Sketching at the Harbourfront, the Sculture Garden and the Roundhouse Park

I've been pretty busy the past couple weeks and didn't get a chance to post about our sketching outings over the past couple weeks. We visited the Harbourfront, the Toronto Sculpture Garden and the Roundhouse Park.

The Harbourfront
There is a lot of interesting things to sketch at the Harbourfront. Despite being a gray day, we had enough time to spend a little time outside to sketch the many view from the  harbor before rain came pouring down on us. Member of the Kitcherner sketching group came to sketch with us as well, which was nice. There was a lot of activity going on that day and free food sample from a festival going on at the time.

Toronto Sculpture Garden 
We had a beautiful day for the sketching event at the Toronto Scuplture Garden. The garden is a great initiative between the city of Toronto and the Louis L. Odette family, giving artist an opportunity to experiment with public space since 1971. The artwork currently exhibited is by Jed Lind and is called Gold, Solver & Lead made with first generation Honda Civics. An archive of previous work is available on the Toronto Scuplture Garden website.

CN Tower
A couple of us met at the Rounhouse park to sketch the CN tower and the Toronto Railway Museum. Unfortunately that day was a little cold so we didn't spend a lot of time outside. Still, we got a moment of sunshine that gave us enough time to complete at least one sketch. Then we headed over to a local coffee shop to continue sketching. This is the time of year where it's hard to predict the weather and we'll probably be mostly sketching inside until next spring, but seeing how beautiful the weather has been this past few days, we might get a couple more opportunities to sketch outdoors before winter.

Perfect day at Distillery District

After a relatively long hiatus from urban sketching, I spent a lovely afternoon at the Distillery District listening to live music and did a couple sketches.  The first one was a loose sketch on my watercolor moleskine, trying to capture Melody Fair - the group that was singing live.  The second one was a more detailed sketch of a cute little shop done on the watercolor postcard paper.

While sketching the cute little shop, I had a sudden feeling that I was in Europe - sketching on the streets filled with people, historic architecture, lovely art displays, and live music - It was the perfect day for me.

Sketching at the Distillery District

We had an amazing turnout for the Distillery District meetup. It was probably the largest gathering to date for our group, with close to 30 people showing up. We even had a visitor from Germany! It was great to see all the sketchers and learn from each other about various tools and methods used. Fortunately the weather cooperated so despite the cloudy sky, it was nice enough to sit outside and illustrate the many stories happening in the district.

Sketching in the Cemetery

A couple weeks ago we ventured to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, one of the oldest in the city and National Historic Site of Canada since the year 2000. The site is huge and filled with interesting architectures, sculptures and gardens. It's a popular place for locals to walk their dog, cycle and jog. We were fortunate to have a perfect sunny day for sketching. As a result, the sketchers were very prolific and produced a lot of great sketches as you can see below. Despite spending the entire afternoon there, we barely scratched the surface of great subjects to sketch. We stayed on the older side which contains mostly older christian tombs dating back from the 19th century. Perhaps we'll have to go back again to visit the other side which is a little more modern and includes fountains.

We spent a lovely Canada Day long weekend in Kemptville, just south of Ottawa. It's pretty hard to sketch outside when you're scratching and swatting bugs left and right. I returned to Toronto with about 50 mosquito bites.

Wicked Cafe, Vancouver, Canada.

I know, I know. Technically this shouldn't be here, because I did it in Vancouver instead of Toronto. But I thought I'd give you full disclosure.

One Car Two FIFA Teams

I spotted a parked car, the other day, from a family displaying their support for two countries competing at the FIFA World Cup. I'm assuming it's a family based on the stick figure stickers on the rear window. I was too far to see the details of it, but most likely it belongs to two parents and a couple kids, maybe with a pet. It seems to be a trend to showcase who the owners of the car are by displaying personalized stickers in the back.

This particular car had two Italian flags attached to the side of it. And as I was sketching the car, I noticed that the front was blue instead of red like the rest of the car and realized that it was most likely an Australian flag that they managed to attached to the hood of the car. To me, this is a perfect representation of the diversity and openness of our city. You can support different teams and still get along.

Sketchbook, the St. Lawrence Market.

Some sketching down at the St. Lawrence with a friend. 
(I depicted her with football line backer shoulders, but I assure you she's a lot more slender than that).

Sketching some St. Lawrence MArket people. Actually having sketched these people, it sparked a potential idea for my next set of paintings. What do you think of closely cropped images of people eating?

The Balcony of a FIFA England Fan

There's a worldwide sketching challenge going on right now with Urban Sketchers to cover the 2014 Fifa World Cup. Since it's an international event that connects us all in a way, I thought it would be fun to participate.

My first finding is this decorated balcony from England fans, ready for the game. They even added red and white flowers matching the colour of the flag. I wonder if they were chosen this way or if it's a coincidence. Out of hundreds of balconies in that area, it is currently the only visible flag from that side of the building. The games officially start tomorrow, it will be interesting to see if more flags show up as the game starts. 

I'm not too big on sports but from my understanding,  Canadians are typically more into hockey than soccer. However, since Toronto is a very multicultural city with Canadians having roots in all corners of the world,  I wouldn't be surprise to see flags from various countries appearing throughout the city. I might have to look at different neighbourhoods to see different flags, but I'll try to keep and eye open and my sketchbook at hand to capture the effect the this years world cup in Toronto. If you're curious to see what other sketchers around the world are capturing, search for  #UskWorldCup in various social medias and if you happen to be sketching and posting something related to the world cup, make sure to use that hashtag as well. 

Sketching at Nathan Phillips Square

Last weekend, we headed over to Nathan Phillips Square, an urban plaza in the city nestled between the new city hall and the old city hall, to sketch the area. It's a great gathering place with tons of event going one and interesting details to sketch such as a reflecting pool and fountain, a stage, sculptures and a variety of architectural buildings and features.

Fortunately this time we had a beautiful sunny day so we were able to stay all days sketching various interesting points of view. I mostly focused on the old city hall located across the street. Build in the late 1800's, its architecture is of the Richardsonian Romanesque style, full of intricate details. The more I looked at it, the more I discovered interesting details. No wonder it took 10 years to build!
We had a great turnout and lots of great sketches from the participants as shown above. It's definitely a place I would go back to sketch again.