Sketchy Weekend

I’ll take a break from the corporate work for a bit here. I have been taking some time to do more sketching again lately and I would like to upload some of the sketches. I have been challenging myself by ‘sketching’ in pen with no gesture lines or thought to composition. I start at a spot on a subject, and just kinda draw until the page is full or I feel like moving on. The idea is not to create a masterpiece, but to capture the ethos of the subject in as few lines as possible, then move on. This is an idea I first got a hold of from Dan Price of the moonlight chronicles when I got issue 18 in the box with my Simple shoes when I worked at a sports store in Abbotsford, BC. There are a few subjects that always appeal to me. Derelict cars, equipment, buildings, old trees, architecture, odd looking people, boats, and machinery. You’ll find these themes throughout my drawing and painting because I find it a challenge to see interesting compositions in our everyday world and present them as ‘art’. It’s like there is a secret world out there and with the right glasses you can see this accidental beauty everywhere.

When I look outside my office, I can see the large silo of Salvador Ready Mix Concrete, and for some reason, I find in it a beautiful honesty. I think the beauty has to do with a lack of pretentiousness that towns can get when they stop being real and start covering every façade with fake rock. Cranbrook, for all its foibles, is honest. Salvador Ready Mix is the epitome of that architectural honesty. Meanwhile across the street they are building replica gateway arches to the downtown, that are modeled after  a historic arch that used to grace the highway entrance to the town. These new arches are, in fact, covered in fake rock. It is, perhaps, the beginning of the end for Cranbrook’s long-held honesty. All that aside, I thought I would get out and draw some of the old buildings in our area like the historic St. Eugene Mission building which, with all it’s ghosts, has been turned into a four-star hotel, golf course, and casino. The original building is more or less intact on the outside, and it is hard to argue with its beauty despite the knowledge of its residential school origins.

This last drawing is the secondary spire of the St. Eugene church that still stands, though it looks abandoned, across the street from the mission. Enjoy.