Montreal

The wife and I went to Montreal last week. It was my first visit to that city and I really liked it. It's an vibrant, active city, but also really chill and relaxed. We ate a lot of great food, though now that I've had it, I think poutine is overrated. Everyone was nice. Hardly anyone honks their horn, no one jaywalks, and bicyclists obey traffic rules. (It's for that reason that I think the bike rental plan they're about to implement here in NYC works great in Montreal but won't work here. In New York, everyone drives, bikes, and walks like an asshole.) There are kiosks with maps all over the place, so you can always find your way around. Everything sounds better in French. And the architecture is beautiful. I could have spent days walking around, drawing buildings.

These first four drawings are done in pencil in my 9X12 sketchbook, and the rest in pen in my small pocket sketchbook.

We went because my wife was competing in the Montreal International Dragon Boat Race Festival. Dragon boat is a form of Chinese boat racing, sort of like crew, except with paddling instead of rowing. It was held at the Olympic Basin at the Parc Jean-Drapeau. Lisa's team won two gold medals and a silver!

Dragon boat racing has a really interesting history. Popular legend holds that it commemorates a poet and statesman in Ancient China named Qu Yuan, who committed suicide to protest war and the corruption of the government. He waded into the Miluo River, weighted down by stones, and drowned himself. Upon learning of his protest, the local villagers raced out in their boats to try to save him and/or recover his body. They threw rice in the water to feed the fish, so they wouldn't eat his body, and banged on drums to ward off evil spirits.I don't think there's much anti-war or good-government sentiments in the current races, but it's a cool story.

Taiko drumming is Japanese, not Chinese, but whatever. They were cool.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Yesterday, I killed some time doing some spot sketching in my new little pocket sketchbook. One thing that becomes really apparent when you sit and watch people is how ubiquitous phones are. The vast majority of people I saw were on their phones, either talking or texting. I can't say I'm any better. When I was in Canada last week, I wouldn't use my phone because of the high roaming charges, and was on a constant lookout for free wi-fi. It drove me crazy! Amazing how dependent we've become on the technology. What will we do if an asteroid strikes or there's a zombie apocalypse and the whole system goes down?

 

 

 

 

This guy was reading an actual newspaper! The type printed on paper!

 

 

 

Quick sketches from my Canada trip

Went on a trip to Toronto last week for a wedding. I'd gotten a 4X6 inch sketchbook to try something new. I usually lug around a larger sketchbook in my bag, but this one can slip in my pocket. Also, I just used a Uni-ball marker and just did very quick sketches. It worked out pretty well, I thought.

My Mother-In-Law, at the wedding

The bride's grandmother

Some lady at the wedding

The bride's mother

The Maid of Honor

little garden at the venue

sound technician at the wedding

CN Tower, seen from Centre Island

View from top of CN Tower

View from top of CN Tower

CN Tower from Centre Island

Telephone Pole, somewhere in PA

Some sort of tank at a rest stop in PA

Harpcon

So, yesterday I'm in SoHo, hanging out on a break in the plaza adjacent to Donald Trump's building, when five or six women show up with harps. I don't know if it was a planned, sponsored thing, or if it was just a harp jam session. I did two quick drawings. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to do more.

I wish I'd had more time on these. The harps themselves are really beautiful objects. As for the music, it was nice, but harp music always reminds me of Star Trek. You know how every time the crew of the Enterprise goes on shore leave to some sort of vacation planet, there's always someone playing a harp.

 
Interesting harp trivia: according to Wikipedia, classical musicians refer to harp players as "harpists," while folk musicians refer to them as "harpers." I've never heard the term "harper" before, but I've never associated folk music with the harp, either. But I don't listen to much folk music at all, so maybe harpers are big in that world. Anyway, these ladies were definitely harpists.

Betty

It's been a hella long time since I've posted, and almost as long since I've done any real drawing. Here's some drawings from a session at Spring Street Studios from a few weeks back. These were from the weekly 'clothed model' session. The model's name was Betty.

And when the model gets boring, there's always mannequins . . .

Pratt Draw-a-thon 2012

Last night/this morning was the annual Draw-a-thon at the Pratt Institute. It's a marathon drawing session with multiple set-ups of 18 models, running from 7 PM to 7 AM. I've always wanted to go, especially considering it happens just a few blocks from my apartment, but I always find out about it after the fact, so I was excited to actually hear that it was happening in time to attend. I didn't do the full 12 hours, I started to get bleary around 3:00. But it was a fun time and I got a lot of work done. And there was free pizza!

One of the things they did was post the models' names on the schedule of what was happening in each room. A lot of the time, I don't know the names of the people posing in these sessions, so that was a nice little humanizing element to the exercise.

Jazz

Patrick

Yolande

David

Gina

Louisa

Chris

Michael