Sketchy Doings 3: Local Flavour

In this third installment of sketches with accompanying stories, I am going to feature various locations in Southern Ontario where I have either lived or towards which I have ventured.

Guelph is a pleasant little University burg about a half hour's drive from where I live. Often I'll find myself in town visiting some friends that live there. This drawing is of the Cornerstone Cafe on Wyndham st. (it's on the corner!) Something of a hippiefyed joint - like most of Guelph - but they won my respect on one notable day back in 2015.

It was when I was unable to find a particular street, and for some reason I had my laptop with me (I'm really not one of those laptop in a cafe dudes I just happened to have it on me)... I asked them for their WiFi password so I could look up a map, and they told me "we don't have WiFi". And I thought: "I respect you."

So I ended up doing it the old fashioned way: by asking. And lo and behold, the fine folks at the Cornerstone Cafe steered me right and I was able to make it to my destination. Analog is so rewarding!

These are some plants in the backyard of my old friend Christian's backyard. He lives in a bungalow in Guelph where he pays barely anything for rent because the place is basically fit to be condemned. I told him, "You live like Tyler Durden!" and he was like, "I know, it's terrible..." I didn't think so, but I guess that several years of dealing with leaks and faulty plumbing and bad wiring would take it's toll on the most independent minded spirit.

On his back porch there was a hole that you could fall through. I know this because one day I almost fell through it. My chair had it's back right leg teetering over open space, with only the other three legs keeping me supported. If I had leaned back before seeing this I would've taken a plunge. To be fair, I was warned about it... But I don't like to use my brain when I drink.

Anyways looks like Chris is gonna have to find a more human type place to live because after fifteen years the landlord's gone and sold the house. Fixed it up on the surface (including the hole, I assume) and managed to sell it to a young couple that didn't even get a house inspector, just made a few walkthroughs. Word to the wise: Always hire a house inspector before buying a place.

Speaking of laptop dudes in cafes, here's a drawing of one that I did at Cafe Pyrus in my hometown of Kitchener. This was from back in 2014, shortly before I had a showing of paintings there, including the finished version to the right.

I remember once at Cafe Pyrus playing the board game Risk with a finance guy and a street person. Well I got knocked out pretty early on, but the street guy gave the finance guy a run for his money, so to speak. Eventually the money man won. Maybe some of you expect me to run down the finance dude, but no, I'm not gonna do it. He bought us all coffee, and more importantly, he tried to teach us something about strategy. I'm not endorsing his career or the finance industry at all... But he was a guy towards us and that's how it happened.

This next two for one combo is of Orange Monkey record store in Waterloo. So, you see how that fine gentleman there is handling some CDs? Yeah they don't sell any CDs there anymore - it's all vinyl, all day. Except way back in the one corner they might have a tiny handful of like, Englebert Humperdink or that timeless standby, Kenny G. But all the happenin stuff is on wax. (Hey, call them up and ask if they've got Englebert on vinyl. You know what? They probably do.)

And here's Lorna Heidt, one of the musicians who play at the Kitchener Farmers Market on Saturdays. Now I'm not sure if this is still the case, but the last time I spoke to her about it, Lorna had a job doing home renovations. Since I've sometimes worked in construction myself, I knew she could relate to dealing with the question, "But what about your hands?" She remarked that playing cello can do just as much damage to your hands as swinging a hammer.


Below is a tiny sketch of a table at the market. Somehow I managed to make everything on this table look like a lasagna take out.

Earlier today, I decided to mark the New Year by taking a drive up to Stratford. My reason for doing this was that I wanted to make a sketch of this old factory, the Grand Trunk Locomotive Railway Repair shop, known locally as "the Cooper Site". I had seen it while passing by several months ago, and today just felt like the right day to head on up and do some sketching.

So I was standing there in a snowed over municipal parking lot, holding my sketchbook in my hand and trying to draw with a ball point pen that kept freezing up - it was stupid cold here today, and snowing like crazy. Not my best thought out plan - before leaving I was unable to find a grease pencil anywhere, and so had to settle for the ball point. To be perfectly honest, I did some touch ups once I got home, mainly filling in the chain link fence. The place had seemed so much more atmospheric back in the warmth of summer...

After that little misadventure I took a short rest at Bentley's Bar Inn Restaurant on Ontario St., where I had a meal of Antojitos. This is a social media site, right? So it's okay to tell you all what I had for lunch today? Just checking...

Just as I was walking in a small band was packing up their things. I wish I'd had a chance to draw a band playing on New Year's day in a blizzard at noon...

And so that's the latest installment of Sketchy Doings. I believe for the next one I'll exclusively show drawings of musicians - buskers, club performers... Maybe I'll go down to the Speaker's Corner and draw the street preacher as he yells about Jesus: that's a sort of music. Drawing people playing music is always good energy, and I get to help promote them if they're active.

If you enjoyed this piece, please leave a comment below, and of course an upvote, follow and resteem is always appreciated. Until next time.

Writing and images by Greg McCann, the author of this post and owner of this Steemit Channel. To view more of my work, please visit www.fireawaymarmot.com.

Note: Some of these works are featured on my older website, www.theartofgreg.ca. This site has not been updated for a quite a while, and at some point I'll probably fold it into fireawaymarmot.com. If you look on the front page of theartofgreg.ca you will see that both sites are linked.