I had just enough time to do a quick sketch on our way back home – and I could’t help but think what a pleasant clean and spacious airport it was in South Korea – we certainly experienced the opposite when we arrived at NAIA terminal 1.
Sun-15-Jun-2025
Here is my last sketch in Canada – and the first sketch in a new Sketchbook (still using Umae hot press paper). I missed sketching the day before this as we were too busy with shopping, visiting the Esker Gallery and packing. With a midday flight it was an easy start to the day, but WestJet still insist that each bag weighs 23k or less, despite us having far less weight overall…so again we were those unfortunate people you see frantically repackaging in front of the check-in desk! That grey blob on the plane, splashed onto my painting from another sketch!
Sat-14-Jun-2025
This day started with lazy morning followed by trip into town for a 3 hour tip-based waking tour of downtown (our guide was Daniel of Toonie Tours). The tour took in Stephen Avenue, Plus 15 (a network of elevated, weather-protected walkways), the beautiful central library, the Bow Building (and the giant wire mesh head sculpture in front of it), the ‘Family of Man’ sculpture, the King Eddy Hotel etc. We then had dinner some friends at Goro and Gun – lovely vegan ramen soup! The tree sculptures I sketched (along Stephen Avenue) were designed by the Cohos Evamy Partners architects and are supposed to mitigate wind gusts in the area.
Fri-6-Jun-2025
Here is my last sketch done on our UK trip for this year. They day started with getting up at 5am and driving 4 hours from Manchester to Heathrow through dreadful drizzly rain. We arrived in the nick of time to drop off the hire car and then had to repack our bags at check-in counter as one was over 23k (even though the other was well under!). Otherwise the flight was uneventful and we got food despite being told when we checked with a phone call the day before, that there would be none provided (so I ate both sandwiches and airline food). On the flight I watched “The Mercy” movie …which was much more depressing than I thought it would be!
Tue-3-Jun-2025
The other day we brought a supply of brown flour from Wonderbake and instead of letting it get musty (we had an attack of hundreds of weevils in our last batch of brown flour), I have been using our trusty old Kenwood bread-maker (see sketch No. 1683), which have had since the early 1990’s, to use up all the flour. Then I am freezing the bread for future use.
Wed-19-Feb-2025
I’ve had this cheap little palette since I was a teenager. The plastic lid is held on with some tape but it still works. The other day I added a row of new colours – by glueing in some bits of old plastic into the part in front which used to be set aside for a paint brush. This palette is the smallest one I have…but I still can’t resist cramming in lots of colours!
Tue-11-Feb-2025
Somehow I managed to loose my old SwissArmy knife on the way back from our last holiday in the UK, so my daughters bought me this one as a replacement, for Christmas. This one has even more widgets on it! I usually use it to sharpen pencils and open bottles of wine and beer on holiday, but now I can saw things and snip paper!
Mon-10-Feb-2025
Here is the Christmas present I got from my sister – some Anker SoundCore P30i noise cancelling earbuds. These are a good affordable substitute for Apple AirPods – which I loved but finally the battery packed up. I found it challenging to sketch such a black object!
Thu-6-Feb-2025
After many years we invested in a pressure cooker. I was a bit nervous using it for the first time as for some reason I think of them as possibly exploding…naturally it was fine. My nervousness wasn’t helped by the incomprehensible instructions – here is a sample: “To raise temperature by cook after cover shown as 6) and pressure limit valve hooking the right position of exhaust pine. If any wrong position and fail to get use effect (shown as 7) and the lift indicating vane pole”. All English words but not in comprehensible sentences!
Wed-5-Feb-2025