In the waiting room at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport (formerly and still called Dorval Airport by most Montrealers and a gentleman in the airplane

On the plane heading to Montreal

Drawings

Must have been a quiet morning on October 2nd last year. Either that or it was a very good book. It's nice when passengers are so engaged in something (or so very still asleep) that they hold still this long.

Apparently I'm not a greenie. I just flew to Montreal for an opera. I like the thought that we will all look back at this time and collectively wonder what we were thinking.

I'm a little behind. I ran out of scans and it's always hard to find the time to do something as mindless as scanning. So a page of bits and none too interesting.

A day late but one wonders if anyone even notices? A page of bits. Small drawings are often a timing choice. When there's not a great distance to my stop or someone looks like their going to be getting off soon I make them small. The small partial drawings are obviously a gross misjudgement of the time people are sticking around on the streetcar. Summertime, baseball caps and short sleeved shirts. Winter is actually a more interesting time to draw. All the coats, scarves, hats, people bundled and still.

No one knows this but that is my favourite post in the entirety of downtown Toronto. That's the post on the left, looking awfully casual between a Bell phone booth and a Canada Post mail box. On the right are some of the very cool characters that inhabit the cyberworld all the while taking up space at The Common (coffee the way it's supposed to be made).

It's spring and I'm sitting here barely able to tear my gaze from the greening of the surrounding countryside. Daffodils and crocii litter the lawn. Hard to think of the imminent departure for the big smelly city. If it weren't for my favourite post, why I don't know just what I'd do...

Another lovely evening at the AGN's open life drawing. We were only 5 including the model. Where is everyone?

Second watercolour in a series? Hard to paint in PH when you're stuck in TO. Not sure when the next one will be...

It's post day and my mind is a complete blank. Dog hair has somehow come into play. A lot of people remark about the hair in the drawings and I was thinking back to just when I started drawing hair in detail. That's where the dog hair comes in: Commercial packaging of dog (and cat) related products and a graphic designers need to change the background colour on which the animal was shot. I redrew a lot of hair back then so that it wouldn't look like it was cut out with a pair of dull scissors. Hair, like everything else in drawing, is just a question of lights and darks and it never takes half as long as it looks like it should.

(I guess not a complete blank after all...)

Summer time, it's coming... A couple of sketches from the dock at my parents country house of my father and brother. Hmm, what can I say but ish. I can't draw my brother, must be the nose?!!?? Dad drawings are easier (emotional baggage aside), there's lots there to hang a shadow on.

Easter keester. The long weekend in Ottawa doing reno's and eating and eating and eating. Except for the driving, a very wonderful time.

Drawing/painting is at a standstill. It's between semesters at art school and I haven't been on a streetcar in days. I have to find an alternative...

The show is over. It's clean up time. Time to give a little attention to all those I've been ignoring for the past two months. This afternoon I'm taking my daughter to a baseball game at the ____ Dome (not sure who's sponsoring the thing this month). Blue Jays baseball, she'll be bored to tears! We're bringing the sketchbooks though and expecting a lot of willing subjects.

Above is Rose. She modelled for us in a class in Port Hope and it was good to be able to draw. The class started with her, me and the instructor. Wow, a private drawing session! A couple of people showed up eventually to fill up the space a bit but it was a very quiet, enjoyable evening. I left the house on the way to the session with the idea that I might try a watercolour for the long pose. I surprised myself by actually attempting it, not having cracked the watercolours in a LONG while. Needs some work but I was pleased.

More drawings...

Here is my favourite page ever. Not sure if it's necessarily the drawings or what I remember feeling doing these drawings? Both drawings: Same day, same streetcar, the pen just doing the work. Thank god she got off the streetcar before I did, otherwise I would have followed her past my stop.

I don't know what it is about taste though, some people, looking through the sketchbook, blow right past this page without a second glance. Some like it as much as I do (and the rest fall in between). I've noticed that a lot about showing my sketchbook, everyone picks a different pic to fall in love with. When I'm encouraging others to draw (my second calling) I point this out to them when they put down their own work.

More drawings on the beach! Meanwhile outside it's getting sunny and warm and green bits are poking up out of the ground. Makes you start to feel all sandy.

The middle drawing is dated June 26th. The last day of school. Not for me but for my daughter. In my childhood, the day after school let out my family headed off to the country house for the entire summer. I remember those summers and the old farm house in the middle of endless fields and forests. I remember it so well that for my entire life I've been scheming to recreate every summer exactly the same way. As it turns out I work mostly on the internet which makes it easy to run off on June 27th. I'm trying to instil the same love of endless summers in my daugther. The guy on the right was drawn on June 27th, he's lying on a beach.

Feet are always a good option on a streetcar ride. I live in Toronto some of the time and I find Torontonians fairly insular. I guess you have to be in a big city in some respects. This insularity allows me to draw just about anyone travelling on the streetcar. Readers are the best, they don't move so much. Occasionally no one's reading and everyone is just sitting, looking around. The minute someone figures out you're drawing them though they get all self-conscious and start moving around as much as possible. This is where feet come in. No one cares if you draw their feet (hands apply here as well but don't stay still as long). So when there are no likely candidates for faces I draw their feet.

Throwing a fish into the works today. What with April coming up and all I was asked to do an icon for the 1st. The fish met with some curiosity and it was only on investigation that I realized: "The April 1 tradition in France and French-speaking Canada includes poisson d'avril (literally "April's fish"), attempting to attach a paper fish to the victim's back without being noticed." wiki. The reference is obviously lost on all the english Canadians I hang out with these days. Still I like the fish and here it is. If you're francophone you can print it up, cut it out and tape it to someone's back...