By Rail, By Sail, By Bike

I'm catching up on posting sketches from the last several crawls, and find a transport theme has accidentally emerged.

We celebrated National Train Day at Union Station...




We sketched the tall ships Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain while they were docked in Vancouver over Memorial Day weekend. I started with a thumbnail in which I worked out some problems of ratio, but still had a lot of trouble in the final drawing. And then the Hawaiian Chieftain sailed away...



Katura and Alanna and their spouses teamed up to provide an organized sketchride as part of Pedalpalooza.



 

Many thanks to Katura and Chris and Alanna and Tad for their work to make the sketchride a success! It was also great to meet new sketchers and to get return visits from sketchers we haven't often seen.

Here's hoping this summer treats us all gently and we can have many beautiful sunny days of sketching together.

Tall Ships on the Quay at Vancuver

Sunday turned out to be not too bad weatherwise. It looked more ominous than actual fact (there were even some warm sun breaks). As in previous years the ships were at dock.... but the space is so tight that a good view of both ships was pretty hard to come by....in addition the dock ramp and pilings made it even more chopped up.
But several of us showed and were game to give it a go.

The Hawaiian Chieftian- ink, watercolor pencils, Pitt markers

This sketch is cropped...in its original form I had the aft end of the Lady Washington but it was awkward with the dock ramp cutting it and the cropped version reads better.
After lunch at the Red Lion I went back to give it another try and then concentrated on the Lady Washington.

The Lady Washington- ink, Pitt markers

These are such beamy ships it is very difficult to get the right proportions and make it look like it is properly sitting in the water. They are pretty elegant above the waterline but in this drawing it looks like a whale has attached itself below!