Write on Bowen

I’m a panelist at the Write on Bowen festival. More on that over here.

Sketchbook ~ false creek

drawn while waiting for the water taxi at Granville Island.

If you’ve got to wear one…

If I were the type, I’d totally design this for reals but I’m not, so it won’t get any farther than my budget photoshop mockup. Besides, I’m sure there’s a product like this floating around out there already.

Although, I think something like this is probably more accurate:

(it would come in a variety of hues & genders, naturally).

Spark Girl Spring Launch

My friend Megan is launching her Spark Girl spring line tomorrow night at JEM Gallery!

date: Friday, April 24 2009
time: 7pm
place: JEM Gallery  – 225 East Broadway, Vancouver)

Sketchbook ~ texting

texting | pencil

Sketchbook ~ Hood Point

Stump at Hood Point | watercolour & pencil

Spent a couple of sunny hours down at the beach yesterday, sketching with a friend. The resulting painting wasn’t very successful, but it was the start of a good exercise.The beach is full of driftwood, including this huge stump, so there is endless subject matter.

quiet

Things are a bit quiet here right now because I’ve been working on a picture book. I’ve sequestered myself on an island just outside the city where I am fortunate to share a large studio space. When I need to get away from distractions of my city studio, I come here where everything is very quiet, the nights are very dark and the most lively thing going on outside the studio window is bird drama, caused mainly by a large band of Steller’s Jays and sometimes by the occasional, optimistic attempts at bird life made by the neighbour’s cat.

I have settled into a routine of sleep, eat, work, evening walks to the beach and sometimes some yoga to fix drawing-induced aches and pains – and repeat.

Currently, I’m blogging my picture book process drawings on my children’s book website. I was a little nervous to do it at first – I wasn’t sure I’d have much to put up there – but I’ve had a bout of productivity while working here so the posts have been somewhat regular. I’m also nervous about announcing projects before they’re printed, published and shipped. Things being as they are these days with the economy and the Canadian children’s book business being its good old precarious self, I’m not too willing to tempt fate or count chickens. (I like to reserve what superstition I have for this very purpose.)

Sandhill Crane Screen

Sandhill Cranes (detail) | oil on gold leaf on panel by Margaret Fitz-Gibbon

This is a portion of one of the panels of a screen my grandma painted some years ago. It’s always been a favourite of mine. The whole thing is 12′ long by 6′ tall and made up of 6 individual panels.

My grandma paints intermittantly now and no longer in this style. She finds painting on gold leaf physically tiring – especially at this size. Much of the time painting is spent tipping the panels at just the right angle to avoid glare. The subject matter, however, is still very similar – birds and plants. It kills me how she can pick up a pencil to draw, sometimes after a break of 1 or more years, and produce an absolutley perfect little bird or bud or leaf. She insists that when I’m her age it’ll be the same for me and that even when she’s not drawing she thinks about it. But I do the same – I just find when I’ve had time off I need to retrain the muscles in my drawing hand and reconnect the line between my eyes, my brain and my hand and I just don’t seem to find the same ease with it as she seems to.