sketch-toon

I consider one of my strengths to be the ability to synthesize.  Maybe that's what's behind this sketch/cartoon I did last weekend, while helping out at Wintergreen.  Wintergreen is a retreat centre which offers a quiet, natural, place to go a little deeper into whatever your "community of interest" might be.

So, last week end as I chopped vegetables and washed dishes, I listened into  a group from a local church taking the Alpha Course on Christianity.  I took a few minutes, between runs to the compost pile, to do this sketch and then added the captions back at home.

I sent it on to the group and hope that they see it as intended - a sort of blurred time-frame snapshot of their session.

This aligns my life-long desire to be an editorial cartoonist and attraction to urban sketching as story-telling.  I think I'll use this device again.

Spring Street Methodist Church

There are five or six very nice churches in Westport,  a charming village on Big Rideau Lake.  I'm always taken with the big dreams and level of effort that the people in these small towns had in building not just churches, but also impressive town halls and schools in these fledgling 19th century Ontario towns.  That, and the divisions between denominations, which compared to the cultural diversity in Canada today seem trivial.

This elegant brick church struck me as unusual as the taller tower, which is on the corner of the block, is at 45 degrees to the main building.  It also has three main doors and I understand a sloped (theatre) floor, so I'm curious to take a peak inside sometime.

It was built in 1889 as a Methodist Church, but in the Church Union, when the Canadian Methodists,  and  Presbyterians merged, it would have been renamed as a United Church.  Interestingly, there is also an active Presbyterian congregation in Westport - one of the third that declined merging in 1925.

West Port Tree Fort

Now wouldn't it be fine,
to stop and take the time,
to sketch a maple tree fort,
while on the road to Westport?


editorial comment:
I haven't been sketching lately, as you see from this careful (stiff)  drawing .... it takes me a couple of days of sketching to get in that loose groove that I aim for.

but; says me, to meself, at least I took the time and had fun doing it