Sketching Archives - Arts Cubed

Bathurst Loop

There’s a turnaround and transfer point at Bathurst and Queens Quay on Toronto’s waterfront. I sometimes used to transfer to a Bathurst car here when I worked in the King/Bathurst area about 2002-04. But these are new streetcars that take up most of a city block. I first rode these articulated streetcars in 2017-18 I think. I was working for Tapestry Opera in the Distillery District and I’d catch the streetcar on Cherry Street. It was a darn cold place to wait. I wasn’t sure about the new cars. They were easier to get on but they moved in such a herky jerky fashion, people were always losing their footing at first until both drivers and passengers adjusted.

Philosopher’s Walk

Nestled between RMC and the Royal Ontario Museum on Bloor is the entrance to the nicest little footpath through a part of U of T’s downtown campus

Anglican Church of Canada Offices

North of St. James Cathedral there is a row of Victorian offices that run up to Adelaide and around the corner. Built in the same brick as the church, the Court House a block away and St. Lawrence Hall, the original City Hall, these buildings house a number or organization including the Anglican Church of Canada, who used to take up the full structure, I believe. Theres a new church Hall for the Cathedral in blue glass between the old offices and St. James Park.

Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto

I bought myself a sketchbook with a wide format. I’d been admiring other people’s ability to create some wide street scenes. I really had fun with this. I think I’ll use this format a lot in future.

Elmsley Place

This house in Toronto’s Annex was purchased by St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto in 1920 and still serves as student housing. I wanted to sketch it because of it’s Hogwarts feeling and the unique brick buttresses under the upper storey tower room. These days it is connected to two additional houses on the block that collectively house about 70 students in double and single rooms. The Annex was Toronto’s first subdivision and is now a mixed neighbourhood of mansions, frat houses, rooming houses and houses converted into multi-unit dwellings.

37 Madison

I saw this house in a real estate listing for about 7 M. It is currently being used as offices for an advertising agency. I think the sunrise light bathing the bricks and stone in yellow and orange really appealed to me.

Cabbagetown rowhouses

These tiny 2 story rowhouses are in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood on Alpha Avenue.

Cobourg Town Hall

We travelled the full length of Ontario’s old Highway 2 from Toronto to the Quebec border this summer and discovered a lot of new sites along the way. This elaborate town hall in Cobourg caught my eye. It really reminds me of St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto which was Toronto’s first City Hall.

Kensington Market-Cheese Magic

This is the Cheese Magic shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. A predominately Jewish owned shop location in the 1950’s and 60’s, it has welcomed numerous waves of immigrant shop owners and now is an iconic tourist destination.

It was also the setting for a much-loved CBC sitcom “King of Kensington”.

I was drawing from a photograph in this sketch and working only in markers.

I have been taking a course in using markers and I think I’m getting the hang of these new techniques but. . . really missing my water colour box.