Urban Sketcher

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

This was a beautiful, large-scale pageant of boats and ceremonial tribal garments, as well as a touching ceremony. It was full of emotional pain and sadness, shockingly so. There are deep wounds in the First Nations consciousness. It’s easy to forget those in one’s everyday life.

Many First Nations people attended this event, and it appeared to be very meaningful to them. I felt almost like an intruder, sketching the proceedings. But a couple of people said nice things to me about my drawing. At the end, as we cheered on the canoes paddling out of the ceremonial area, it felt to me like a bit of heaviness had lifted.

Snippets from reconciliationcanada.ca:

… Watch as beautiful cedar dugout canoes paddle into False Creek from Vanier Park to Science World and are welcomed in a traditional ceremony to the Coast Salish lands.

… Indian residential school survivors will partake in the water that day and paddle up for protocol for recognition and honor.

… The cultural significance of the canoe movement is the resurgence of songs, dances, names, language and teachings.

… up to 110 canoes attend these cultural tribal journeys.

Posted on Sep 16, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

The Park-a-Park/disposal bin was moved to Granville Island, right in front of Emily Carr University of Art and Design. So of course we sketchers had to climb in there again. I moved across the street shortly after our meet and greet though, it was the perfect opportunity for me to sketch the art school where I spent four years of my life. The drawing could benefit from some colour, but there wasn’t time that day.

I was reminiscing a bit about my college years while drawing it. I thought of Fred, Ted, and Ken, my trio of fully-bearded design instructors who had to share a single vowel. They were the steady ones in what seemed like institutionalized insanity at times. But my first year at ECUAD in what’s still called Foundation Program was probably my favourite — it seems like such a luxury now that I got to spend a whole year taking a wide variety of art courses before studying graphic design for the remaining three years.

One of my most memorable instructors from first year died just this summer: Dennis Burton. Born in 1933 in the prairies, he was an excellent painter and drawer, kept consummate sketchbooks which he displayed all around his classroom, and believed in the craftsmanship of drawing. I probably worked harder in his class than in any other. His stylized images of women’s garters (and women in them) from below, above, or at the craziest angles are some of his best-known work. Dennis told us they were inspired by the Sears catalogues that were delivered to his rural home when he was a boy, their undergarment section containing the most revealing imagery of the female form that he had ever seen.

My first life drawing sessions ever were in Dennis’s drawing class. He always put on music, mostly jazz, and chatted with the models, which put us nervous newbies at ease. His obliquely worded assignments, such as “draw a sleeping animal”, could produce a wide range of fascinating interpretations. And despite an asthmatic student’s complaint, Dennis kept smoking in the classroom while ranting about the “philistines” in the school administration who were thinking of actually banning smoking from the entire school. Yes, it was a different era.

After our drawing session in the bin, I took “my sketchers”, as I affectionately think of them, to New Leaf Editions where I’ve been working on copper etchings of some new urban sketches for a poetry book. The owner, Peter Braune, gave them an insight into his traditional printmaking studio.

Posted on Sep 10, 2013 in Vancouver | 2 comments

The Dr. Sketchy Vancouver session on Sunday September 8 featured Camero Luvroc as Marilyn Monroe. Above: a 1-minute pose. I like the thick marker for its bold, expressive line quality. And how it doesn’t allow me to get hung up on detail.

I think the above was a 5- or a 10-minute pose. This was my favourite sketch from the evening. The figure seems to have some gravity, but nothing is laboured, and I drew most of it in a fluid line.

I think this was a 15-minute pose. I used a white Pitt marker on wood veneer, trying to draw highlights only. You can see a few black strokes on her right arm where I gave up on just the highlights, and tried to add shadows as well, which wasn’t necessary. I am mainly showing this for the beautiful wood texture and as an inspiration for others to use wood veneer as a drawing surface — it’s not my favourite sketch ever. I got really uptight about the tutu, which is probably the opposite of how one should go about drawing the fluffiness that is a tutu. But I will keep trying to draw on wood veneer pieces, I think the idea has potential, I am excited!

Posted on Sep 10, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

The last page in my moleskine watercolour sketchbook. I tried to leave this sketch a bit unfinished. Or maybe I just didn’t want to stare at the people for too long.

For Sunday Sept. 8, I had set up two sketching outings, one in my favourite disposal bin, the Park-a-Park, the other one at a Dr. Sketchy Vancouver session in the evening.

Julien had arranged for the Park-a-Park to be moved to the Food Cart Fest in False Creek for just the Sunday afternoon. Three other sketchers came: Dino, Glenn, and Rachel. Julien, his girlfriend and a couple of their friends hung around there too. Glenn, Rachel and I figured out that we’re all neighbours — it just took sitting and drawing in a disposal bin together. It’s great to know there are sketchers living nearby; when the fall and winter rains arrive, I foresee a couple of impromptu sketching sessions at one of the many hipster coffee shops in our neighbourhood.

In the bin, with Julien, we had several random, yet all art-related conversations. I’ll try to summarize a couple of the topics, because they were interesting, and I want to remember what we talked about:

Big name artists who employ large numbers of assistants

And not just to mix their paint and prep their canvasses and empty their ash trays, but to actually execute art for them: artists like Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Dale Chihuly, and many others have done that or are doing it now. That model of the artist’s studio already existed in medieval times, when a master painter would train many apprentices to paint in the “house style”. So does it really matter whether something is drawn by hand, by the actual artist, or is it the idea behind the art that matters? What role does craftsmanship play in art?

My brother-in-law, who builds and rebuilds unicycles and sailboats and motors, but professes to dislike both modern art and frou-frou drinks in fancy hotel bars (the latter purely to spite me), says it’s the lack of craftsmanship in much of modern art that turns him off. But I think art is not just about craftsmanship, there has to be something more. A unique way of interpreting the world, maybe.

I think a good mindset as an artist is to realize that you’re an alien who’s been dropped into this world from outer space. Then you set out to discover everything. Just keep the alien thing on the down-low.

Drawing people in public vs. photographing them

Like most sketchers, I have a hard time staring at strangers long enough in order to draw them, I really don’t want to intrude on anyone. With models, I have permission, but then it’s posed. Of course, friends or family or other sketchers may allow you to draw them, but they won’t be 100% natural either. Candidly drawing or photographing strangers on the street is a bit like photographing wildlife; it’s tricky but capturing a true-to-life pose or expression can be wonderful.

Dino said he tried to draw some native artists who were selling their crafts on the street, and they all got very irate when they noticed him drawing them. Maybe they were concerned about him intruding on their turf, being another artist? But I am certain that they cannot forbid him to draw them. Just as in street photography, where everybody who’s out on a public street is fair game for your camera, drawing a street scene with people in it is perfectly legal. Drawings of people are even permissible in places where photography is forbidden, such as during court proceedings.

Rachel pointed out that drawings are edited to only show that which is considered important by the artist, and are therefore not considered as neutral or realistic as photographs, hence the court artist is accepted where a photographer is not. Also due to time constraints, often a sketched portrait will be more of an impression than high realism. It’s about telling a story.

I tried to find some writing on street drawing and ethics, but I’ve only found entries on the ethics of street photography. Some of the thoughts here might apply to drawing as well:

• Ming Thein on street photography and ethics
• Eric Kim on street photography and ethics

As sketchers, I think it’s important to exercise our right to draw in public. It can feel awkward at first, but one gets used to it.

And we can’t help ourselves anyway.

Posted on Sep 3, 2013 in Vancouver | 5 comments

For my first sketch, I used a piece of wood veneer with a black pen for the shadows and a white pen for the highlights. I had bought a pizza box full of wood veneer pieces at Lee Valley a few years ago for other art projects; I just hadn’t thought of using them to draw on until now. It was fun experimenting.

Here I used a dark blue paper with the white Pitt pen, drawing an alley scene right next to the market. The downtown Vancouver alleys are unique. I used a black pen to rough in a few lines before colouring in the highlights in white. The high contrast between the still-light evening sky and the darkening alley really helped.

I just had to bring along some China-red paper to try my white pen on. This is a Dim Sum food stand. The sketch was hard to do, and is not very successful, but I am glad to put it out here as an example of my attempt at something difficult. After the sketch, I bought some pork dumplings here, which I didn’t struggle with nearly as much.

We had a Vancouver Urban Sketchers meetup at the Chinatown Night Market today. About 10 people came, a nice group, eager to draw the city. I showed them my wood veneers and some coloured papers that I had cut into my favourite narrow shape, as well as my new white Pitt pen, mainly because it’s an unusual set of materials for sketching. Then we did the usual routine where we spread out to draw separately, some together, then met up again at 8:30 to show each other our drawings. Some people, including myself, stayed on afterwards to complete more drawings.

It was dark, and about 9:30 pm when I walked to my car which I’d parked just south of the Georgia Viaduct, on the east side of Main Street. The light of the street lamps on the grassy, treed landscaped feature beside the viaduct produced exciting shadows with almost no grey tones. It looked like a perfect scene to draw with the white pen on a dark piece of paper.

It’s not the greatest neighbourhood to be sketching on a curb in the dark, on a deserted side road, for half an hour, so I sat in my parked car with the doors locked to draw this. A couple of Greyhound buses coming and going from the nearby bus depot almost took my tiny Yaris out as they rounded the corner where I was slightly illegally parked. And a street person looked like he was going to rest on my hood but changed his mind instantly when he spotted me sitting in the car. He shouted some insult into the air, which one should never take personally in this neighbourhood, and took off. I probably startled him far more than he frightened me.

South of the Georgia Street Viaduct and east of Main. Focussing on drawing only the highlights was great fun, and a good exercise for my brain which is trained to see shadows. I entered “the zone” as I was drawing this, it was a sketcher’s high!

Posted on Sep 2, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

At the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) in Vancouver. Top left to right: The famous wooden roller coaster from 1958, a carousel ride, cheerleaders at “Sportacular!”, the wooden roller coaster again (the best rickety ride ever, I just can’t believe they still allow it to run!), views of the fair, the other rollercoaster, a bit of unscripted horse drama from the RCMP musical ride pre-show, a ferris wheel.

Jeff went out of town for the long weekend to spend some one-on-one time with a good old friend. It’s not a bad thing to have a few days off from one’s partner and get a chance to miss them. So I made lots of plans to see friends and do some drawing.

On Friday night, I had my friend Eman over for dinner and he gave me a show-and-tell of his latest photographic experiments. He brought some amazing hand-made laser-copied and stapled photobooks and ‘zines along. It’s been great to see my friend’s artistic development really take off over the last few years.

On Saturday, I spent the whole day at the PNE, an almost 100-year old summer fair in Vancouver, held annually during the last two weeks of August. It also borders on Playland, an amusement park with roller coasters and other rides. I went there with another friend, Brian, and three of his many nephews, all grown men of age 19 and up. The five of us played like kids, except we had money and no meltdowns. Well, it’s possible that it was mostly Uncle Brian’s money, since I suspect he paid most of the nephews’ way. A couple of times he tried to pay for me too, so now I call him Uncle. A fun day. I did my best to capture a bit of it in sketches during our time in lineups at rides and sitting in the stands at performances.

On Sunday, I went grocery and art supply shopping, and did some house cleaning as a surprise for Jeff (I don’t get around to doing that quite as often as he does, I just don’t feel the same urgency, which means he is inordinately grateful when I do clean up). I did some baking, drew a few cards for friends, planned a few other drawings, and attended an Urban Sketchers meetup in the evening. I will post sketches from that soon.

On the holiday Monday, there’s about an hour or two of work I need to do on a time-sensitive annual report for a client, then a hike on the agenda, then to the airport to pick up Jeff later in the day.

If I ever wonder why this weekend went so fast, I can look it up here.

Posted on Sep 1, 2013 in Vancouver | 0 comments

A close friend of mine and a close friend of my sister’s, whom I’ve also known for years, each lost a brother this summer, in both cases unexpectedly and at far too young an age. I have never met either of their brothers; they lived much further east in Canada, so these deaths feel strangely abstract except for their very present impact on my friends.

It is hard to know what to say in the face of such loss, but not many words are needed since it is better to listen to someone who’s grieving rather than blab at them. I am sending them each a hand-drawn card on wood veneer.

Posted on Aug 30, 2013 in Vancouver | 2 comments

My photo of the Beach volleyball rec league at Spanish Banks was printed on the contents page of the Georgia Straight weekly. The original photo can be viewed large on my Flickr.

The Georgia Straight is Vancouver’s weekly events newspaper. I had uploaded some of my best beach volleyball shots to their Flickr group, and they asked me if they could buy one of them for their contents page. It was published in the Aug 8-15 edition.

Peter, the owner of New Leaf Editions printmaking studio, where I’ve been etching, said I should draw one of those volleyball scenes as an etching. But there’s no poem about beach volleyball. I must speak with the poet and see if he can come up with one ;-).

The beautiful summer I caught in my late July photo seems like a distant memory today: it’s August 30 and it’s pouring rain. But I am hopeful that September and October will still bring some good hiking and sketching weather.