AT THE QUACK OF DAWN

            This was a practice painting using a photo reference, courtesy of Owno Photo. I could somehow relate to the lone duck, breaking away from the group, finding a quiet spot to call it's own in the early misty morning. 

STEVESTON: GULF OF GEORGIA CANNERY LINE ART

I was with a friend MJ walking along Moncton St. with our sketch books. It was around 4pm and establishments were winding down their operations and calling it a day. We managed to get ourselves some coffee and pastries and sat ourselves at a table facing the Cannery. The sun was out but it was really chilly and windy. This was done straight with a micron pen. Pretty proud of myself since I'm so used to laying down sketchy guidelines to begin with.

COAL HARBOR LIGHT SHED

         This is a sketch I did on site of an art installation known as the Light Shed. It was very cold outside. I was on a bench not too far from the installation, shivering, while everybody else seemed fine. People were in shorts, biking, jogging, running. (My nose went on its own marathon as well). The amazing thing about this is that it's entirely a cast made from a light gray non-shiny aluminum. It also has internal lights that are timed to go off at night, illuminating the sculpture from the inside, shining through the glazed windows and through the crack of the slightly ajar front door. On the end of one of the beams the little hut is resting on, there was a round, black palm-sized sticker that suggested that underneath the shed was a good place to kiss.

THE "BATEMAN"

        "Have you heard about this guy named Robert Bateman?" I asked. ROBERT BATEMAN? ROBERT BATEMAN?! "He's only the best living WATERCOLOR artist in Canada." A confession I made to Robert about a conversation I had with watercolor artists since I only found out about who he was a week before meeting him. Robert laughed and said thank you. Then he leaned in a bit and whispered, "I actually paint in acrylics and oils." (Some fast facts about him: In the 1950s he went around the world in a Land Rover ; He drew an unusually large crowd for a living artist at his exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute in '87 ; He destroyed his own painting of orca whales demonstrating his protest against the possibility of oil tankers passing through B.C.'s Douglas Channel.)