That time of year

 

 

The month of May has come to a close, and summertime fun is just around the corner.  In fact, it seems like there's been non-stop fun lately so it's time to settle down and bring to conclusion the "East Side Storeys" series.

 

For the series finale, I'd planned to place figures on a balcony, to be viewed from a lower vantage point. Over months, I'd spotted some lovely old homes that offered different possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

During the first COVID year, the life drawing studio I attended moved its sessions on-line. Sometimes the facilitator would set up a "mole cam" to capture views that would be impossible to get in person.  I'd always wanted to do something with this pose in particular.

 

Eventually, I chose one of the first houses that had suggested the balcony idea to me.

 

Uh-oh.  When I went back to get a better photo, I was shocked to find a City signboard indicating the house is slated for demolition and replacement.

 

 

And why should I be shocked?  It's the Vancouver story these days.  At least this old house will be replaced, simply, with a somewhat larger new house – not a residential tower from 8 to 44 storeys.  But let's not go there.

 

Every painting in this series quickly took an unexpected turn and went somewhere I hadn't planned.  All right, then.  I gave up on the balcony idea and reverted to one of the oldest, most intriguing houses I've come across.

 

Built in 1906 (thank you, BC Assessment records), it was likely a rooming house for workers contributing to the early 20^th century development and population boom that hit about 1910.   

 

Oh, I do love those bay windows!  Musing on who might have looked out those windows in days gone by, I decided to tap into the rooming house vibe.  Dreamily and surrealistically, the images unfolded – not to "haunted house" standards, but yes, with a little air of mystery.

 

A rooming house of the early 1900s would have had a landlady – a kindly one, let's hope, and she began to show herself behind the curtain.

 

Here, in the final version, she's likely checking to see how many of her boarders have arrived home from work.  Is it time to heat up the chicken stew?   A couple of them are already hanging out, waiting for supper at "The House at the Bottom of the Hill" (copyright 2025 – East Side Storeys Series).

 

I walked by there again today, hoping for a photo to capture the rather steep slope of the hill – to no avail, with the trees in full leaf. 

 

 

More usefully, for the end of this series, I spotted these neighbouring houses, just two blocks away:-- On the right, one of the typical houses of this part of the city.  On the left, under construction, one of the new-style 21^st century models.  Someone else will have to tell that story some day.

 

 

Step right up -- if you can

 

At the outset, I had great plans for my "East Side Storeys" series.  I'd have my preferred subjects – people – interact with features of actual old houses on my side of town.  First, a house with enchanting rooflines;  then, a house with beautiful stained-glass windows; then, an irresistible bay window: and mostly recently, a unique front porch. 

 

Well, if you haven't lost the plot – and it's been easy enough to do – you'll know that each East Side street I've travelled has had a bump in the road.  Do I dare try again, aiming for a house with lovely front steps occupied by step-sitters?  The gorgeous title photo of a classy brownstone in Upper Manhattan urged me to rise to the challenge – thank you, Friend A!

 

Here's the house that started my original train of thought:

 

When I cruised back one day for a better photo, I wondered if its next-door neighbour might offer more possibilities.

 

If you've noticed a similarity in colours with previous houses in this series, it's probably due to the "True Colours" program – a catalog of heritage-inspired housepaint colours derived from the colours of actual old paint chips.

 

Somehow, these steps just didn't work with my would-be sitters and standers.  And meanwhile, I'd again walked in a different direction and paused at this charmer with its wrap-around veranda.  I was undeterred by the prominent tree in front.  Hadn't we gleefully learned of "artistic license" in Grade 7 art class?

 

Yes – let's try this one.  Here's the view I'll work with as I try to get both those side porches.

 

From this, I did a rough pencil drawing to scale, to be copied with a pastel stick onto a green painted underlayer.

 

I played around with this for several mornings' studio sessions.  WHY hadn't I remembered the basic East Side lesson – that unless I worked on a very large canvas, I was unlikely to be able to combine plausible people with plausible housefronts.  The step-sitters just wouldn't work!

 

Then, to the rescue -- A small figure I've had on my bulletin board for years.

 

Scaled up, she's going to help me get back to basics.

 

As we take this house "down to the studs" as they say, I'm going to begin again, working from the blueprint.

 

Paintbrush in hand, this gal works fast – choosing to start with that bay window that I couldn't resist.

And here's the final:  "Working from the Blueprint" – East Side Storeys series, copyright 2025.

 

Just coincidentally, I walked into my Friend L's gallery (hers by virtue of several decades of expert volunteer labour) to find its current exhibit featuring an artist who works large-scale – with the architecture of vintage houses!  How about that?!?

 

And meanwhile, we've all had the pleasure of Friend A's photographs – as beautifully composed as those of the plats du jour at her boutique restaurant.  She comments, by the way, that the very idea of prohibiting step-sitting is "very un-New York." 

 

 

"Time must have a stop"

 

 

I'm not the first to borrow Shakespeare for my own mundane purposes.  You can check out the source here but try not to get drawn into all the warfare violence.  My issue is simple  -- not enough time.  There's not even a hint when I look at my wrist – my sentimental old watch keeps slipping out of sight.  My fitness tracker goes dark – although it wakes up with two taps.  And the braided band is there for I.D. purposes.

 

No time! – even though I'm moving along with my game plan:-- Pause/paws to reconsider where and how to proceed with the East Side Storeys series, and then – back to the drawing board.

 

The next house in my series was intended to feature "step sitters," as I called them in my photo files. It took some sketching and playing around to decide which house might work best.  With the choice made, I reviewed my file of sitting poses:

 

Then I laid in the base green colour.

 

I was putting in a good couple of hours every morning, but – it takes a long time to build a house!  And a lot of weird stuff was happening around me in April.  I don't want to pick up T.S. Eliot's April vibe – my stuff was not "cruel," just weird, or unexpected.  Consider this:-- my medical referral to a cosmetic dermatology clinic (who, ME?).  Located near the Harbour's seaplane base, the clinic made an adventurous destination for me -- but I couldn't help thinking "when worlds collide." Luckily, my results were benign (the staff were medical dermatologists, as well) – but, alas, there was no free ride on a seaplane.

 

 

Then there were the sudden new demands on my schedule, as my garden shot up all at once and the first semester of my Beginner Italian classes began.  In March, it had seemed a good omen when I found this used book for a mere $5.00 – but I hadn't factored in the required hours for either gardens or Italian, as pleasant as those hours would be.

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And now, the delightful surprises in my own garden.  For a sunny place on my porch, there's a gift just hand-delivered from friends who are garden experts.  They've nurtured its "mother plant" and shared its offspring with me, and it's already budding. 

 

It's prime time now for one of my favourite B.C. wildflowers – Youth-on-Age – vigorously doing its thing, which is to be fruitful and multiply.

 

I thought this year's super-cold weather had destroyed the Solomon's Seal originally given to me by friend G, but it's come up more widespread and vibrant than ever.

 

All of this is wonderful – too wonderful to get lost in stress and overload.  Taking a cue from the Wisdom Department (Hello. Solomon), I decided this very morning not to be frazzled about my usual month-end painting deadline – but to proceed with measured pace and take time to stop, breathe, observe, enjoy if possible.  And then get on with it.

 

 

Paws to reflect

 

 

After my labour-intensive building project with the previous painting in the "East Side Storeys" series, my frazzled mind again needed to hit "Pause" and figure out what I thought I was doing.  And along came just the paws I needed.

 

Part of my frazzlement has to do with upheaval in the neighbourhood, including the impending loss of my comfortable next-door neighbours -- and the loss, already, of their aged cat Linus.  That's been hard for me as Linus has been my antisocial garden companion (is that possible?) for 12 years – and of course, harder for them as it's followed on the loss of their adored dog, Bugsy the Pugsy.

 

One of this neighbour pair came over one day to pick up another dog of theirs I'd been dogsitting. (Not a story anyone wants to replay).  He noticed all my paintings stacked around the living room and declared them to be "beautiful." Thanks!  I'll take encouragement wherever I can get it.  The next day, he came back to ask if I'd consider doing portraits of the cat, the dog, maybe the cat's long-gone sister.

 

Uh-oh.  There's a pause and there are paws, and there's no guaranteed applause.  I couldn't just say, "No."  Instead, I suggested I'd do a trial run from one of my own photos, and we'd see if it landed in the realm of possibility.  Here's my original photo – taken in March, three years ago.

 

 

 

Here we go again, dealing with lines and angles along the back fence on the laneway – and here's the first outline of Linus.

 

 

The view made his posture tricky, and I hadn't even reached his face.  From my early 1980s life drawing classes, I remember a classmate asking my revered teacher if it was "harder or easier to do animals rather than humans."   The remembered answer:  "It is the same thing – you must consider gesture, anatomy, mood.  You must pin down what you really want to do."  And that brought me to this stage.

 

On to the forsythia – and it might be said this painting is more about spring's harbinger shrub than about Linus.  Quite coincidentally, a surprise awaited me.  I'd gone to the online Oxford English Dictionary to double-check pronunciation – another neighbour puts a "scythe" in the middle while I've always heard and said "sith."  And there I found:--

 

Oh, yep.  I know this guy – John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge Shecut, my many-times-great- grandfather.  Scroll past the letter to Thomas Jefferson and you can read Shecut's full story.  Some have even called him "eccentric," and what better ancestor to have?

 

 

Meanwhile, back to the doings on my Vancouver laneway and the final version of "Linus on Guard" (copyright 2025).  My neighbour thought the face was a pretty good likeness and accepted it with thanks.  He's thinking over another photo to send my way.

 

 

And trying to regain focus, I roam the neighbourhood, savouring forsythia and all kinds of spring blooms that have burst open in the suddenly sunny weather.  There are more paws in evidence, too.

 

 

Tetrachromacy makes it all come clear

 

 

When I first saw these jumbled threads of a worn-out orange construction fence, I actually thought they were a new species of flowering pink vine.  Well, there are some with better eyesight whose gifts were ultimately helpful as I approached #3 in my series of  "East Side Storeys."  Here goes.

 

I love this beautiful house that I frequently pass on my neighbourhood walks.  The residents hang occasional flags and often display giant seasonal balloons – snowmen, jack-o-lanterns, what have you.

 

In my sketch notes, I've called it "House with cut-out porch."  It's the shape of the archways on front and side that are so delightful.

 

 

I decided that this time I'd aim for a little more spontaneity and avoid a meticulous preliminary grid.  As I began my layout with chalk, I saw it would be a trick to capture the cut-out on the side of the porch – and at the same time, the cooperative young model from a historic mail-order house that goes back almost a century before on-line ordering. 

 

 

Well:  Press on regardless.  As I began to apply colour, darks first, I saw that my invented vantage point was making for troubling perspective.

 

 

What's that handy self-critique that hits me about three hours into a painting? "What was I thinking?"  Because by this stage, all the lines, all the angles, all the overlaps and intersections had already doubled the time I usually spend to get to this point in a painting.  And after many  more hours, they were still not right!

 

 

If I'd planned more carefully at the outset,… Is it even worth completing that sentence?  I was where I was, and I decided to just keep going.  For one thing -- to review an early choice -- I'd realized there was a meaningless space between the side cut-out and the small window so I'd filled it with a hummingbird feeder.

 

That's it – Hummers to the rescue.!! After all, we know that they don't see the world like this:--

 

No, their vision has the special quality of tetrachromacy.   Some humans have this trait, too, but hummingbirds can also see colour on the UV spectrum.   So surely their super-vision will put aright any of this painting's flaws.  They could care less about perspective – and knowing that they see in their own perfect way, I've titled the painting "What the Hummingbirds Saw" (copyright 2025 – East Side Storeys Series).

 

 

During the weeks I was grinding away on this, I caught a Zoom lecture by phenomenal wildlife photographer Liron Gertsman.  It's worth flipping through his gallery, and if you're really intrigued by birds and photography, you could view one of his videos like this one  – "The Best Photo of My Career – A Bird and a  Solar Eclipse."

 

Having seen how he photographs rapid wing movement, I was tempted to place an oversized hummer right before the front steps.  But that would be a bit much, wouldn't it?