Missions Fest 2012

Two sketches from the Saturday morning assembly at Missions Fest 2012, here in Edmonton, where a speaker from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada spoke. Once again, our family was involved with TLM Canada, and as I do every year, touched base with some of the folks at eMiC.

Family Day outing

The Art Gallery of Alberta is free admission on Family Day... which gives me the incentive to finally visit the building for the first time since its re-opening several years ago. Today it is full of people, including our two kids, making it difficult to really appreciate the artwork at a leisurely pace, but the kids enjoyed the children's activities in the lobby while I sketched away.

Meanwhile just outside on Churchill Square, the Metropolis winter festival continues under the brilliant sunny blue sky. The temporary pavilions are huge structures framed with scaffolding and shrink-wrapped in white plastic, creating a wonderful event setup befitting the snowy landscape.

Churchill Square

industrial building, 98th Street

A large steel shack with what appear to be monstrous overhead doors at both ends. The building is connected to the CN rail yards and allows a train car to pass through, linking directly into the CESSCO plant and presumambly serving some heavy duty industries in Alberta and the rest of Canada.

From the Archives #014: My Wife, asleep, September, 2007

This sketch, from September 2007, was drawn during the brief moment of sleep granted to my wife during the 50 hours of labour that brought our first child into this world. My wife had a most wonderful glow on that day (or, on those days, I should say) and I recall praying a most fervent prayer of gratitude to God that night, thanking Him for the beautiful spirit I had the privilege of sharing this life with.

Happy Valentine's Day!

and now for something completely different...

A "sketch" of my daughter

... and now for something completely different...

some paper cutout "sketch" compositions that happened on a whim, because my daughter, who previously was into pasting colour construction paper (which she called "You-will-cut-and-I-will-paste"), decided she was beyond this stage in her life and wanted to embellish this year's Valentine's cards by stamping instead.

But they were perhaps inspired in part by the beautiful "kirie" (cut paper) prints in our living and dining rooms, created by my wife's relative in Japan.

A cartoon of my son, just for kicks...

tomatoes on the vine

 Tomatoes...

As a kid I remember loving to eat ripe tomatoes whole like they were apples. They tasted much richer and sweeter back then, and had a much deeper red hue to them.

some fruit...

 Trying out gasenshi paper is quite enjoyable... letting the paint do its work to get some great effects in these quick doodles of some beautiful fruit. The mangoes were given to us, while the lemon sketches include some memorable quotes from Kajii Motojiro's classic short story, which I ended up reading for the first time since high school.

nap time

Both kids sleeping in their car seats on a Sunday afternoon...

Vietnamese Restaurant

A break from the busy day as we eat lunch at a local Vietnamese restaurant recommended to us by friends. We have come here for tapioca dumplings (Bánh Bột Lọc), which we had never known about before.

bus stop

A young woman at a bus stop...