Pencil Jar Art & Journals: 2014

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Station #2

Though the rain clouds threatened and the ants crawled up our legs Kim and I still managed to have a great time today at Station #2.

When we finished for the day we were invited in for a coffee/tea. Anyways, long story short...it was a good day. Long but good.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

This weekend has been a busy one. Today my mother and I went to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. What an adventure. Not only is the scenery beautiful and is so much fun to think about how many dinosaur fossils could be in each hill you pass.

The museum was quite busy seeing as it was the long weekend, however, we did get to see many neat things. A lot of the fossils were found all around Alberta.

After walking around the museum we came to the Triceratops one of my favorite dinosaurs. It was perfectly placed beside a bench. While my mother got to have a rest I proceeded to dig out the pen and sketch book and give him a try. He was a challenge to draw with all the bones. Thank goodness he didn't have tiny bones like a fish.

Below are a few pictures and drawings from this weekend.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

Today my mother and I took the motorcycles out to the Ukrainian Village 45min outside of Edmonton. It was their opening weekend with perfect weather and very few people. The fresh air and beautiful surroundings was a great start to the long weekend.

They have a lot of old style buildings to sketch and its fun learning about the history of the Ukrainian people. It's like fort Edmonton but much more spread out. They have brought in old Ukrainian buildings from the surrounding area to put together what a town would have looked like back then. Close to the railway tracks, with a school, grocery store, churches and a grain elevator ready to serve the local farmers. The interpreters were quite informative and sometimes very entertaining. All in all its a great place to spend a day.

With all we could do there my mother was a wonderful sport and let me do some sketching as well. My favorite part of the day was getting to sketch the clay oven they had at one of the farms.

They bake bread in this oven by making a fire inside to heat it up real good. Then when the fire burns out they clean out all the coals and ashes in order to place their bread in to bake. They say that the clay oven cooks the bread in about an hours time and I can only imagine the wonderful aroma that comes from that oven when they take the bread out.

This particular oven seen below had old lumber covering it to help it stay warm, however, after exploring the different settlements I noticed that this was a more primitive set up. The others often had a little hut built around them but it still served the same purpose. Its amazing the little pieces of information you can pick up in places like these. Not only did I come away with a fun sketch but also with some interesting facts and information.

Anyways, if you are looking for a good time and you've
been to Fort Edmonton a little too often, maybe you'd like to check out the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. By the way, they give free wagon rides :) Just saying.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Downwind from the Pound Maker

Today Kim and I braved the weather to go out and sketch. It seems that every weekend we sketch together has turned out to have bad weather. Bundled in my fathers large but very warm sweater I went out to have some fun.

The sketches we did today were of both the pound maker and a very long Fire Engine. WE FROZE!! The sun was out and there were these beautiful white fluffy clouds but the wind was like ice hitting us at incredible speeds.

With all the challenges the weather threw at us we were still successful in pumping out a few sketches. Both Kim and I did some fun sketches of the Pound Maker in our journals. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this building, it is a building used to train firefighters in different fire situations. How do you train to rescue people in a fire you ask....? Well you set the Pound Maker on fire and go inside :) I have heard from a reliable source that the Pound Maker has various sections that simulate different fire situations. For example, a house fire, or perhaps an apartment fire, or even a garage fire. Needless to say, this building does its job in preparing our Edmonton Fire Fighters for rescue in all types of fire situations.

But where does this large, singed, concrete building get its name? Who knows? All I know is that a building named "The Pound Maker" is not one I would go into without some serious thought and training first. Having warn the bunker gear with hose and axe in hand I can only imaging going into a fire to save someone. Adrenaline might get me through the door and up the stairs but after finding the person to rescue I'm not sure that I'd have the strength, endurance or stamina to make it out alive. In other words...it would pound me!

So after sketching the dirty, not on fire, concrete building we moved on to a more complicated subject. Always taking on the challenge then realizing we may have bitten off more than we could chew. But we must be getting faster, because we usually have barely enough time to do one sketch. Thankfully we ran out of time before we turned into blocks of ice.

Our second sketch was of this pretty but very large and long red fire engine, complete with ladder. It didn't seem like such a daunting task until we sat down and started drawing. That's when I really started to notice all the details. The word "oops" almost slipped out of my mouth when it dawned on me that it would be more complicated than I originally thought. Full of geometric shapes and complicated measuring we got our drawings done but were not able to finish with the paint or inking. It was probably for the best, as we lost our paper towel earlier to the wind...

While sketching all these wonderful things we saw a lot of fire engines go by accompanied by a lot of curious looks from the firefighters inside. This place seems to be as busy on the weekends as it is during the week. The last time I was sketching the Pound Maker I saw them pressure testing their hoses while making big beautiful rainbows by shooting the water hundreds of feet in the air. It was quite a colorful sight.

To end the day I will be finishing the painting of the fire engine. I'm looking forward to doing some more sketches of the engines, maybe even some older ones too! If you know of any cool looking fire stations in or around Edmonton that would make good sketches let us know! We'd love to give it a try. Until next time...

Happy Sketching!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Summer Project + Sketching Buddy!

Not to long ago I found myself a sketching buddy. You have no idea how hard it is to find someone with the same interests and love for sketching until you try and find a sketching buddy. Kim is that person! We both attend the same church and found that we both have a love for sketching. So, we thought up a summer project that has just now begun. We hope to, by the end of the summer, have a calendar filled with sketches of fire stations in Alberta.

We have twelve stations to do, so we've decided that if we both take a try at sketching each fire station we will choose which 6 of her sketches and which 6 of my sketches will go into this calendar. We are super excited and are hoping to finish by the end of the summer/fall despite having to work around vacations.

Its great having Kim around to sketch with. I have learned a lot from her in the short time that I've known her. Its also fun just having someone to talk with while sketching and even more fun to to have someone to laugh with when you make a mistake. "Oops" seems to be the word we hear most often come from our lips, causing laughter and the relaxing of our sometimes tense muscles caused by our trying to draw perfectly straight lines, ha!

Sketching is much more fun with others as well as safer, depending where you're sketching. I'm so excited for future projects! Its always fun coming up with ideas and so rewarding having the finished product at the end. Happy sketching!