Category Archives: Sketching

August 22, 2026 · 11:22 am

My Vacation

After a year off, we returned to our annual pilgrimage to the wilds of Vancouver Island, and Buttle Lake. I carried along the same sketchbook in which I had sketched the lake before in prior years. My skill hasn’t improved, but I then I don’t get enough practice. How’s that for an excuse?

My grandson observed my efforts closely and after I was done he borrowed my kit and went at it.

Our Westy sink empties onto the ground, so we place a dishpan there to catch the dirty dishwater. One morning we found a poor expired mouse in the pan. I keep meaning to put an escape ladder in that dishpan. I put the mouse on the fire grate to have a look at it. You don’t often get a close look at a mouse, and this one was clean, too, but a bit soapy. The tiny fingers are quite astounding, as are the huge ears. The mouse inspired me to write a song, which amused the kids but has not gone over well with adults. The last verse is below. Credit to Leo for the line about fish bait!

To a Mouse...with apologies to RB

He looked so sad and lonesome
lying there on the grate
But there was no way to cheer him up
or to reverse his fate
He was too small for dinner
and too big for fish bait
So we cooked him on the fire
But he didn’t smell so great

To The Meadow

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Filed under Painting, Philosophy, Sketching, Typecasting, Uncategorized

Tagged as Christmas Hill, gary oak meadow

July 5, 2026 · 1:44 pm

Lone Oak 2

I saw the lone oak again today on my hike up the hill. It is an unmistakable tree. From a very different place on the hill I recognized it like an old friend. I took the opportunity to compose another poem about it.

Poem typed on the Royal typewriter featured in the previous blog post. Turns out the typewriter was not a refurbished “P” after all, but a lesser known 1940 bargain model called “Signet”. So it’s only 86…

AloneOakTree

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Filed under Painting, Poetry, Sketching, Typecasting

Tagged as oak tree, plein air painting, watercolour sketch

June 14, 2026 · 2:39 pm

Cafe Living

I recently discovered in Austria, or was it in Hungary? that an Americano is a cup of drip coffee. What Starbucks calls an Americano is actually a doppo longo, made in an espresso machine. But I suppose that as long as Starbucks can sell you a cup of coffee, they don’t really give a crap about being technically accurate. However, it seems that Starbucks is dwindling here, even though they’re still everywhere, only less so these days. They’re even in Europe, which is puzzling, until you realize that anything from here is semi-exotic over there. I saw so many NY ball caps there I was flabbergasted. I wonder of any of the wearers of those caps are aware that the NY stands for the Yankees baseball team?

All that aside, most of the cafes I saw on a recent jaunt to Budapest and Vienna, were not chain stores but locally owned small cafes. Although I no longer drink coffee because it disagrees with my stomach, I nevertheless had a few lattes in Buda and Vienna, which did me no harm and were terribly delicious. Here is a lovely bookshop cafe in Budapest that drew me in to have a snoop. There were a few typewriters in the window, so I couldn’t very well not go in.

`Olympia Simplex - never seen that one before`

As for the cafe life, one could live it to the full in Budapest or Vienna, if one could stand drinking that much coffee, or – heavens! that much lager beer. Yes, cafes sell beer there. Beer is not a crime in Europe it seems. Sadly, it all tastes the same, pretty much, but it is beer after all.

Although I had a small sketchbook with me the whole time, I was generally too busy having coffee, beer, langos, goulash, and walking my butt off all day long, to bother to get out the watercolours. But one fine afternoon I was wandering around on my own in the north part of Vienna and I sat down for a beer at a cafe and made a sketch. There were cafes on either side of my cafe, and everywhere there were people in theses cafes. When I returned home I was out downtown walking and I passed a number of sidewalk cafes, all of which were empty. It seems that all we do here is work! Where are all the cafe crowds?

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Filed under Beer, Cafe life, False advertising, Sketching, Travel, Typewriters, Uncategorized

Tagged as budapest, cafe, cafes, coffee, europe, food, travel, typewriters, vienna

August 21, 2024 · 11:21 am

Sketches from Canadian History

*Eglise St George, Cacouna, Quebec* _{(courtesy Google)}

I picked up an interesting art book yesterday, called AY’S CANADA. Note the similarity between the photo above and the pencil sketched church on the left side of the book cover below?

AY Jackson, one of the renowned Group of Seven artists who invented Canadian modern art about a century ago, liked to roam around rural Quebec with his paints and sketchbooks. In 1921 he drew a pencil sketch that included the same church shown above, in the village of Cacouna, Quebec – on the lower south shore of the St. Lawrence River. When I grabbed the book off the shelf at my local thrift shop I had no idea that AY had ever been to Cacouna. Nor did I have any clue as to where the cover illustration was sketched.

Not until I reached pages 42 and 43 did I discover the Cacouna sketch, and realized that it was the sketch on the book cover. The reason this is so fascinating to me is that my father’s father was born there, and his middle name was Cacouna! If my great grandfather and grandmother had some reason to name their son after the village where he was born, no one in the family knows. It certainly has lasted however, and gives him some distinction in the family history, even though he died around 1925, leaving his wife and six kids in poverty. Such was life a century ago.

*Cacouna Village with melting snow (1921), A Y Jackson*

I’ve never even been to Cacouna, but one of my boys went there once, just to check out where his great grandfather was born. I have been to Buttle Lake here on Vancouver Island however, numerous times in fact. Last week we were camping there again and I managed to do one measly watercolour despite having nothing else to do but eat, sleep, swim, and go for walks. I am not quite so dedicated to my art as AY was, but here is my sketch.