All's Calm on .calm

I just spent a few lazy days, on a pal's sailboat, reading, swimming and sketching while at anchor in the Navy Islands near Gananoque on the St. Laurence River.  It was as busy as I had heard about but was beautiful nonetheless.  

Rainy Day Sketching

Default sketching locations in poor weather are coffee shops and museums.  The choice is a no brainer, as museums won't allow coffee in the display areas!

The top sketch was done in Habit Coffee downtown Victoria and while I didn't get the circular perspective right, the people add character.   The lower sketch is in James Bay Coffee and Books and while the curved perspective is better,  the drawing would be more interesting if had there been some other people there to animate the composition.  Serves me right to show up at 7 am, I guess.

Ferol de Ferreria

 Dear Diary,
Ttoday we went for a walk, found a lighthouse and
had to draw it.    It was fun.

The World is Round - Circular Perspective

About a week into my trip to Cuba my sketching valves opened and I started to loosen up and have fun.  I had done a couple of aerial perspectives and without much planning, sat down and generated this sketch.

Part of it was loosening up my hand by drawing for a week, but probably of more influence was the visits to the collective print studio - Taller Experimental de Garfica de la Habana, which is just off the Plaza de la Catedral.  Those visits had me thinking about representing what I saw, or even using what I was sketching as a starting point for composition  and moving away from strict documentation of the subject.  A breakthrough for me, as it was really fun to do and adds a fresh approach to my repertoire.