pomegranates 2

 Before and after (watercolour, that is...) images of the pomegranates bought a week ago...

Drawing these brings back memories of my childhood in Western Australia; pomegranates were very familiar to us as we had a tree in our back yard. The tree did not yield large fruit, but when we were not casually eating them during our adventures in the neighbourhood, we were incorporating them in a variety of up-to-no-good ways...

tire shop

The back yard of a house is being used as an old tire yard for a tire shop. With the sudden snow and treacherous road conditions these past few weeks, tire places like this must be booked solid...

Enjoy Centre and the Make It! sale

Trying out the hand bound sketchbook (made by this little workshop in Ponoka) bought at the "Make It!" craft show this weekend at the Enjoy Centre in St. Albert. The Coptic binding allows the book to lay flat with hard covers still supporting both sheets, making panoramas more manageable.

Other things bought at the craft show: two wonderfully designed calendars by this illustrator, and a series of postcards by this illustrator.

Gakugeikai (School Festival)

The audience (mostly the younger kids sitting at the front) taking in the class plays that were presented at the our kids' community school...

pomegranates.. and chestnuts (and a nice surprise)

I picked up some pomegranates at the local store; the real challenge is drawing the bright red seeds inside!

To my surprise I found a lone sketch of some chestnuts that my father did on October 9, 2010 on the very back sheet of the sketchbook I used today. It was likely one of the last sketches (if not THE last) he ever did; he was already very weak at that time. It was one of those contemplative moments as I thought how similar we really were in our choice of subject matter, medium, composition... With the inclusion of my daughter's earlier sketch of some gourds, this sketchbook now contains three generations of drawings. (As an added twist, the day I started using what I thought was a new pad -- October 9 this year during a trip to Banff-- is exactly 2 years since my father's sketch...  I felt like my father and I continue to have some sort of dialogue about our sketches even though he is no longer around!)

weekend Youtube ritual

 Spending time at the computer letting my son watch his favourite tank engine clips on Youtube has become a bit of a weekend morning ritual for my son and me.

sweet dreams...

 Our five-year-old daughter sleeps, exhausted from another full day.

... her sketch of the gourds from the previous day. I'm impressed by kids' abilities to capture the essence of things.

this year's gourd collection

 Every year for the past few years I've given in to the craving to buy an assortment of gourds. This is what we ended up buying this season. 

velociraptor...

one purely for my kids, who helped put this thing together...

Whyte Avenue panorama

Whyte Avenue on a cloudy winter day...

Mendelssohn's "Elijah" at the Winspear

On a whim, we decided to go and hear Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah, performed by the Edmonton Symphony, the Richard Eaton Singers, and soloists at the Winspear Centre. Here we wait as some members of the orchestra warm up, while we anticipate the entry of the massive choir...