I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

YUP, AN ELECTION IS COMING IN CANADA...

The federal environment minister, who is also our local MP (Minister of Parliament) for the Ottawa West-Nepean riding, John Baird and his wife were handing out re-usable cloth shopping bags at the Merivale Road Food Basics supermarket this afternoon.

Since I doubt John Baird likes to waste his Saturday afternoons being a free bag dispensing guy at the local discount supermarket any more than I like to work a rather grueling and very busy six-hour shift pushing shopping carts on Saturdays (and I don't usually work Saturdays, but I think most of the cart pushers that they hired in the autumn quit), and since the bags he was handing out were emblazoned with his name and some vaguely campaign-ish slogan about his green credentials, I take this as a sure sign that the Conservative Party machine is revving its engine for an early spring election, which will presumably be triggered when the Liberals, NDP, and the Bloc Québecois vote against the federal budget.

Even though I did vote for Baird in 2006, and will vote for him again barring the sudden emergence of a viable libertarian alternative to the Conservatives, I was too shy to really talk to him or ask him if I could take a photo of him (and I didn't get a good opportunity to get a candid shot of him "pressing the flesh" with the customers).









This blog isn't dead, but it's been hibernating as I've been busy.

My current project is drawing serious Crayola crayon drawings of automobiles which I shall submit to an art show called The Great Crayon Experiment at the Blank Space Gallery in Seattle.

Here's the first drawing in this batch, of an RCMP Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor on Rideau Street in downtown Ottawa.



It's based on this photo that I took in early December.



I drew that drawing on the floor, like a little kid. Fortunately, for Christmas, I got a tilting drawing table that's large enough to hold the large sheets of poster board I draw on.



So now I draw my crayon drawings the grown-up way. :P

The drawing on the table, which is based on this photo of a Ferrari Enzo that I spotted on Woodward Avenue in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham during the Woodward Dream Cruise last August still isn't finished, but I've added a lot to it since I took the photo of the table a couple of weeks ago.



I'm at the most frustrating part of the drawing process, where most of the "big" parts of the picture have already been drawn, and I'm now drawing in those annoying tiny details that are especially hard to draw in crayon compared to coloured pencils.

I wanted to draw at least five car drawings for the art show, but, since it's at the beginning of February, I doubt I'll get more than three done in time (though I'll draw more to add to my overall portfolio).

posted by Steve Brandon @ 3:08 AM