Cafe Sketches

Montreal is great for having a variety of choices when it comes to cafe environments. Still, it can be difficult sometimes to find a good atmosphere that will allow some time and space to sketch or draw. Although sketching or drawing can be done in most places, I'm always on the search for a place that is in tune as a creative space. Besides that, this place has tons of character on its own and it made for a great (humid) afternoon sketching (before the eventual downpour).

a wooden table and floral wallpaper to set the mood

a figure emerges from the white space as I am immersed in coffee.

ink pens and a sketch in progress

Pen Shelter

Leaving our belongings behind, may they be the various dreaded cell-phone / smart-phone crises, or maybe a favourite pen, can be strenuous on everyone. But no where have I seen the unexpected demonstration of care in this one make-shift pen shelter to comfort a lost pen that has lost its owner in a company washroom. It brought a smile to my face to see all the support left for the pen ( probably by using its own ink... ) to write messages of support behind it.

Desolate Sign

rain falls amidst a desolate sign standing beside the highway in the Montreal / Laval industrial park

I guess it was the sad day following the death of our cat, Jaja, after she jumped from the balcony of our apartment (suicide?). It was so unexpected and definitely shocking. Although she was a cat, the impression dawned on me just as horrificly: as I didn't see her as I neared the balcony ( thinking she hopped down from the tree or safely some other way - worrying how I would retrieve her ) only to find, peering over the final side-railing, to discover a lifeless body sprawled on the pavement. That familiar form, the familiar colours, that had somehow gone all wrong through its familiarity. A dead body is something you never equate to someone or something. At least I hadn't. Even though she was a cat, the tragedy still clings to me. Rest in peace, Jaja.

Sketchbook Entry

áthas / joy (king) sketch

skeleton / flowers, pencil sketch.

With the coming of Spring from the gray frozen winter, my inspirational aspiration this season is joy.

Website Crash

Well, it happened - and soon. The story goes that I was having a nice cafe session with my laptop, editing and uploading a small update to the website (an attempt to edit the scrollbars for Windows browsers - something I've neglected). It must have been the cafe's particular internet connection that uploaded ( "successfully" ) the pages with the updates as empty files. Instead of uploading the files with changes, it uploaded only the files without any of the data. Anyhow, I had only given this update to the most important pages, therefore realizing a day later that I had just wiped my website from the face of the Internet. Bravo.
Luckily, I'm not so bad at backing up my work. Although the amount of changes I had made recently was enough to have needed to spend another week re-working my last backups, sometimes just re-creating some pages that were in development anyway. Lesson : back up the files after EVERY session. It's not a waste of time. But I don't have to mention that. I'm sure most people know this story.
More specifically, I had really wanted to dig out some old sketch concepts to work on that I had started the year before, which turned instead into more coding sessions ( which can become addicting for me ).

former homepage, click to see the update

Sketch Journal

architecturish sketching - ink on paper

Character & Feather Study

Ethauet - ink on paper

feather study - ink on paper