Celebrating Year 1

The Toronto Urban Sketchers group recently celebrated its first year anniversary. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I created my first post on this blog hoping to meet local sketchers in my new home city.

For the event, we were fortunate to be able to get together at Station 477 for a night of food, drinks, sketchbook perusing and great conversations. We were also fortunate to receive several prizes from Above Ground Art Supplies, a local art supplies store whom we've recently partnered with and plan to work on great projects in the near future. Thanks to them, everyone who attended got a prize (sketchbook, pencil, pen, brushes, conté, etc).

Everyone had a great time. We also had a little slide show of our first year, displaying photos of our various events (shown below),  and started some discussions about what we could do for our second year.

I'm looking forward to year 2 and all the fun upcoming sketching projects. If you're in Toronto and are looking for a group of people to sketch with, I hope you join us.

1 Year, 325 members, 23 sketching meetups and 1 sketchcrawl

Almost a year ago, the Toronto Urban Sketchers had its first official meetup at a pub. A year later we have a growing community of over 300 members in our facebook group, 23 get togethers and 1 sketchcrawl under our belt. In order to celebrate this first milestone, we'll be organizing a little celebratory get together and talk about plans for our second year. We're currently looking for a sponsors to help make this a great night for the participants. For more details, you can contact me at mj[at]m2jlstudio.com.

A big thank you to our first ever sponsor and partner Station 477.

Sketching While Waiting for a Dunlap Lecture

I got a chance to attend Neil DeGrasse Tyson's lecture the other day at the Convocation Hall of the University of Toronto. Since Dr. Tyson is kind of a big deal, the organizer's repeatedly reminded us to be there in advance and that any empty seats would be given away after a certain time if the ticket holders didn't show up in time. So I made sure to be there in advance and brought my sketchbook to do a bit of urban sketching while waiting for the lecture to start.

I first sketched the crowd and view from my seat. I was lucky to get a seat where I had a great view of the stage and screens. People around me were keeping busy playing guessing games, talking and watching videos of Tyson on their laptop. There ushers were making sure every seat were occupied. They did a good job organizing the crowd. Each areas were filled in sections as people came it. The main floor was filled before people were directed to the balconies.

The convocation hall has great architectural features. It has a cupola with interesting carvings around it. I attempted to reproduce one of them. On the right is one of the attendants who was reading from his tablet while waiting for the lecture to start. After the initial introduction, I switched to sketchnoting. 

Sketching People Sketching Things

There is no lack of interesting events to go to in Toronto. Yesterday I joined a meetup group where the organizer set up a couple fun still life scenes throughout a room and challenged the participants to draw them within a certain amount of time. It was great to see people getting back into drawing after not doing it for several years and how relaxed and welcoming atmosphere encourage them to have a little fun. There's definitely something about drawing that gets people to relax and forget about the day to day stress and be in the moment. You don't need to be a professional to benefit from drawing. 

Sketching at the Brain Freeze Battle Zone

Last Sunday I attended the Brain Freeze Battle Zone dance competition which took place in the basement of the Filipino Centre Toronto. During the event, I sketched a couple of the participants and judges. It was great to see all these people expressing themselves through music and coming up with clever ways to move their body, essentially materializing the music by painting a temporary picture with their gestures. It was fun to be able to witness this and to see how the dancers entertained the viewers, taunt their opponents and showed clever tricks and dance moves that made the viewers reacts with a lot of "oooohs" and "aaaahs". There's a lot of talented dancers out there from all walks of life and all ages. 

As usual, there was a great atmosphere of camaraderie, fun, love of music and support for one another. It's great to see events like this in the city.

Holiday Art Battle

I attended the Holiday Art Battle and did a little urban sketching while on site. The event took place at the Steam Whistle Roundhouse, which is a beautiful space. The canvas were bigger than the ones in the previous Art Battle event I attended a couple weeks before, so we only got to vote once. Once again, it was great to see live painting and how each artist had their own painting strategies to tackle such a bit canvas in 45 minutes. Some started by tracing an outline, some started with shading and others went straight for the background first. After the painting session, the artwork were auctioned off to the public. The winning art piece sold for $1100. 

Toronto Holiday Comicon

I found out through a fellow sketcher that there was going to be a Toronto mini Comicon for the holidays, so a couple of us went out on Sunday to check it out. I figured it would be a great opportunity to sketch fun costumes, and it was. There was all kinds of costumes from the very simple to the intricate. I saw many known characters like Sailor Moon, Batman (he was uber tall), Dr Zoidberg, Picard, Poison Ivy and a couple unique and personalized characters like pink spiderman and a creepy realistic zombie in a wheel chair. It was fun to see various characters walking around the convention centre, checking out the items for sale and taking pictures. It's impressive to see their level of creativity especially considering those made by hand. 

I  was able to draw a few of the people sitting around or standing long enough for me to capture them. There was so much more to draw! I saw a lot of creative and talented people in this conferences. It's definitely a feast for the eyes and something that I will do again, perhaps for the annual ComiCon in March. 

The Village Annual Halloween Block Party

I couldn't pass the opportunity to go sketch some amazing halloween costumes at the Village Halloween Block Party. It was my first time attending this party and it was very inspiring to see all kinds of characters walking down the closed street. We lucked out with the weather. Despite the bits of rain here and there, it was fairly warm and we managed to get a great spot with a table and chairs outside under a little roof at a Starbucks.

We had a bit of time before the street were closed,  so I drew the store right in front of us. It had a cute little halloween window display. Soon after that all kinds of characters started to walk up and down Church streets, to the beat of the music playing from the next door commerce by a DJ disguised as Superman.

The types characters parading on Church street were very diverse. The sketches I managed to complete are a very little portion of the range costumes I saw while we were there. This is a collection of the most completed sketches for the night. There was a pregnant Kim Kardashian in a catsuit version of her famous flower dress, a giant lego character, a fun lady in a mask dancing to the beat of "DJ Superman", a really well put together Robin, Batman' sidekick, some sort of Sasquatch angel, and a cute little boy in a spiderweb cape, also dancing to the DJ's tunes. There were very simple costumes and very elaborate costumes. The attention to details of some of these costume was unreal. At one point, a guy in a very believable zombie costume, came to our table to fix his contact lens and complete his outfit with fake blood oozing out of his mouth with fake maggots. It was very creepy. Some of the fake blood he used to complete his character feel on the ground and most people passing by it after were freaking out and wondering if it was real before it slowly got washed away by the rain.

The overall ambiance was great. Many people were there to have fun and embody their character. We had zombie Captain America growling at us a couple times while passing by our table and met a team of volleyball guys in tight white t-shirts and short red shorts inviting us to take pictures of themselves because they were awesome. Hilarious.  Lot of people were also taking pictures of themselves with various characters (creepy zombies, sexy nurses, sexy cops, ghosts, beautiful drag queens, cartoon characters, etc).  I wish I would have been able to stay longer as more and more new characters kept showing up, but it was getting a little too cold for me.  

Our next sketching event will take place at the Toronto Reference Library. If you would like to participate join our group on Facebook (Toronto Urban Sketchers)  to get the latest updates.  

Toronto Art Battle # 66

Yesterday I went to check out the 66th Toronto Art Battle in a beautiful place called the Great Hall. It's a live competitive painting event where artists compete by creating a painting in 20 minutes using provided acrylic paint. The competition is organized in three rounds and the public gets to vote for their favourite artwork at the end of each round. It was my first time attending this event, which takes place in various cities across Canada. It was quite something to witness and see how different artists create in such a short period of time and what comes out of it. There was a great atmosphere, with a live camera enabling everyone to see the artwork being created and a DJ playing a mix of music on a stage at one end. The winner gets a prize and the artwork goes up for auction and can be purchased by the public. I'm very tempted to try this next time. It sounds fun. 

The Toronto B-Girl Movement Celebration

In an attempt to practice drawing people in motion, I decided bring my sketchbook to the Toronto B-Girl Movement Celebration at the Dovercourt House. It was great to see all these people of various ages, dancing and having fun. The event was to celebrate the end of the session of a three-month program created to support girls interested in learning more about breakdancing. The celebration featured 2 on 2 battles (pairing a guy and a girl to compete against another girl-guy team), cyphers (dancers taking turns expressing themselves by showing off their moves within a circle of participants), and food. Whoever organized this, did an awesome job. 

Bboys and Bgirls don't really stand still for long periods of times, especially when there's music going on, so I started by drawing people sitting down to chat, eat or take a break. During the first part of the event, most dancers were warming up, learning tricks from one another, catching up with friends. I really got a nice sense of community while I was there. People came to see my drawings, I chatted with a couple dancers and even lent my belt to a young girl who decided to participate last minute to the battle. 

The MC presented the girls who took part in the program and who were going to participate in the battle. It was a great occasion for me to sketch the group of people who gathered to listen to her. Then battling teams were randomly selected and after a little strategy session between team members, the battle began. 

I stood on a bench in order to get a better view as more people gathered around to see what the dancers could do. It's very impressive to see what some of them can do and the creativity in their movement and choreography. I've always been fascinated by the amount of control they have over their body. And the ability to carry their weight on one hand never get's old. 

While the battle was going on one side of the room, there was also a cypher going on the other side of the room. I sketched one instance of it and I'm happy with the result, especially the movement of the dancer in the middle. I hope that with time I'll be a little faster and will be able to concentrate more on the movements and the beautiful shapes these dancers create with their body. To me they are like a dynamic, living, breathing, moving works of art : organic sculptures. I'm glad I was able to see this and would definitely do this again. 

Sail-in Cinema

The 3rd annual Sail-in Cinema event occurred last week, and I was able to check it out and make some sketches.  The event features the world's first 2-sided floating movie experience - boats can sail in and drop anchor on one side, while people can sit by the lake on the other side.  Each night features a different classic movie, and "Ghostbusters" was playing on the night I attended.

Two-sided screen set atop a barge located at Sugar Beach @ 25 Dockside Drive, Toronto.

(On the left) The first 500 people received a complimentary Bum Box to seat on.  The Bum Box is made out of cardboard, and it has a flap that folds down for seating.  It's good for situations where you don't want to get your pants dirty from grass / dirt, but I have to admit it was not very comfortable to sit on for extended periods of time.

(On the right) My friend and I got there early, so we ordered some food to take out from the nearby restaurant - Against the Grain Urban Tavern.  I ordered the classic Burger and Fries combo, and it was quite delicious.  It also attracted a bunch of ants in our area!!  Whoops...

Since we got ourselves front row seats by the lake, it was rather hard to do sketches of people without being too obvious.  I am still not that comfortable drawing random people because I never know how they would react if they saw me sketching them.  I only managed to sneak in 4 sketches while waiting for the night to turn dark so the movie can start.

Overall, I really enjoyed the night.  Thank you Toronto Port Authority for putting on such an awesome event!

For more Information about the event, please visit: http://www.sailincinema.com/about.aspx

local fair

One thing I learned from the symposium is that you don't always have to go to places to find interesting things to sketch. A lot of the time, you just have to take the time to look. A couple weeks ago, a fair took place in a small park in my neighbourhood. It's a park where a lot of people usually walk their dogs and children play from time to time, but on this particular day a truck showed up and uniformed staff stated to installed tables, tents, a BBQ started, an ice cream truck showed up, there was a dunking game set up, speakers, etc. Then people stated to pour in. There even were umbrellas for the guests to allow them to enjoy their meal despite the little bit of rain that day. They also had sponsored prizes and trampoline acrobats on the side. I have no idea what it was for but it looks like it was a successful event and it was a great unplanned opportunity for me to do a little sketching and playing with watercolors.

 

Toronto Caribana Parade 2013

There is no lack of things going on in Toronto. It's seems like no matter what you're into you'll find an event to go to. I found out the day before that the Caribana Parade was going on this weekend and decided to take the opportunity to practice some of the things I learned during the symposium (i.e. people in motion and watercolors). I've always heard of the Toronto Caribana but I had never been to one before. It's a huge event spread over multiple days and attracting over 1 million tourists every years. In order to make sure I had a good point of view to do some sketches, I bought a ticket to see the parade from the Exhibition Place and have a seat. 

The announcer said that there was an estimated 17,000 participants to the parade. While spectators were settling in and the participants were gathering, I started to sketch the people around. It was fun to see people in all kinds of costumes and masks walking around. You don't get to see that many color around you on a day to day basis in North America. The three girls in bright blue in the bus on the way there made the bus driver's day. He was smiling ear to ear. 

The parade started with the sponsored cars that were decorated for the occasion. Then  a group of police officers headed the march followed by a sea of people in red and white from Scotia Bank. It was quite a scene to witness. 

I learned that each Mas band (which is what they call each group of people in costume parading) have their specific costumes created based on a chosen theme. These bands are like little companies with their own band name. They each have their own website where anyone can apply to be part of the group and order their own costume to participate to the parade. Some of the costumes are very elaborate and creative. They must have required quite a bit of time to put together. I didn't realize how serious of a business they could be. 

I used the breaks between the mas bands as an opportunity to draw the spectators and see  who was coming to the event and what everyone was doing as well. Yesterday was the perfect day for such an event : Hot and sunny.  I realized that in order to really enjoy the event on such a sunny day, you need to be prepared and bring a hat or umbrella for some shade as there was not a lot of available shaded areas. So despite having available seats, many of the people who did not bring a hat or umbrella sat under the few available trees. 

After a couple hours, all the bands headed off to Lakeshore Blvd to continue their parade and I decided to call it quits, as I was getting a little tired. But it was a great first experience and I'm looking forward to try this again next year, hopefully with fellow urban sketchers.