Space Girl with BIG Gun

Here's a piece I had completed a while back. I modeled the gun after a toy gun from the 1950s. I'm not too pleased with the outcome. I used markers, then added the smoke with pencil crayons.

Larger images are hosted on my Webshots gallery.

Christmas

A few photographs I've taken during the Christmas holidays.

Click the image to see more.

Click the image to see more of our cat..

Lunch at Zyng!

My eldest and I were out late this morning, into the afternoon, doing some drive by shooting at a number of different subway stations in Toronto. She's working on a design project to provide the blind with geographic information when leaving Toronto's subway stations. It's for school, so whether it gets implemented in the real world is another story. I'm sure a lot of people were wondering why two people were running around taking so many pictures. We photographed Don Mills, Bayview, Lawrence, Eglinton and Bloor -- a total of 277 photos, and approaching 700MB. Whew!

For lunch, we stopped off at Zyng. Zyng is one of our favourite restaurants in Toronto. (We actually have many favourite restaurants.) I ordered Indian Spiced tea, and she had Jasmine Flower (or something like that). For lunch we had Pad Thai and she made her own noodle bowl. It was delicious. As usual. The conversation was also great, bouncing across many topics. Since I'm off for the holidays, I'm trying to put in a lot in the two weeks I have, with my family. When I'm at work, our time together seems hurried.

Here's what our view was for lunch. It makes for great people watching.

Bad Winter

It's been a bad winter so far here in Toronto. We've had some snowfall, but it has been followed almost immediately by the weather warming up a little. That means there has been little accumulation of snow. This afternoon, my wife and I took a walk a little ways through a nearby park, and we did find a good deal of snow, but there was none on the trees. All had pretty much been melted. Which didn't leave much photography to be done.

I took some pictures anyway. Click the image below to be taken to the gallery that has the rest of the pics from today.

Inspired by Ghost in the Shell

Here's a little something I did when the Ghost in the Shell inspiration hit me.

Night of Snow

Since the first light brush of snow, I've wanted to go out there with the camera. Yesterday we had a big snowfall. Predictions were that the snow would continue on and off throughout the weekend. Well, today, it all sort of got melted. It was a bright and sunny day, and it was a wee-bit warm. We still have some accumulation, but it's not the same. I figure that would happen, so last night, when everyone was in bed, I slipped out onto the balcony, and tried taking some photos of my backyard. Here are the results.

Driving in Winter

We've had a little snowfall here and there in recent weeks in Toronto, but winter didn't really arrived until last week. At least we had a taste last week. I took the following photos as my wife was driving me to the subway station.

The bus turning onto the road is the one I should have been on.

Traffic is always slow after the first snowfall that accumulates. Despite that, there are usually numerous accidents. After the first few snowfalls, people get back to driving like normal, and accidents are reduced. Go figure.

This is a small park by the road.

Another view of the park. Yes, we got real accumulation.

The snow never lasted of course. It was gone by the end of the day. Yesterday though, it started again, and is expected to continue over the next couple of days. We're expected to get up to 30-cm according to some forecasts.

Self Portrait

Here's a self-portrait I did sometime ago. I did it originally for a web comic, but I ran out of patience.

Egyptian Inspired

Here's a piece of art I did about a month -- maybe two -- ago. It's one of my favourite pieces in the new sketchbook I started. I was given the sketchbook for Christmas last year -- or my birthday -- can't remember which one. The sketchbook is only 7x5-inches, but the paper is 110lb. That made it easy for me to use inks and markers -- which resulted in this piece. I've since decided that the sketchbook will be devoted to just colour art -- which is quite the goal I've set myself, as they take hours to complete -- usually at a coffee shop somewhere.

From the Weekend

Yesterday, I also sketched my cat. She was doing her best to appear as lazy as possible. This was done again, with just markers.

My wife and I were also on this past Saturday, having brunch at Bloor West Village -- otherwise known as the Annex. It's an artsy-fartsy part of town. My wife was being sketched by some guy. I in turned took a couple of minutes to capture these two men having a coffee, yapping and looking out the window.

Sketch from this Morning

Here's a sketch I did this morning at our family meeting. My daughter was sitting opposite me, and I had the Faber-Castell brush pens out. I did this without the aid of pencils. Sometimes, it's best to just strike with the pen, and not worry about getting things perfect. I thought this sketch came out pretty good. The left and bottom right portraits bear the closest resemblance to my daughter.