Canada Blooms

It's always challenging to find interesting places for the group to sketch in the winter in Toronto, fortunately there's a lot of things to do in the city in the winter and one of them is to check out Canada Blooms, an annual flower and garden festival. It's a great way to shake off the winter blues and start experiencing Spring time. Despite the cold temperature, a couple of us headed over to the Direct Energy Centre to sketch some of the floral arrangements, an full scale landscape design displays. It was very impressive, especially the one with a tree house perched a couple feet above ground and completed with a commercial spiral slide. It must have been quite a bit a work to put all of this together. The aroma of the flowers were very enticing. It definitely felt like spring in the building. There was plenty of great colourful subjects to sketch, and we had a great time.

The Gardiner Museum

Earlier this month we visited the Gardiner Museum for a sketching session. It's a cute little museum focusing on ceramics. They even offer classes on how to work clay and had a little demo table at the entrance the day we visited. About 20 of us made our way to the museum to sketch interesting sculptures, vases and plates from around the world. Some were as big as 3 feet tall, other as small as a couple inches tall. It's a great place to sketch when it's cold outside. We had a great set of sketches at the end of the session and quite a few subjects as you can see in the photos. 

Toronto Urban Sketchers Exhibiting in the Subway

A couple months ago, I posted about the Sketching the line contest organized by PATTISON Onestop, encouraging sketchers to apply. The purpose of this project is to feature the works of established and emerging artists, as well as those who enjoy drawing as a hobby, on digital screens of Toronto’s TTC subway stations and Edmonton’s LRT stations. Sharon Switzer, National Arts Programmer and Curator for PATTISON Onestop, states that “This exhibition explores the medium of drawing as well as the social context that the artists worked in, and the influences that affect their practice. Sketching in public is not only a useful tool for observation, it is a raw and immediate expression of the artists’ unique vision."

I am please to announce that  3 of the selected 10 sketchers this year are from Toronto! So if you find yourself using the subways in Toronto or the LRT in Edmonton, be sure to check the digital screen to see sketches of the commuters by Marek, Wil and myself, as well as sketchers from Richmond (BC), Newton (MA, USA), Berlin (Germany), Edmonton (AB), London (UK) and Brooklyn (NY, USA). 

For more details on the selected sketcher, be sure to check out the Sketching the Line web page. Also, feel free to tweet @arttransit using the hashtag #sketchingtheline if you snap a shot of the screen too. It's a great way to promote and encourage more artistic projects like these.