October Update: Road Trips, Metric Century, Acreage Tractor Series, and Studio Upgrades
Looking back, October was a busy month.
At the beginning of the Month, we took the camper to Prince Albert, SK for a dog agility trial. We camped at the trial site, where there were about 20-30 chevy II variants (chevy 100, chevy nova, acadian invader, etc) wrecks sitting in the field next to our camper. So, ideal conditions for old car sketching. Crazy how many variations of roughly the same car there were in a short time. I like this version of the acadian grill, with each letter standing up just above the bumper…. also, real chrome holds up!
Soon after this trip, we were on the road again. Melissa had a conference at the Banff Springs Hotel and I was happy to come along too. The first day for Melissa was a class in Calgary, so I was able to meet up with my painting friend Valerie Speer (@valerie.speer) for some plein air painting at Nose Hill. Later in the week I painted by myself in Banff and Canmore areas. Then I met up with Calgary painter Christina Olson (@christinaolsonyyc) and painted at Two Jack Lake and at the top of the Sulpher Mountain Gondola.
At the end of the week, Melissa and I celebrated her birthday with a Metric Century ride and an amazing dinner at Crazy Weed. For the bicycle ride, we started in Canmore and rode the Legacy trail between Canmore and Banff twice each way, with some extra riding around Banff, Canmore, and along Vermilion Lakes for a grand total of 106 km.
Later in the month, Melissa took our youngest dog on a road trip to Prince Albert for an agility seminar. Left to my own devices for a bit, I tackled some big changes to the layout of my studio area in the garage. Work is still not complete, but I now have a large L shaped desk area with a 2’x3′ built in drafting desk, much more shelving, and an increase in floorspace. Really exciting is that there are two bookshelves in the studio space, which gives me much easier access to my growing art library.
Throughout the month, I’ve been working on a series of vintage farm equipment studies, mostly acreage tractors. The first was a commission for a friend but working on that got me excited to keep going. Interestingly, I found the ink drawing work I did this month was a confidence boost for jumping into these paintings.
That’s it for now, I’ll probably post an update on the studio mods when they are a bit more complete.
~JW
