Parks and pens

Santa brought me a Sailor fude pen, and I've been experimenting with it at a local park.  Loving the variable line but need to switch to waterproof ink so I can do watercolor over it without the ink smearing.

 

Here's some photos of the park:

November in a nutshell

Most of November was spent working on paintings for Christmas, but there was also the array of coffee shop sketches.

 This one was a math tutoring session, with the relateable quote, "I feel like I understand it, but when the test comes, I'm blanking.":

That laptop lifestyle:

An then, of course, there's the annual Winterfest with rides for the kids, a 10' x 20' area of snow, craft booths and live music.

Halloween in these parts

The same street that goes all-out for Christmas really makes a bang on Halloween as well.  This year one guy hired circus side show performers to be the "Haunted Circus" complete with fire-eaters, sword swallowers, and one guy who picked his nose - with a nail.  Don't try this at home, kids.

A few houses down had cute glowing pumpkins. 

There were also giant witches.

A block away from me is a nice grave.

My street is empty as a result of being walking distance to this, which is why I went to the circus.  I did get two Trick-or-Treaters, and a squirrel started eating my pumpkin the minute I put it out.

And unrelated, in the Good News/Bad News department, a Dunkin Donuts recently opened nearby.  There aren't many on the west coast to say the least, and this one is a mile and a half away.  I walk.  There's an app on my phone that congratulates me for earning my Heart Points after this.  I'm not sure what a "Heart Point" is, but apparently earn them by eating donuts.

Cops and cars

Sketching at the Art & Wine Fair.  They had a classic car show, and those are always fun and challenging to draw with all the odd angles and curves.

I also managed to catch the cops having a pizza party.  Well, lunch, but it was pizza.  I had actually set myself up to sketch the first aid station across the way but then they came along and I couldn't resist.  Pretty sure Shades figured out that I was drawing them, but if you're going to sit still for even a few minutes, I'm going to draw you.

Digital people at the coffee shop

I've got a backlog of coffee shop drawings.  These are all done in Procreate on my iPad in 10-20 minutes, mostly at Peet's Coffee.  I can make tea at home, but I really like the rotating selection of models that I get at a cafe!

These folks were either related or had known each other forever - they were talking about who's in jail and who's living in their car.

This was actually at a place called Mints & Honey, and this guy was doing a ton of Disney-style drawings.

Back at Peet's your typical Silicon Valley scene.

I see the cops at Peet's all the time, but this was the first chance I was in a good spot to draw one.  There's a lot of doodads on there, and it's hard enough painting black on black, but even harder when the sun is on your screen.

I love this one.  I remember the music was terrible that day but I had such a great scene to draw!

This woman was so engrossed in her kindle that she didn't notice that I was drawing her from four feet away. 

And here's some videos of a few of the drawings.  Procreate saves these automatically.

Happy equinox

Getting back was the other half of the fun

My flight to Vancouver was delayed by three hours, and coming back was just as good.  First, I didn’t realize that you go through all of the customs stuff on the Canada side - good thing I have Global Entry!  Then I got pulled aside for random screening, which requires taking every electronic thing out of every case and turning it on, which required a de-Tetris of my bag, followed by a re-Tetris, so it was a good thing that the flight was delayed by a half hour. Then we boarded!  20 minutes after I’m in my seat, I look out the window to see the ground crew examining the bottom of the wing and the captain comes on to announce that they accidentally unplugged us from the terminal too early, and the resulting power failure wasn’t taken kindly by the instruments, so they need to reboot the plane.  O_o    We have our safety demos (four exits, and your closest may be behind you), but 20 minutes later we are still there. The captain  announces that they are doing some more instrument checks, and I hear the guy in front of me make the comment, “it’s like the key to the Subaru: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”  By this point the ground crew is looking bored.  Finally we push back from the gate and I’m hearing some sound effects that are like a large hydraulic something trying desperately to do something.  We taxi for a while, then pull off into a little corner so they can “work on an issue.”  We’re finally wheels-up at 1:16 - only an hour and a half late for this hour-and-three-quarters flight.  Once again I am thankful that I brought a sandwich for my short flight, and in this case, thankful that we made it.

On the plus side, I did enjoy the view. When I could see it. There was a lot of smoke from wildfires both in Canada and down in California.

This is the view as we are coming in to land.  Generally you would see the other end of the bridge and the entire East Bay:

Stanley Park in orange

Orange light because there are wildfires all over, but the trees here are still green. About an hour before sunset I looked directly at the sun, which was a red-orange ball. That tells you how much smoke is in the air. You don’t smell and taste it as much as you do in California, but you definitely feel it. It was a pretty walk, even if it was hard to breathe.

A long walk

After a week of sitting in conference sessions, I went for a walk. Over 8 miles, actually. I met up with a friend and we walked along the seawall that surrounds Stanley Park, stopping only for views and lunch and finally landing at a place that makes evil chocolate. A day well-spent!