Impatience reigns!

Late, Bazaar, The Young

Sharing blog with blog, here I am weekly - The Sunday Building Project. The mother blog of an explosive trend of Spacers!

Hey cold, Hello snow.

 It might be physically impossible to continue this project in the same manner. You can see the flight into insanity as my hands freeze and the drawings are rendered more sketchy and less detailed. Time to get inventive.
It is diffucult to find very omnipotent vistas from warm, windowed, and free-to-occupy spaces. Windowed stairwells? Permissed occupation of furniture store window displays?

Two quickies - hands and feet frozen solid. It actually becomes a bit of an emergency - if I have nowhere to go inside to warm up, I wander the streets in a senseless nightmare, unable to feel the ground or release my bladder. For some unjust reason, many places are extremely restrictive about public use of washrooms. Terrible! I arrive at this issue way too frequently - how does one relieve oneself when one wants to meander uninterruptedly without stopping at a reliable school, library, or church (my three pit-stops). What is the alternative? If neither Jean-Coutu nor Dollarama want my pee in their toilet, where do they want it?

Gingerbread houses. I like holidays. I'm inventing a recipe for mint-chocolate cocktails.

It seems that a lot more outdoor activity in Outremont is recreational, rather than utilitous as in other areas of Montreal. Moms are out for strolls, geared up bikers and joggers veer up and down the streets, and very few people seem to commute without a car. There is definitely no commotion or hustle - no bustle, for that matter, either. It's strange to find neighbourhoods so pristinely ungraced by plethoric public transit systems. Hey! Remember how I said if I mention nothing about my job, it exists no more? Consider that statement expired by this one. It was a slushy afternoon where I left work without knowing where I was going, so I just went up a road I'd never been before. Entertainment abounds.

Ottawa, Behind the Scenes, Tents not bombs.

The concept behind this project is apparently flexible, but this it must be. I am not going to be in Montreal every single day for the rest of my life, so neither is it! Every now and then, we take trips - some far, some wide, some virtual. The other day, we took a virtual trip to my friend's parents' home to make it into a birthday present. Happy Birthday, Peter!

As charming as house facedes are, their behinds are just as alluring. This is also the home of many a foraging squirrel, hyperactive child, and tomato plant lying dormant on stakes.

...Which begs the question, what is a home? Occupy Montreal is organizing workshops/discussions on a variety of topics, and I believe today's was on housing issues. Here is the third installment of the very metaphysical update of the Building Project -

Dedicated to my dear friend Vanessa in honour of her birthday!

Welcome to the digital age, Plateau postering, Outremont encore.

I was doubly queried by the owners of the lawn on which I was stationed about my willingness to procure the small television on which I sat to do my drawing. Despite the negative nature of my responses, I had delightful interactions with both man and woman, the latter of which I engaged with in a brief remonstration of the elimination of analog broadcast signals for TV - the reason the unit was now on their front lawn.

This day, I made a caustic error at work. I have obsessed about it ever since - hence the reserved, solitary drawing. If you hear no more of this workplace fatality, then indeed my job will be through. But I don't mind the simple buildings. They take me less time now, and I can practice what I see as a self-framing technique. Although, it would be nice to stop eliminating windows due to lack of drafting skills. This is on Laurier.

Early, Brothers, Sisters, O-Verdun

It was 7:00AM, too cold to be outside, and I sheltered inside a bank foyer waiting for the grocery store to open. Boy, do ATMs ever get a lot of action.

Some people live in apartments, and some of these apartments have McDonald's on the ground floor. I am kept company by a chain-smoking man across the way, who shouts to his friend Peter. Peter wanters over, a balding man wearing a winter jacket of faux black denim, nursing a gigantic iced cappucino, evidently obtained from where he just was - kiddie corner to us at the Tim Hortons. They speak at length, the former expounding on some aggravating tale about who wants to do what and who wants who to think who can do what or some such.

This is the second time this building has tried to dupe me. It started raining just as I was trying to add some last-minute details. The park was so carpeted with leaves that it felt like you might sink into the crevices between the sidewalk and the pavement where the mountain heaps lay. A man illegally fed squirrels nuts, two girls walked by identically dressed (I'm pretty sure by accident), a hispanic man and his little girl rested on a park bench on the way home from school. He shouted at a woman he apparently knew, and even his french sounded like spanish. She responded affirmatively, waving goodbye and hurrying away, smile fading,  her jostled briefcase falling open despite her firm grip.

The name of this house is a pun? If it is, it's funny.

Friendly friendly Parc-Ex, wonky wonky cars

Out of town for the weekend!

Waitin' for the boys and the car.



Dan's cottage - Prévost



The view across the street

Back to town

Childhood home, Outremont, and The Shire.

Early, candy wrappers on the ground. Leaves, too.

Jamiey's place

First commission! Yeah!

So this is one of basic options for a commission piece. It's just a pen drawing, and this one took me almost two hours because there's shading and periphoral details.

About this blog.

What I'm doing is tracking a personal project that allows me to practice my drawing skills whilst creating a body of work I can be proud of. I am simultaneously offering my skills for commission. Charging on a sliding scale principle, we discuss the parametres of a piece that is to be done (medium, size, duress of drawing), and then you end up with a nice hand-created image of your home. Or of something else. To be discussed. But welcome!
Peruse!
Tell your friends!
Ask about my Christmas card deal!

Building project is underway.

I'm drawing a building every day. Some drawings are more complete than others, due to time, light, weather and visual constraints. Since being deterred more than once by the arrival of an obstructive parking job, I've decided to try to include everything I see rather than restrict myself to the buildings themselves - stop signs, inconveniently parked cars that arrive mid-session, cables, adjacent building features, occasional wary animals are all included if I happen to be attending to that portion of the scenery at that point in time. I try to spend an hour getting the whole image down, but like I said, there is the occasional obstacle. I've had to interrupt myself a few times due to inclement weather scenarios which render paper and ink useless.

Introductory houses, buildings.

Animals

Buildings, posters.

It was getting dark as I laid this one out.

An oldie but a goodie. Point Sainte-Charles, from the front stoop.