Portraits of Amanda

 I did a few portraits of Amanda while on our trip to Europe, when we had idle moments... which were... few... 

The first was at the Saskatoon Airport before our journey had really even begun!

We were at the airport hours early, so I thought I might as well get started on the drawing! 

The next wasn't until our third or fourth day in Amsterdam, when we stopped to have a meal at the Vegan Temple Bar - I pulled out my small sketchbook - which I carried with me EVERY DAY of the vacation... JUST IN CASE!!

The next was waiting at Amsterdam Centraal station

While we were waiting for our train to France! 

A few days later when we were in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Amanda actually joined a work meeting via her computer. 

The meeting was so long, not only did I DRAW a picture of her... 

I also managed to COLOUR it!? 

finally, on our first morning in Paris, I woke up STUPID early and could not get back to sleep. Amanda was still sleeping, so I drew the apartment from the little table I ate breakfast at. 

The temperature on the afternoon when we arrived was +38°C and stayed around there for most of our stay... it dropped to 31°C in the middle of the night... 

The apartment we rented was NOT air-conditioned, however... Nor did it have screens on the windows... So I didn't feel really confident about leaving the windows open all night and not having bats or rats or mosquitoes or any other number of pests joining us! We got enough flies and mosquitoes in during the hours we were there and awake and had the windows open! 

I still have three or four pictures (or maybe five..?) that I started while I was in Europe, but need to finish up (mostly colouring... and touching up here and there...?). And then the plan was to finish filling up the sketchbooks I'd taken on the trip with drawings done from the thousands of photos I took while there! 

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...