Vancouver sunsets

We've had a few nice sunsets here over the last few days...

14 miles on a sunny and warm day

I literally walked 14 miles today, and my legs are feeling it. It was a bright and sunny day, and hot by the afternoon. I walked along the water enjoying the sound of the waves but appalled by the dozens of giant shipping freighters and corresponding lack of wildlife. Then I walked to the conference Center to get my badge and back up to the grocery store to get a salad for $4 instead of 12. Lots of walking, but tomorrow will be equal amounts of sitting since the conference starts in the morning!

Full sketchbook from Vancouver

Now available on Issu: http://issuu.com/margplum/docs/vancouver2013sketchbook

Some sketches from Vancouver

Here's a few pages from my sketchbook:

The flight over:

Queen Elizabeth garden:

The aquarium:

More to come!

Home

Pretty flight. More later. 

O-Canada

So long Vancouver, it's been fun. I'll see you again sometime. 

Vancouver from above

From the reception on the 34th floor. 

Half-painted aquarium

Pouring this morning so off to the aquarium today. When I got there it wasn't bad but super-crowded in short order. The aquarium itself has a good assortment of animals but fails on benches, restrooms, and rain protection. Their only cafe is outdoors and there's really no covered place to eat, just some umbrellas over a few of the tables.  Odd point if failure for a place in the Pacific Northwest.  They do have some great stingrays, fabulous frogs, quite a few snakes, a number of jellies, an octopus, and a really nice Amazon experience.   By about 2pm I had my fill of the crowds and kids, so it was back on the bus to the city and a cup of hot cocoa in a quiet cafe, followed by a trip to the waterfront when the rain subsided for a few minutes. 

Here's a few pages of the sketchbook from today. 

Low tide

Today Anna was facilitating class, so I went off to enjoy the beaches. There was a really good low tide at 6am that was still good at 9.  Flotsam up here in BC seems to consist mostly of purple shells - zillions of tiny muscles - and small kelp.  You don't get the huge kelp that I find in Monterey. You do get otters, though!  There was a whole family (with four young ones) playing around and they came up on the sand and rocks and ran around and rolled and rolled in the sand. It was very cool to watch   

I walked a couple of miles around by the water, stopping to sketch along the way. The sketches came out well, here's s half-decent photo of one. 

 

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy so I'll likely end up at the aquarium. 

Culture or something like it

We started at a lovely Japanese garden, sketching and enjoying zen mixed with construction vehicle fumes.  It was overcast, but the reflections off the water were fantastic. Then it was across the street to the anthropology museum which has a wonderful collection of totem poles and other carvings. Fabulous learning if the day: since 1830 they've been using laundry blueing as blue paint. This evening the art museum is open late and of course we haven't had enough culture yet!

Cool sunset colors

From my hotel room happening now. 

A day at the beach

And the garden, and the ferry.  We went to Queen Elizabeth park and enjoyed some gardens, drawing all the way of course. There's a wonderful restaurant up there with a view down toward the city and the mountains.  Great food and wonderful view.

Then it was over to Granville Island for gelato and just walking and sketching. It rained for a bit but we just stayed under cover until it passed.  Then we took one of the water taxis over to Sunset Beach and sketched and walked some more (there's a pattern here) then walked all the way back to the hotel, stopping for sushi along the way.  

Here's a mediocre iPod shot of a few pages from my sketchbook. 

Vancouver

Coming to you from the airport.  Here's a picture from the air.  

Some sketchbook pages...

Still scanning, but here's a few pages:

Lot's to scan...

I've got loads to scan, but here's a preview from my sketchbook.  This was just hanging out at Robson Square:

A surreal kind of day

I went to the Surrealism show at the Vancouver Art Gallery today – a pretty amazing show.  Something like 350 works and no, it’s not travelling, so you have to see it here.  Well worth the trip.  There’s quite the variety of works and they borrowed from all over the globe.  One of my favorites is a work by Paul Nash “Harbour and Room” that you practically fall into.  There’s also some great titles like “Murderer on a fine autumn afternoon” and “Vegetable Delirium.”  I was rather surprised to find Magneto (or is it Boba Fett?) in a Man Ray painting (I’ll let you look for that one).  Miro made several appearances, as did Ernst and Tangy.  There were also sculptures, photography, and films. There was even some native northwest masks, which I had never realized that these guys collected.  It’s a great show, and the Gallery has a great café, too!

After the show it was out to explore the city some more, and I stumbled upon some sort of festival with music and food.  More importantly, the Olympic flame was lit!  Very impressive, and darn hot.

Granville and some beaches

Today I took the Aquabus over to Granville Island.  The aquabus is a floating tin can that makes the 2-minute journey every 5 minutes.  (The island isn’t exactly remote.)  The island itself is a sort of tourist market – Pike Place times five.  Lots of produce and meats a number of crafts vendors, and of course the musicians.  There’s the local coffee – including such flavors as “Harbour Blend Decaf” and “Creekside,” both of which say “low tide” to me – and the fish market – including an option to buy the heads, tails, and other unsavory parts (for compost?  For reasons I don’t want to know?) – and the Granville Island Broom Company, which makes brooms that Harry Potter could fly.  There’s a number of artists studios, including the FunkSui Atelier.  The best part is the people watching and the musicians.  Crowded as all get-out by noon, so I took off shortly thereafter.  Here's some pointing-and-shooting at my sketchbook:

Then it was a long walk along the water – lots of sunscreen since there is no shade on this side!  The tide was coming in and by the look of the beaches there’s a huge difference in the tide line between low and high tide.  People were out in hordes.  There’s an awesome trail that’s essentially flat that goes all over everywhere and nicely separates wheels from feet.  Tons of people on bicycles and walking and just hanging out on the beach.

Then it was a relaxed dinner.  Cloudy tonight but last night was a fabulous sunset:

Tomorrow is art museum day.

Another SIGGRAPH come and gone

Great sessions on Kung Fu Panda 2, Rango, and more.  Technical sessions and talks, cool weird stuff in The Studio, and ran into some folks I haven’t seen a while.  Today  rented a bike and rode around the headlands – awesome!  A great trail and a great ride – just wish it were on my own bike and I was wearing my bike shorts :-).  Then I headed down to Robson and Granville and had a pizza while watching the world – steel drum band, ultra-conservatives, girls in dresses too short in both directions, spray paint artists, and the ice cream man.  I think things are just getting started, but after a 2-hour ride and a long walk, I’m about finished!

Five t-shirts and eleven pens

That’s right, today I did the trade show.  Not many toys (one squishy ball) but plenty of pens and t’s.   I hit up the NVIDIA sketch match again, and drew a frog with logo leaves:

At the end of the day I won a copy of Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro – cool!  Other prizes were things like an NVIDIA Quattro Pro card and Adobe Creative Suite, but hey, I’ll take it. 

The tradeshow had the usual variety: There were a handful of 3D printer folks showing off their stuff, NVIDIA and ATI, several different flavors of 3D monitors (both glasses-free and requiring glasses) and motion capture.  Plus ADSK, Z Brush, Pixar, Digital Domain, etc.

I went to some sessions in the morning, one was the production session on the final battle in Kung Fu Panda, which covered every aspect from the art to the fx.  Earlier it was a series of talks on lighting.  When they went into the complexities of the number of passes it required in the computer, the fine artist in me thought “geez, I could paint it by hand faster than all that!”

Yesterday was a session by Marvel on Thor and Captain America, and it was interesting to see all of the different studios that worked on the films up there together talking about their different roles – I want to learn more about asset sharing and workflow on this.

There was also the early-morning technical talks on modeling human motion, which was amusing due to the fact that these guys can simulate locomotion using a combination of complex mathematical formulas, but can’t figure out how to get their PowerPoint onto the big screen.

I got to spend a little time at The Studio, and need to go back to that.  There’s the DIY 3D printer, and the lenticular floor with the dizzying patterns that cause you to veer to the right and thus avoid collisions.  I liked the MoleBot – a coffee table with a simulated mole underneath knocking things over.

Yesterday was a full day with the Computer Animation Festival screening in the evening followed by the dessert reception – nothing like a plate full of desserts at 10pm after a long day of cool tech!  The reception was at the convention center, which has a nice outdoor area and a view of the city and the giant orca (lego?) sculpture.

Tonight it's a cup of tea and a sunset!

Sunset and fireworks

OK, there are two advantages to this new room: The sunset and the fireworks show!  Wasn't expecting th latter, but I'm not complaining since it was pretty awesome.