Donny's house

Spent the bulk of the week in Vancouver at Donny's house. This kitchen is one of my favorite places in the world to hang out. Brother Greg flew down, I picked Austin up from university, and we all had a good family bonding session, making battered fish and chips with the cod and halibut Donny and the kids caught on their last trip. It was funny to look at Donny's three kids, all at that age where they think their siblings are a cross to bear, and know that 20, 30 years from now there will be no one they'd rather have dinner with.

I drove out to Richmond to pick Greg up after he landed. Why oh why are there no street signs in Richmond? It's like a concentrated planning effort to keep people lost when they go there. Add to that the sky train construction and what should have been a 20 minute drive turned into and endless circling, trying to hone in on a target. I found it funny that, after I waved to a car in the next lane to ask if I'd passed Westminster Highway (for the third time, seriously) the next car that drove past me waved my window down and asked me the exact same question! A request to the City of Richmond: signs, please. You'd reduce your traffic by at least 50% because people wouldn't have to do all these extra loops trying to figure out where they are.

That's all.

Fibonacci's Roastery & Cafe

diedrich
Originally uploaded by sketchalina

We spent the weekend in lovely Nelson BC, weaving our way through their hilly streets, looking at the beautiful, funky houses built into the slope, eating at fantastic restaurants (Red Fish and Max and Irma's Kitchen were two of our favourites).

Tonight is Italian Night with the girls. I just found out that because it's at my house I don't have to do a thing except open my door. Gotta like that! I thought I'd be spending the day cooking, but now I'll spend it working on some vintage watercolours of Kelowna instead. They're all sketched, just waiting for some colour washes. I'm doing them from old sepia museum photos, but I think I'll add a hint of colour.

I popped into Fibonacci's this morning, mostly for breakfast, but also because i've been wanting to paint this beautiful machine, and I knew sitting and sketchbooking would make me feel good. It did. They were playing a recording of Carrie Catherine's performance there last week, which we were at. She's a great songwriter, wonderful story teller, and has an easy, graceful bluesy style.

Being in Nelson this weekend, I got this idea that it'd been cool to do some more sketchbook trips, but make an accompanying video, sort of a travelogue type of thing. I feel a new adventure coming on!

Now on to those watercolour washes.

From Sketchbook to Canvas

What to do on a snowy day in the Okanagan? Paint the beach in Vallarta, of course. This is painted from a sketch in my sketchbook. It's looking back from the round about at the beach in front of Olas Altas. I so remember this day, perched on a ledge, absorbed in what I was doing. I ended up being inundated with kids from a big Mexican family. They had a million questions (and statements, as kids usually do!) about art and painting and colours and the like. Very fun.

I look out my windows here in the house and see our little forest all covered in snow. It's still falling, and it's piling up nicely on the tops of each branch. Round about now I start to go squirrelly for some heat and sun. Time to hide the passport and credit card on myself.

Last weekend (or was it the weekend before) I took a couple of large canvi up to Apex and did my first two big acrylics from the sketchbook. I like working this way; it keeps me from getting all factual, like I would working from a photo, and keeps the colours more sketchbook-y. Fun.

Apex Musings

gunbarrel at night
Originally uploaded by sketchalina

I wanted to try capturing the light and colours out our window at night. When I started this background was all one big sheet of fog. As soon as I'd sketched the buildings it lifted to reveal this complex but very interesting pattern of shadow and texture.

There was a time when I painted exclusively from photos. I thought people who painted from real life were crazy, that you'd never get a good end result because the light and atmosphere kept changing, things moved or went away. Now I find that's exactly what I love about working 'plein aire'. I look at some of the sketches I've done over the last year, and the reference photo's I've taken just as I'm about to leave the scene, in case I want to make adjustments later. The photos never really show the good stuff. Perspectives may not be perfect, and it's more challenging to judge what's going on with angles and colour relationships when they're not flattened into a convenient two dimensions for us, but there's more freedom to interpret, to respond to what's there. I love it! It's so much more about the experience of doing it than it is about the result.
I painted this curled up in a corner table by the window of Fresh Tracks Cafe and Bistro while Greg hung out with his friend James and daughter Ashley. I keep intending to paint something simple, like the snow on the roof here, and then get caught up in all the other details in the scene. Oh well, it's all fun. I nursed a single Chai Latte through this whole sketch and almost but never dipped my brush in it once! I must have been deeply absorbed in what I was doing, because Greg popped in twice while I was here and we didn't even see each other.

Weekends up here are so relaxing. It's a half hour from our house in town, but a world away. I'm no longer drawn to shredding up the hill (my last venture there ended in an ambulance ride and a Christmas spent immobilized and stoned on painkillers last year) and love to just kick back, watch movies, have hot tubs, walk the dog. We talk and plan, cook, eat, dream, all the good stuff. When we get back to town we feel like we've had a break. Greg actually pulled the 'For Sale' sign off the side of the condo this weekend.

Now we're back in town. I have a presentation and a speech to write and we've got a host of 'must do's' beckoning. As we drove home we realized that there's not one evening this week when at least one of us isn't obligated to be somewhere. On the highlight side, there's a reception I have to attend for an award I've been nominated for (best home based business of the year - business excellence awards) tomorrow night. The busier we get, the stronger my desire to take March off and go hang out in Mexico for a month gets. Ha! An email just popped into my inbox from my friend Marcela in Mexico as I was typing that sentence. Coincidence? I think not. I love that stuff.

Double Whammy

How’s this for timing. We finally stayed home for an evening and watched Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Wow. And then, as our heads were whirling with what we’d learned, we turned off the dvd player to see Greenland falling into the sea yet again on David Suzuki’s ‘Arctic Mission’ on the Knowledge Network. It was like the TV Gods were orchestrating themselves to send us a message.

And then, to top it all off, when the news came on one of the lead stories was the Indian auto innovation, the Nano, that will have a kabillion more people on the roads contributing to our emissions situation. I have to admit for about 13 seconds I thought the Nano was a great thing. “Replace all the SUV’s with the cool little affordable low emission things and we’ll save the planet”. Nope. It’s “keep the SUV’s and add all the people currently walking to the carbon stew”.

The thing that shocked me the most? That currently it’s primarily North America making this mess. I really thought that with their huge populations, India, China and a host of other countries were doing things we couldn’t possibly compensate for by changing our lifestyles. Wrong. We keep doing what we’re doing in spite of our knowledge, and now these massive populations are following us down the same road. And why wouldn’t they. What will it take to start creating change? My hat is off to Misters Suzuki and Gore. And shame on all the people in positions of power and influence who look straight at the facts and then look away and pretend they didn’t see it.

It’s all overwhelming. What to do? When I feel like this, I like to drive around in my big ol’ SUV and just think. I always think best when I’m driving.

Looks like I’m going to have to come up with an alternative.

The Coffee Maker

Greg hoped, prayed and hinted, and sure enough a beautiful Saeco Coffee Maker appeared under the tree. He thinks it's for him, but every morning when I hear the beans grinding and know a perfect cup of Jo is about to be delivered to me in bed I secretly know differently. There's snow on the branches outside the dining room windows. I'm inside listening to latin music and dreaming about warmer climes.

Cool Shadows and Faux Fur

skaha
Originally uploaded by sketchalina

Stopped by the beach yesterday on my way to the grocery store for a quick sketch. It was gorgeous sunshine and shadows when I arrived, but by the time I started with colour it'd shifted to that chilly, clear but grey thing the Okanagan does so well in January. The far side of this view is one of our favorite running trails; flat and scenic, it takes us down through the campgrounds on the west side of the lake, and once we build up the endurance it'll take us right to OK Falls. In the summer there would be bodies all over this scene, and swimmers crawling across the background, but right now it could be on the moon it's so quiet.

Ingrid invited me to join her 'girls group' this year, and our first get together was last night. I didn't really know what to expect, but it was an absolute blast. They get together once a month, pick a country or a theme and everyone brings an appropriate dish. Last night it was Morocco. I made a chickpea soup that was a complete disaster. I chucked it at the last minute. Luckily I had some Ginger Squares in the freezer that we didn't devour at Christmas so I took those instead. Moroccans do Ginger, no? How untypically Martha of me to be able to pull something homemade out of the hat like that. Usually the only thing in m freezer is cheater frozen appies from M and M's. All the food at the party was amazing. We feasted, then did one of those goofy gift exchanges where you can steal the gifts that are already open. I drew the last number which means I came home with the best gift - a big faux fur throw for Greg and I to curl up under to watch TV. Lovely. It was nice to do something that had nothing to do with networking or business building.

On that note I must sign off and go get ready for the Penticton Women in Business Lunch today!