Portrait Sketches from Banff Travels

I signed up for NaNoWriMo. You may already know this since I've been trying to shout this to the wind, in order to make myself feel responsible enough to carry out my pledge. Anyway, I'm going to keep this short as I have 50,000 words to make up over the next 30 days. I just wanted to share some sketches from my trip to the Canadian Rockies. The scenery is utterly incomparable to anything I've seen, and I would love to go back with a paintbrush in hand. I will, in fact, some time in the future attempt to paint one or some of those photos.

This trip though, was as much as anything, about family and enjoying one another's company. Which is what these sketches are. Enjoy!

Sketching began on the plane out – Mark and I didn't bring headphones, deliberately leaving all electronics behind for this vacation, and Air Canada charges you for them now. So we watched the silent old comedies and I paused the screen sometimes to make a sketch.

The matriarch of the Family of Readers.

Patricia Lake, where we stayed in Jasper, Alberta. That's water and mountains behind the trees. Can't see it here for the lack of color.

Sometimes you don't get the proportion right and the drawing speaks for itself.

Mark and Missy, the resident border collie at Tuxedo House B&B, where we spent a night in Calgary.


My favorite of this set.

Another avid reader... sweet Auntie Lynn

Mom ignoring the world for Sudoku. Typical.

And always a lovely sight, Grandma's feet and the ankles of her nighties.

Which is a nice way to end the night. Maybe next time I post, I'll have written a novel?!? Night night, world!

Designosaurs Really Can Change

Here's a little poster for a cause that I believe in.

Museo is the font, designed by Jos Buivenga - you can download it here (you have to register to 'buy' it, but a couple of the weights cost $0.00). Thanks for sharing Jos, it's been a lovely find.

As for the hidden word, I'm not sold on it. Can anyone find another that makes greater than or equal to sense? Because I'm all about sense. Read up on the Delta for an extra gooey layer of meaning.

Nobody Knows Like the Forest Nose

A collaboration between Mark and I. I scanned a drawing from my sketchbook and he's working on his photoshop skillz so did some touching up and texturing. Click for some mad close-up detail.

The lettering underneath the drawer, btw, reads: Piano Sweat. We were watching Ulee's Gold (has anyone else seen this masterpiece?!?) from 1997 with Peter Fonda as a beekeeper in Florida. The unbelievable outlaw hijinks he gets up to, such a stoic North Floridian. Anyway a punk-rocker Jessica Biel says at one point, "Yeah no sweat" but she says it with such 'tude that it comes out as "Piano Sweat." Which was an image too lovely for this writer/imagist to pass up. It deserves its own illustration really. Someday, piano sweat, someday.

Where do ideas come from?

Mutant babies, of course.

This is the perverse product of an illustrator tutorial I recently watched - Live Trace refresher. My apologies to those recently born - (yay Benjamin! Perfect in every way!) - and to those expecting... This has nothing to do with current affairs and is in fact a drawing from a sketchbook when I was in England and mildly delusional. Was? Your call on the tense)

One Billion Bees and a Swatter

Life has updated itself, I'm now on version 3.1. We are moving this weekend into the largest space we've ever lived in on our own, with the mighty task of furnishing it, I started a weekly writers' group, I've begun contracting on lots of jobs (more than full-time), I have yet to hear back about my visa (so I may not even BE in Canada in a month), I have about a million other things on my to-do list including age old commitments for Lamay Clinic and Black Kettles, in fact I have several to-do lists, and in the meantime I am neglecting what is most important to me (friends and family) and being hard on myself for doing so. Ah well. If you're reading this, please forgive me for not keeping in better touch.

Moses was a Beaver

Jesus Was a Bear

Corkboard illustration. Thanks to Gwenny poo for giving me the idea to draw on cork.... Next up: Moses was a Beaver