreated to Moonpennies, an ironically named cafe at the corner of Thurlow and Pender Street. It is a great place for sketching with lots of windowfront seating looking over the urban landscape. I only had about 30 minutes to do this sketch and didn’t think much of it at the time, but I quite like it now. And sans colour on this gray day felt about right.

My fellow sketchers Matthew and Dave joined me in presenting a workshop on urban sketching at the Annual General Meeting of the BC Society of Landscape Architects on April 27. We highlighted the global organization we belong to, urbansketchers.org.

We were also asked to present a PechaKucha on urban sketching at the conference the day before. I took it on, and had fun preparing a presentation of 20 slides x 20 seconds of talking = 6:40 minutes. Not too stressful, although I was nervous as I was sitting there waiting for my turn. But I was encouraged by the fact that all the other presenters seemed nervous too, and then it wasn’t all that bad. And how hard can it be to talk about something you enjoy doing so much?

Reconnecting with Julien Thomas, social artist

The first presenter up was Julien F. Thomas. As soon as he started, I recognized him as the nice young guy that I had coffee with about a year ago on a traffic island that he had occupied on the E. 10th Avenue bike route. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late May. I had been teaching in the VCC design program for 4 months last spring, and was cycling home from mounting the design student graduation show at a downtown gallery. It was the very last thing on my list of full-time teaching duties I had taken on in addition to working in my business in 2012. I had been working 60–80 hour weeks for almost the last three months. I was exhausted. But I was done. I had a euphoric sense of sudden freedom from a huge burden, a feeling of time and space generously opening up in front of me, so I was up for almost anything. A nice-looking young man sitting in the middle of a traffic island called out to me “want a coffee?” as I rode my bike around him. I hit the brakes.

We had a good conversation over coffee, brewed with water from an electric kettle on an extension cord on the sidewalk, with organic cream that Julien produced from somewhere in the bushes.

But back to the conference. As he got going on his PechaKucha, I realized why he was chosen to go first. He did an amazing, passionate job presenting on his various social art projects.

Pechakucha this

Oh, and I think PechaKucha should be a verb. As in, “has anyone pechakucha’d that yet?” or “I’ll have to pechakucha you on why you should chop garlic by hand rather than in a food processor”. It probably already is. If only I had a globalized, easily accessible search function at my fingertips, I could find out.

Posted on Apr 30, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

I organized a Meetup sketch outing here. I am glad I sat down and started drawing almost immediately, because people kept trundling in for about 30 minutes. So I was able to welcome them while drawing, and didn’t wait around doing nothing. Although there is nothing wrong with doing nothing. I should do nothing more often.

There were 9 of us in the end. All very nice sketchers. One of them even fetched me a coffee — thanks Cindy!

I am realizing how many people are new in town, or come here temporarily to work, study, or improve their English. There is definitely a social aspect to this urban sketching Meetup. I am hoping to find the right balance between chatting and drawing. Luckily, one can do both at the same time, even though it takes getting used to.

I really enjoyed the Skytrain ride there and back, especially back. It was sunny and sitting on the Skytrain, I seemed to float above all the greening, blossoming trees towards the mountains, having sort of a bird’s eye view, admittedly the view of a low-flying kind of bird, but it was a neat feeling to imagine being a bird.

Clearly I don’t ride the Skytrain very often, and not in rush hour. I know the poetic bird feelings wouldn’t come up so much if it was my regular commute.

Posted on Apr 28, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

A meetup with other Vancouver urban sketchers in Chinatown turned out cold and rainy, so we went inside the International Village mall. We found a large table at the Starbucks, so I did one sketch there, and then went upstairs to draw the vertigo-inducing view from a higher floor down.

This mall lost a lot of tenants in the last few years. But there are signs of recovery.

I tried to speed up my sketching time, so these are not as detailed as I normally draw.

Posted on Apr 25, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

My sketching visits to coffee shops continue. Off and on it’s still a bit too cold to draw outside.

I am using a different sketchbook sometimes now, still a Moleskine but not always the expensive watercolour sketchbook. I want to jot scenes down more quickly and I don’t always take the time to colour them in, so this plain paper sketchbook works well. The colour of the paper is quite yellow. But it’s cheaper — good for my post-Berlin budget.

I came here on the weekend because I heard that they have home-made croissants only then. But I must be a croissant snob: it just wasn’t very good. A bit flavourless, and not buttery and flaky enough. If I’m going to spend $2.75 on a pastry, it better be worth it. And croissants cost the same all over the city, so may as well go where they have the good ones. Good coffee though, and really a nice place to hang out, both inside and out. And I had a scone here the other day that was very good.

All this talk about croissants is really just procrastination. I have a load of work to do and need to get back to it.