More Sketching in May

(Whoopsie! I was just starting on uploading drawings I did on the Euro trip and realized THIS post about drawings I did back in MAY was still sitting in Drafts!)

I kind of stopped drawing for about a year! 

(Though I did still carry around a sketchbook WITH me everywhere I went!? I literally never leave the house without one!? I just fell out of the habit of getting it out and actually DRAWING anything in it!?) 

So, I have been trying to get back into a regular practice of drawing... and... not doing... GREAT... but... I have been doing SOMETHING... sometimes...  

I drew the set of the last play we went to at the Persephone Theatre for the season. The set was pretty amazing - and the play was okay too! 

This was done in the same sketchbook I was using in Moose Jaw. 

I did try adding colour at home... and... kind of ruined it... Ah, well... 

Amanda watching Death of a Unicorn

This was done in a little 5"x5" I started in 2021 which contains only little sketches of Amanda. 

Waiting at the doctor's office a week or so ago. I was trying out a NEW sketchbook... Art Placement, where I buy almost all of my art supplies, no longer stocks the Handbook watercolour journals by Speedball... so I have been on a hunt for a NEW sketchbook. The have the 100% cotton fibres, 250gsm Hahnemüehle Watercolor Journals, which do look VERY nice... but they only have the landscape format (or squares) which I don't love... I found Opus had some of the 200gsm Hahnemüehle Watercolor Books (and some of them were half price!?) so I ordered a few of those to try out! I do like it much better than the one I'd been using - as it lays open much flatter!!

I hate it when I find a thing I like... and then the next time I go to get one, they've been discontinued or the place I get them from doesn't carry them any more... 

I rode the tandem over to the Royal University Hospital last week to pick up Amanda who'd been there all day with Morgan (who was in for "day surgery"... but ended up staying overnight...?). Amanda needed a lift to the school that she teaches yoga at on Thursday for one of the community associations. I thought I'd see if I could knock out a quick sketch by the bike racks where I was waiting for her... I was waiting and awfully long time and was going to text and see where she was at and realized I had missed nine phone calls!? Apparently where she was was at CITY HOSPITAL!? 

Whoopsie!! 

So I sprinted away and made my way through the labyrinthine maze of detours around all the roadwork going on around RUH and the University Bridge and met Amanda walking up the University Bridge (luckily the cycling and pedestrian pathway on ONE side of the bridge is still open!) and got her to her yoga class on time! Thank goodness it was City Hospital and not St. Pauls!! 

In my defence, NO ONE TOLD ME it was at City Hospital!? Most of our visits to the hospital have been to RUH and I HAD thought about confirming, but Amanda had texted earlier in the day and had mentioned using the uSask wifi... why would they have uSask wifi at any hospital other than the UNIVERSITY hospital!? 

So this got finished up at home later on... 

There has been a lot of TV watching over the last few days while Morgan is at home recovering and I did a couple sketches on Sunday while Amanda was watching with us... 

One in the new sketchbook... 

and one in the small sketchbook of just Amanda... (Although Morgan does appear in the background of a few of the drawings!) 

I've been messing around with using a combination of markers and watercolours to colour some of these... 

Sketches from Carcassonne

Amanda and I were in Europe for a good chunk of June and the first bit of July. 

I had hoped to do a lot of drawing there. I did some. Not as much as I'd hoped...

I took a lot of pictures and will probably do more drawing from those pictures now that we are home. Eventually I'll get around to sharing them here. Maybe. 

These are a few sketches I did in Carcassonne. 

(There are others I did in the castle I'll share at some point!) 

Both of these were on Pont Neuf where we were waiting for the Tour de France riders to roll by at the beginning of Stage Four of the 2026 Tour de France. We were there really early, as I had expected a lot of people might want to hang out here to take pictures.. so I had a lot of time to draw - while standing around in the +38°C heat!! 

THIS is the reason why - from Pont Neuf there was a pretty great view of the castle of Carcassonne! 

So I could end up with shots like...

This is one of my favourites. In that line in the foreground, on the left in yellow is the current race leader #1 Tadej Pogačar, who had won the tour the previous year and won it again this year! On the other end of the line is #32 Derek Gee-West - the sole Canadian riding in the Tour this year! 

If they look like they're out for a chill, casual ride... it's because they are. This was part of the Depart Fictif - where they rolled through town past all the crowds and sites... the ACTUAL start of the stage was a few kilometres outside of town. it was already +38°C when they rolled by and expected to be +40°C as the day went on, so there was no need to do more than what was necessary to get them to the start! 

This veiw is looking the other way down the street, where we would first see the cyclists approaching from. 

Like so...

Both of the sketches were drawn on location, but the colouring with watercolours was done later. 

At some point I'll post some more pics of drawings I've done (and will do...).

AND at some point, I'll probably do a post on the Bike Blog about the carnival that was the depart for the fourth stage of the 2026 Tour de France! (and maybe something about bicycles in Amsterdam and Paris...?). We shall see... 

Sketching in Moose Jaw

I came here to post some more recent doodles and realized I somehow completely forgot to post my pics from Moose Jaw!? At the end of April, Amanda had a chance to travel to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, for a work-related conference at the Temple Gardens Hotel and Spa. She's always wanted to go there and jumped at the opportunity, and I got to tag along. It was a VERY busy conference that kept her busy from 7am to 7pm most days - and all her meals were provided, so I was pretty much left to my own devices. 

When we originally planned the trip, I was figuring it would be warm out, being the END OF APRIL... I had planned on wandering around the town and sitting and drawing things... but then at the beginning of EVERY WEEKEND IN APRIL we had a snow storm!? And the last weekend, just before we travelled, was no different! The snow had melted enough that the travel wasn't terrible on the Sunday, but it was still quite COLD!! 

In the end the first few days I just ventured out for walks, it was too cold to sit too long! 

Tuesday it was above freezing long enough that, in the afternoon, after a long walk, I did sit and try doing one little drawing... 

The Moose Jaw Public Library - which was located in the park across from the hotel - Also, many of the session Amanda was attending were held at the Library. 

I didn't do the colouring until I got back to the hotel... 

The next day it was a degree or two warmer so I got out and did a couple more drawings. 

The first was St. Andrews church, which was part of the United Church of Canada for decades, but apparently was sold to a new congregation (Victory Church?) last summer. it was located across the street from the Public Library. 

This one I also waited to colour back at the hotel... 

The other one was Zion United Church, just a few blocks away... 

This one I didn't get around to colouring until I got home on Thursday... 

All of these drawing were in a smaller (5'x8') Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Art Journal that I started four years ago and then abandoned (or... misplaced...?) I stumbled across it recently and thought I'd try using a smaller sketchbook that I usually use. It doesn't lay as flat as I prefer - like the Handbook watercolour journals made by Speedball that I had been using a few years back - for the Birds of Saskatchetoon). I like the size... but I'd like something that lays flatter and is easier to draw across the two-page spread like I was doing in these pics). 

There were a lot of interesting old buildings in the town that I might have liked to have sat and drawn... 

City Hall. 

Catholic Church. 

Some warehouse with faded advertising on the side. 

Another building downtown.

Some were shut down or empty and boarded up, like this motel

and then there were some odd-looking bodged together atrocities...

like, whatever the fuck is going on here... 

but visually interesting... at least to me!?

I spotted a pair of Northern Flickers in the park on one of my walks... at first I thought it might be a territorial dispute... but after watching them carry on a bit, I think it might have been mating behaviour?!

On the last day, after Amanda was done with her conference, we had a few hours before we had to head home, so we stopped by a few galleries - starting with the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. 

(Which is also part of the library...)

I liked the show in the gallery. 

The museum was interesting too... 

But this seemed a dubious claim... I mean, the casualty rates in the Great War were very high. I think one in ten of the 600,000 or so Canadians that served, died. To suggest that more than THREE QUARTERS of those that marched away from Moose Jaw never returned, seems a bit off... unless the soldiers of Moose Jaw were the unluckiest bastards that ever lived... or the stupidest...? OR, what seems more likely, many of those that served, survived, but never returned because, having seen OTHER PLACES for the first time in their lives, decided they'd rather stay there than return to Moose Jaw!? 

We also visited a commercial gallery That had a lot of different art from a variety of different artists. I though these were really fun... but I forgot to make note of who the artist was...

They'd made this really cool dice tower out of clay! 

Amanda had suggested getting it... but I've been wanting to make my own for sometime... and I'd still like to do that... (and ideally out of something that wouldn't be so LOUD!)

This was also very cool and, again, Amanda and I pondered it for a moment before realizing we didn't really have any place we could PUT it in our house... 

Anyway. That was Moose Jaw. 

We also soaked in the mineral water pool a few of the evenings we were there. Amanda liked it. I'm not a fan of pools, or being in water in general... but I went along anyway and it wasn't the worst. 

Oh, and there was a fun little game and comic store I went in that just opened last fall. I didn't take any pictures or draw it... or... even buy anything there... but I thought it was a rad little thing to just exist in Moose Jaw! I hope they make a go of it and are there next time, should we ever go again! 

English Robin on a Brake Cable

English Robin on a Brake Cable - ~90cm x 60cm - Latex on Plywood

A few months back, I mentioned I did a thing... (went back to school). As of this past Thursday I am done for the term, having written my final exam. I'd started out the term taking a Sculpture and Drama class and ended up dropping the sculpture class (for a number of reasons, largely because I'd injured my shoulder and wasn't sure I was going to be able to do the work, but also checking on classes/credits I have versus classes I still want to take, I did not need the sculpture class, and, indeed, if I did finish it, I would not have been able to take one of the drawing classes I wanted to take later in the program...). 

The Drama class I was taking was Technical Theatre (Scenic Construction) - not acting - and so involved a bit of art making as part of the projects required for the class. 

The class was really fun, the teacher just fantastic with a wealth of knowledge from decades of working in theatre and filmmaking. While the class is called Technical Theatre I Scenic Construction, there was also parts on general layouts and theatre safety and an introduction to entertainment rigging. 

One of the final projects was building and painting a "TV flat". A "TV flat" is a modular section of a wall used to define space on a stage in a theatre or a soundstage. A TV flat differs from a more traditional theatre flat in the way the framing is laid out and TV flats have a plywood facing, whereas traditional Theatre Flats usually have a fabric facing. 

The first part of the project was just cutting the wood and assembling the flat in the theatre shop. The second part was to take a 6"x9" image and transpose it onto the flat using a grid method. The image on the flat was to be painted with interior laytex paint and a limited palette of primary colours were supplied and other colours had to be mixed from those. 

Most students picked images they did not create, but me, being me, decided I needed to paint something I MADE... 

Amanda took this picture of an English Robin on one of her trips to the UK many years ago and it hangs on a wall in a hallway in our house. I've often thought it would make a fun painting. 

I did a rough sketch with ink and watercolours and changed up some of the colours... just to see what that might look like. 

And then did a better copy with gouache on paper (~11'x17") and sent that to the prof to print off as a 6x9 image for me to copy onto the flat. 

While I was at it, I also touched up/repainted two other paintings I'd previously done (because we were supposed to submit a few options...)

Deirdre the DH Diplodocus - I literally took the original - painted in watercolours and inks - and painted over it with Gouache (as I figured gouache would be easier to reproduce with latex paints than wishy-washy watercolours!)

Pink Surly Karate Monkey on Blue-Green Background - this was already painted with gouache, but I touched it up, and extended the colour on a couple edges of the paper, to eh bike would fit into and area that would be cropped to make it a 2:3 ratio... 

Initially the prof suggested doing the dinosaur... but I talked him into letting me to the bird! 

Grid Transposition Method. 

outline done

mixing paints to figure out the greens.

painting the background

finishing things up. 

I did most of this work at home over the long weekend at the beginning of April, right before the last day of classes - when the projects were due! (I was NOT the only one leaving things to the last minute!). In the end the class was given a week extension. 

I hauled it all back to campus and submitted along with my drafting project. 

There was a drafting project as well which was fun - drawing a plan and front elevation of a small stage set. Got to bust out some skills and equipment I had not used in a LONG time... 

The painting project was really fun too. I feel like I have not been doing much painting for the last few years. What little painting I have been doing has been ink or watercolours and this felt like getting back to doing the things I used to do. 

Am I going to be doing more work with laytex paints in the immediate future... I don't know... 

Am I going to continue with this return to school business...? I don't know.. 

Probably... 

Unfortunately, I HAD planned to take some classes this summer - to get the first year Foundation in Drawing classes out of the way (which I'd never bothered to do back when I was taking classes in the 1990s...) but for some reason (some sort of restructuring of the School of the Arts curriculums...?) there were almost NO studio art or drama classes being offered in spring or summer session - despite there being all sorts of drama and studio art classes every spring and summer since, like, forever (my very first studio art classes were taken in Intersession and summer session back in... 1995...? Morgan took Drama last summer...) - all of which REALLY kind of wrecked my plans for how the next three years might roll out... Either I'll have to abandon the original plan of taking 4th year senior Drawing and Related Work IV A and B classes... or I'll be going to school for an extra year...?

So no school this summer... on the plus side, I'm probably travelling to France and the Netherlands, so I'll be seeing lots of (and perhaps making some) art while I'm there!   

Amanda in her Office

Amanda had an appointment this morning and then bussed to work and was going to walk home so texted me to see if I’d wait after class and we could walk home together… I stayed late after class to finish things and clean up then made my way to her office.

She wasn’t quite ready to leave.

So I drew a picture.

Then we walked home together.

(The line drawing was done in the office, colour added later at home)

I did a thing...

 

I kind of signed up for classes and returned to school... after a 30 year hiatus... 

It's... a LONG story... That I don't really want to get into at this exact moment. 

I will say... it feels a little weird... and ridiculous... and indulgent... but here I am. 

As it turns out when you make a rather last minute decision to return to school starting in the second term... it's pretty slim pickings for available classes. I would have like to take a drawing and or painting class. But it seems that will have to wait for spring/summer session or next fall... IF I continue with this. 

For now I am taking a sculpture class, which seems like it might be pretty interesting. 

and a Drama class - Technical Theatre - Scenic construction, Scenic Painting, and Entertainment Rigging. It seems like I will also be really interesting! 

As an added bonus, I've been really enjoying the walks to campus. it's about 4.5Km from our house and takes 40minutes to an hour, depending on whether I'm in a rush to get there or just enjoying the scenery on the way home. 

There's been some fog coming off the river this week, leaving all the trees through the river valley covered with hoar frost. 

just to lean into the ridiculousness of it all, I thought it would be funny to take one of thoseOBLIGATORY BACK TO SCHOOL PICTURES standing on the front steps of our house on my first day back... But Amanda was already at work and the kids were still asleep as they didn't have classes that day... so all you get is this selfie...