Silent Art Auction

Vignettes from the recent silent auction to raise funds for Arts in Healthcare programs at the University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton. It was held at the McMullen Gallery in the hospital. I am a volunteer in their Artists on the Ward program. A silent auction has become a yearly event and this one was a very well attended lively occasion. A successful one too from the looks of things!

City Market Downtown

The City Market Downtown started as the Rice Street Market in 1903. It was a regular Saturday venue for local and regional farmers to sell their products. The market was moved a few times to make way for new construction and eventually came to occupy Churchill Square which is the main square in the city. In the fall of 2011 it moved indoors to the ground floor of City Hall for the colder months. This has allowed it to be a year-round market and for a city where winter can last 7 months it was a welcome move. Downtown Edmonton has little to offer and the market helps somewhat to revitalize the weekend scene. Today craft and food product stalls outnumber meat and produce. 

Unfortunately (I guess because it is City Hall after all) no hot food is allowed to be sold indoors. This was a disappointment when I went there to sketch last Saturday as part of the Edmonton Urban sketchers monthly meet. A nice hot snack would have been just the shot.

Sketching The Line

I was recently one of 10 artists selected to participate in Sketching the Line 2015 (a showcase of drawings made on public transit around the world). 50 artists from 16 countries submitted work for consideration. Each artist chosen had 6 sketches selected and they are being shown on screens at train stations in Toronto and Edmonton until the end of April 2015.

It takes a bit to overcome the discomfort of sketching people on a train. I started doing this in Singapore much to the discomfort of my spouse when he was with me. On one occasion a man sitting next to me got quite engrossed in what I was doing and got anxious when I was having trouble capturing a passenger who kept moving. He was quite relieved when I finished just in time before the passenger left the train. When he left, he shook my hand.

These are the 6 sketches selected for Sketching The Line:

Singapore Sketches
I had a longish commute which gave me about 30 minutes of a relatively empty train before more passengers got on and blocked my view. 

Edmonton Sketches
These ones were done on my short 16 minute commutes between Century Park and McKernan. 

Here is one shown on a train platform in Toronto.

And a couple more I particularly like.

Moods of My Neighbourhood

This winter I’ve enjoyed sketching the various moods of my neighbourhood - the early gloom of evening, brilliant sunrises in a sky still black from the long night.

Here the approach of freezing rain...

and a snow storm.

Snow storms and Snow Ploughs

It’s been a “mild” winter with only 3 short periods of frigid temperatures and snow so far. Windchill dipped to a low of minus 24 degrees Centigrade last Friday afternoon while I was sketching this scene. The roads were very icy. My spouse saw 2 people in front of him fall flat during his short walk home. A fall could be serious if you’re a senior and he was glad to get home safely. 

Earlier in the day a parade of snowploughs went down the street which gave me a chance to sketch 2 of them as they went by. The drivers must have been heading back to base after a long night’s work clearing up from the snowstorm the preceding day. Interestingly each plough was a little different. 

Calgary

My first trip to Calgary and I liked the city. It's hilly with views of the Rockies and has a big city feel which Edmonton doesn't. 

Early morning sketch looking north across the Bow River from the International Hotel. 

The Fourth Avenue Bar at the International Hotel served excellent (though expensive) fish and chips. The chips were spicy hot! Must have been their Chef Naidu's specialty. 

(Due to the presence of the Downtown Airport in Edmonton, there was a restriction to the height of buildings in the city. It's only now, many years since the closure of that airport and the demise of any plans to revive it, that taller buildings are beginning to appear on the Edmonton skyline).

Quick Trip to Calgary

In early January I had to make a quick trip to Calgary. These sketches were done at Edmonton Airport. A delay due to a snow storm gave me an extra hour to sketch. What luck!

Watching diners at an airport restaurant.

These two ladies were both chewing their straws!

People in the Olive Clinic where I spent a whole day attending to immigration medicals. With three Chinese doctors, the all Chinese staff and mostly Chinese patients, the bustling clinic could have been somewhere in Singapore or Hong Kong. The receptionist had a perfect command of English, Cantonese and Mandarin.