Fall foliage at Evergreen Brickworks

It's been awhile since I joined TOUSK on a sketching event, but am I glad to be present at the beautiful Evergreen Brickworks today!

Fall foliage at the Evergreen Brickworks was in its early stage, but there were plenty of colours to look at. It was difficult to choose one scene to sketch, but I was captivated by the location of the meetup - right at the Weston Quarry Garden location.

After 2 hours of sketching / painting, the group gathered around to admire each other's work of art.

The artworks even attracted a pair of dragonflies :)

There were a few of us that stayed for the second half, and I got my chance to finish my own watercolour painting.

Here's my final painting of the Fall foliage at Evergreen Brickworks:

Thanks for organizing the event Oliver! It was great to meet everyone in person :)

Sketching Trip to Niagara Falls

A couple of us went to Niagara Falls to sketch part of the city for a day. We took the Go train from Union Station, and two hours later, we were in Niagara Falls. It's an easy and stress-free way to get there.

When we got there, we met up with a local sketcher and went for a bite to eat in Clifton Hill before looking for some inspiration in the area.  We stayed a little bit in Clifton Hill for our first sketching session. This touristy area of town reminds me a bit of Las Vegas but geared towards families. There's a lot of visual stimulants. Then we took the WEGO bus to go see the Falls before heading to Niagara Whirlpool for our second sketching session.

There's a lot of things to sketch in Niagara Falls, we barely scratched the surface. There might be another trip to Niagara Falls in the future to explore more area. All in all, it was a fun experience on a perfect summer day.

 

Sketching Toronto's Disappearing Landmarks : McLaughlin Planetarium

This summer, the Toronto Urban Sketchers are working on a special project, sketching some of the disappearing landmarks in the city to create an illustrated book that will commemorate their place in the history of the city, before they are demolished. Amongst the many endangered historical buildings in the city is the McLaughlin Planetarium.

Located right next to the Royal Ontario Museum, the planetarium opened its doors to the public, in 1968.  It stayed in operation for 41 27 years until it was sold to the University of Toronto in 2009. The planetarium has since been closed and sadly,  the University of Toronto apparently plans to demolish it to build a new site. A couple of us met on site to sketch the building before it disappears. We were fortunate to have a beautiful day during the sketching session, and we produced quite a few rendition of the building and its surroundings, as you can see below. 

Check out or Facebook Page for more images from this outing. 

Sketching at IKEA

Just before the weather started to get a little nicer, a couple weeks ago, the group met at IKEA to sketch inside the store. I got this idea from Nina Johanson, over in Sweden, and thought it would be a great indoor spot for the group, and it was!

The store is full of interesting and colourful subjects to sketch and has tons of comfortable spot to sketch from. Looking for the sketchers during our session was a bit like playing "Where's Waldo".

Below are the resulting sketches for the day. Everyone did a great job, as always. And a couple of us stayed to eat IKEA's famous meatballs. Overall it was a great outing and definitely a keeper for cold winter days. 

Sketching at 401 Richmond

401 Richmond is a restored heritage building right in the city and home to several artists, cultural producers, microentreprises, galleries, festivals and shops. Fortunately it's also open to the public, so a couple of us sketchers recently met there to sketch the many beautiful and eclectic vignettes throughout the building. We had a great turnout of over 20 sketchers, each capturing beautiful details of the building through their sketches. If you're in the area, it's a great place to visit. 

Check out some of the sketches below and head over to our facebook page for more. 

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.