I've written once or twice before about my pleasure in sketching as I rode the bus downtown in my last few pre-retirement years. Depending on the time and season of the year -- and whether I'd been able to grab a window seat -- I might jot down old buildings, signs and architectural details, or people on the street -- like the spotted-jacket guy above. "Jot down" is the operative expression because the bus was whizzing along, and often what I captured was just enough to stimulate a later sketch from memory.
Memory drawings or instant sketches are not just eccentricities of mine, but a time-honoured artists' practice. About observation and quick sketches, the artist Delacroix said something like, "You should be able to capture the essentials of the figure before a man who has fallen from a building hits the pavement." Luckily this scene never presented itself to me in my trips through downtown Vancouver.
One of my enduring fascinations was the last block of Kingsway, just before it merges into Main Street, the dividing line that separates what's generally called "East Vancouver" from the rest of the city. There, still planted in East Van and several blocks north of the trendy Main Street section known as SoMa (South Main) was an intriguing stretch centred on Budgie's Burritos and East Vanity Parlour, a funky clothing shop.
Over a period of weeks, months really, I'd make note of this half-block of store fronts -- the size of the windows, the placement of the doors, the clientele and passersby.
Something about the grid of rectangles and the colourful scene on the sidewalk always attracted my notice.
I'd always had the idea of making a long panel painting based on this streetscape -- why not start now, seven years later? I began with some small studies of various sizes, no larger than 8"x10" -- a good two months' work! Here's "East Vanity Parlour lives on" (sadly, the shop has gone out of business since my bus ride days) in which I played with how the placement of colour attracts the eye.
It won't be evident but I was actually learning some good stuff from this exercise, like how to pull shapes out or push them back, how to make a harmonious whole. In this next one -- "Show and Tell" -- I made many mistakes...the too prominent slats of the Adirondack chairs, the too prominent flesh of hands, legs, feet. I liked the observer in the doorway, though, and you'll see that I've cut her loose from the rest of it, planning to save her.
"Meet Me at Budgies" gave me a nice challenge with the bicycle:--
And "Three's a Crowd" brought into the action -- well, out of the action really -- a curious little isolated figure I'd noticed on the sidelines one day.
In most of these studies, I was also getting used to working with acrylic medium rather than water to dilute the paint -- for more opaque colour and "brushier" strokes. From an early morning winter bus trip, I recorded "Still Dark at 6:30 am"
And here's another dark morning scene from the "Bus Stops" series I still work on, both on paper and in my head -- "Headed Downtown."
Here in East Van, we're not without pretensions. Three blocks from us, there stood a few years ago two rather sweet little 1940s houses. First given up to renters, they retained some lovely garden plants -- a big fuchsia shrub and a never-ending rambler rose. Then they were vacated, the deadly sign appeared advising a development permit was applied for, and squatters moved in. After a "police action" that left bullet holes in the once charming octagonal windows, protective fencing went up -- and the houses soon came down. Now, in front of a deep excavation, a sign advertises a 3-storey condo building is on its way ...with the impressive (!) designation, "Kensington Point."
In that spirit, I've recorded these studies in my workbook log with the grandiose title, "The SoMa Suite." Amateurish as some of these look, they gave me some good practice, during which I often recalled the counsel of one of my virtual teachers, Mary Beth McKenzie). In A PAINTERLY APPROACH she wrote, "Much can be learned from the first steps in making a painting. A student will do well to make many starts."
Most of these quaint folks I've painted are destined to hang around in my studio for a couple of months and then be painted over for future studies. I'll close with the most successful one, "SoMa Conversation".
