ART ON THE SPOT

The Burnaby Shadbolt Center and the Vancouver Urban Sketchers have collaborated to promote art to the community at the Art on the Spot event within the Shadbolt grounds. It went on for 2 hours and the idea is that the public can approach any Urban Sketcher to hang out and sketch with them!

We each were given a red balloon and some stickers. The red balloons identified us as part of the Urban Sketchers and the stickers are an incentive for children (and children at heart) to stamp on their sketch books. (Photo courtesy of Donna Hagerman.)

This is Ivan (10 yrs) and Shirley (7 yrs) and their mom Judy. After giving stickers (to the kids) I taught them a few of my drawing "secrets". Judy spoke to them in both Mandarin and English. Hearing this, I pulled out my phone and showed Judy a short message written in simplified Chinese that I needed to clarify (not related to the event). So I asked her to "draw" the Chinese characters as if it were for a 3 year old. I got everyone drawing, in one form or another, for that brief moment they were with me. Mission accomplished! (Photo courtesy of Donna Hagerman.)

After the 2 hours were over, all the Urban Sketchers gathered around as we usually do to display our work. I managed to get 2 sketches done that day.  (Photo courtesy of Donna Hagerman.)

The view of the first sketch I did. It's a 3x5 inch study of a house peeking out of the trees. I was told on good authority that this house was designed by our very own Architect Arthur Erickson.

This is an 8x10 inch study a house by a tree. I may explode the two sketches into a bigger watercolor painting in the near future and I can't wait to get that started.

It was a great day for sketching outdoors. I got a couple of kids to draw, met some people and made new
friends. There will be another similar event at the Shadbolt Center in the fall so I'm looking forward to that!