Amaryllis, Narcissus... The Beginning

 I bought these at Canadian Tire on sale... which is a good thing because I do not have a green thumb. But I find them interesting as "objects". As such, I thought I'd record them before planting them in pots with my daughter tomorrow.

The top are Narcissus bulbs, kind of like shallots in size.
The bottom ones are Amaryllis... like Onion's ugly cousin.

Hoping to update these as they grow... if they grow.  

Burger Baron

The drive-through burger restaurant... the epitome of car-centred building design...

Unlike the big national chains, all the Burger Baron restaurants, seen only in and around Edmonton, are housed in a wide variety of buildings as they typically renovated and moved right into existing fast-food restaurant structures. In Edmonton, they range from A-frames, former drive-ins, to old Kentucky Fried Chicken (pre "KFC") outlets, like this Burger Baron on 99th Street. It's a pleasantly humble approach to branding and theming that I appreciate, and a contrast to the strategy employed by Dairy Queen, seen in the background.

Having said that, and as popular and famous as they are in Edmonton, I've never been to one. A quick Wikipedia search yielded this photo, which as it turned out, is what I found that I drew today (including the pole in the background).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burger_Baron_sign.jpg

room in my heart for Thee...

Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown,
When Thou camest to earth for me;
But in Bethlehem's home was there found no room
For Thy holy nativity.
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,
There is room in my heart for Thee.

Emily E.S. Elliot, 1864 



Many thanks to all for visiting this little blog through the past few months!

Merry Christmas!

From the Archives #006: Price Low's, 376 Yonge St. (April, 1998)

With a deadline tomorrow, it's another long workday... no sketching today. So I've dug out another one from my past, this time from 1998 in Toronto... over 12 years ago. I lived close to Yonge and Gerrard St. (where this was drawn) for a few months, and spent a whole spring exploring Toronto's diverse neighbourhoods.

Once again, I was curious what became of these buildings... so here they are now:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.658821,-79.381973&spn=0.000758,0.002064&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=43.658899,-79.382008&panoid=3gqerdDRF0LJkr6flPji8Q&cbp=12,249.62,,0,-9.09

All the tenants have changed. I still remember when Starbucks moved into the building, originally a bank, on the right; it's now a pub. Price Low's is now a clothing store, while the gift shop and the used bookstore have changed into little eateries... but I'm surprised how little exterior modification has actually occurred; even the lights around the bookstore signage is still there.  There is only some new flashing on the dormers and party wall to address some moisture issues.

3 years 3 months

a quick sketch while my daughter watches her favourite Disney DVD...  sometimes, sketching the kids is almost like a process of predicting what they might look like in 2 or 3 or 4 years... this is just inaccuracy on my part, but we'll find out in due course...

From the Archives #005: Houses in the Vancouver eastside (April, 1999)

It's been over 10 years since spending a few weeks during the spring of 1999, sketching in the Vancouver downtown and downtown eastside areas... I was curious to see if this house still existed; fortunately I had captured the street sign, and so I found it here:

http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&ll=49.276688,-123.095661&spn=0.000321,0.000946&t=h&z=21&layer=c&cbll=49.276688,-123.095661&panoid=yoRckJ9L0RV3uyC98qW3vg&cbp=12,68,,0,-3.9

 It's all still intact, but apparently under new ownership...

waiting for the party...

I had to both kill some time and warm up between work and a Christmas party, so I stepped into a cafe... unfortunately, I didn't have a sketchbook with me (embarrassing!) so I had to use a large Post-It note instead.

Hard to believe Christmas Day is only a week away...

bus ride

It's a longer bus ride home the past few days, with the dump of snow in the city...

sleeping like a baby...?

We are still dealing with the stress and fatigue of a 6 month-old waking up crying 3 to 5 times in the night... so in recent weeks I've not risked disturbing his slumber by the presence of a sketcher...

Somehow, I did manage to squeeze in a window of time today, but the sketches became a series of little unfinished vignettes as my son kept moving in his sleep every few minutes... and I had to adjust my line character accordingly. 


As we head deeper into Advent, I am increasingly intrigued by the thought of the baby Jesus, the Son of God, beginning His life as an infant among us just like my own son sleeping in front of me. (And unlike what all the paintings show us, I am certain that He too kept his parents up through the night; with the kind of faith that Mary and Joseph had, I'm sure God would have had it no other way! Somewhat comforting I suppose...)

From the Archives #004: Matsumi-ike, Tsukuba, Japan (October, 1996)

I have not posted anything with colour for some time now, so I thought back to a sketch from 1996 when I experimented with some colour ball point pens... one of the earliest colour, on-site sketches I can remember. 

This was a grove of trees gradually turning to their fall colours, seen across a pond on a university campus.

I still find the expression of trees to be a difficult thing...

winter scenes

Two wintry thumbnail views along 118 Avenue...

at the local library...

My daughter and I took a short trip to the local public library -- a weekly routine-- where we like to get on the kids' computer. She's gradually grasping the idea that the mouse controls the movement of what is on the screen... something I must have learned much later in life.

108 Street to the Legislature

It's a sunny but hazy day... lots of glare, especially in this view directly south towards the Legislature building, along 108 Street.

This might be the only street around here where monuments terminate an axis, reminiscent of Baroque urban planning, but unfortunately it was never really taken advantage of here.

Alberta Plywood

A quick sketch of some mechanical equipment and ductwork at a fairly large industrial building just west of 99th Street... I was rather rushed as my son started to cry in his carseat, and my daughter was finishing up on the Timbits that I bought her to buy myself some time.

Royal Alexandra Hospital

Another grey, wintry day...
A view towards the Royal Alexandra Hospital, with its new Lois Hole Hospital addition.

Eastwards... part 2

Finished up with the right hand side of this view at lunch today (left side is from yesterday.) It was much sunnier, so more pronounced shadows...not that it really shows. Hmmm... maybe this warrants going further southwards...
(If the building on the right edge looks distorted, that's because it is... it's a parking structure with sloped slabs!)