Toronto, Part 2

Toronto's been on my mind a lot, lately.  Then I remembered I never posted the remainder of my sketches from my trip there, when we went sketchcrawling at the Distillery.  It was super cool!  Unfortunately the sketches don't capture the amazing sky that day.

    



I know I spend too long on my location sketches, but I so enjoy being "in it" that it's hard to change focus too frequently.

Birdie's Birdies

It hasn't been polar around here for quite some time.  Must fix that.

 

Birdie Bowers was adorable, and Adélie penguins are adorable; as the two of them were often in proximity I imagine there were many instances of eye-watering adorability.

Dagonites

A couple weeks ago Radio 4x ran a reading of Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and when I was doing a bit of housekeeping on my blog I noticed I hadn't posted my more recent Innsmouth-inspired drawings.  No people this time, just a froggy fishy thing I drew on a paper-covered table at a restaurant and then further exploration thereon from my sketchbook.

 

These last few weeks, one would get the impression I do nothing but listen to Radio 4x  and draw all day.  This would be incorrect: I also listen to Radio 4 and the CBC.  :)

Sredni Vashtar

A reading of "Sredni Vashtar" came up again on the oft-renamed Radio 4 Extra and just as last time it caught my imagination. This time, however, I got an illustration on paper before the inspiration fled.


It is a perfect summary of why I don't belong in the Disney story department that, when I hear this story, I think, 'That would make a great animated short!' We are . . . very much not on the same page.

Les Miserables – For Once, Not the Musical

Radio 4 Extra* has just recently finished a run of their epic radio play of Les Miserables, and as I've been very busy at work lately I actually managed to listen to the whole thing.  It's the closest I've yet come to reading the book (shame, I know) and it was very exciting, particularly the part where I got introduced to a character who is entirely glossed over in the musical, to everyone's loss.

First, the usual suspects, Marius and Eponine:


            

. . and then my new favourite, Combeferre! Completely aside from his being just a really great character (and played by one of my favourite radio actors, no less) what I especially love about Combeferre is the fact that, on the most important day of his life, he has a cold. How brilliantly mundane! No one ever thinks of that, but it makes him and his experience so much more real. He spends a good deal of time rhapsodizing on tomatoes and how it is impossible to find good ones in Paris, which led to this variant on the drawing. 

*which I will think of as BBC7 until I die