The Old Curiosity Tea Shop

Located at Markham Road, Main Street, an English-style restaurant is one of my favourite places to visit. Their signature house tea is worth to try! The restaurant is decorated with different kinds of tea pots. The plates and tea cups are very pretty. You would think you are already in England. Sorry! I couldn't sketch the food this time. Booking in advance is a must because there is almost impossible to get any seat by walk-in.

Sketching at Neo Coffee Bar

Sketching food is one of my favourite things to do. Today I went to Neo Coffee Bar which is a new Japanese-style coffee shop on King St. East. I wanted to try J-desert and coffee. This time I got a "Rose and Berry" roll cake with a blueberry, rasberry and a blackberry on top. I thought I would like to use my bright watercolours painting berries. I wanted to try a latte but I ended up getting a cold brew coffee instead. I loved the aroma of the coffee while I was sketching food at the coffeshop. It took 30 minutes to sketch, but less than a minute to finish my roll. That was my reward!

Dim Sum Day

Almost every Chinese loves dim sum, especially in weekends. Families and friends get together, ordering different kinds of dim sums and sharing them. It is very mysterious that you cannot hear what other people said at other tables even you found they talk very loud. The tables are pretty close to each other too. This one has western style in the hall. Large traditional western-style paintings are hanging on the walls. It's a bit weird to me, the styles don't match simply. However, the dim sums taste good, love the pu-er tea which is good for digestion. Going to a Chinese restaurant for dim sums is called "Yum Cha" in Chinese.

"Orange Dancing Daylilies"

 

Thank you for accepting me as an Urban Sketcher Correspondent! - for my first blog posting I thought I would start with a subject that I have been playing with for the past month.  The orange daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) in my garden which arrived in bloom a month ago.  My first sketch is titled “new arrivals”.  The container in the sketch is a new reclaimed pot ready to be filled with plants and the tall daylilies are the backdrop.

I tried to capture the dancing graceful ever- changing shadows on the neighbourhood sidewalk.  I thought about how each pedestrian interacts differently with the moving patterns and wondered if anyone notices the beauty of this connection? 

 

Sketching and painting the orange daylilies helped me to slow down and appreciate what was happening in my daily life.  Each flower lasts for only ONE day!

Now there are only a few blooms left.  I am sure they have certainly naturalized ( s p r e a d ) in my garden for next year’s colourful arrival!!!  In the mean time I will delight in the arrival of the shadows of the tall dried up dancing stocks on the snow to come.

Sketching Toronto's Disappearing Landmarks : Honest Ed's and the Cookbook Store

Our latest group sketching session involved some of Toronto's disappearing landmarks. Toward the end of July, a couple of us visited Honest Ed's to sketch immortalize this unique and "loud" building with pens, pencils and watercolors.  I never realized how much puns there are until I took the time to sketch some of them. It was a beautiful sunny day and lots of sketchers created amazing artwork that day. It was interesting to hear some of the stories from people who remember the time where they sold fur coats for $1 and gave free turkey on holidays.

A couple weeks later, we headed over to sketch the now closed cookbook store. The entire block has been purchased by a developer who plans to keep the 1860's 3-storey buildings and add a 55-storey condominium above it. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. It already looks different then when Nora sketched it a couple months ago.

To see more of the sketches, head over to our Facebook page.