Author: kirsti

Winterlude

| kirsti

Lost Lake, Whistler B.C | January 2008

Just got back from a couple of days holidays with old friends from out-of-town. We ate some great meals together, topped off a couple of evenings with port and great dark chocolate, mourned the lack of Trader Joe’s in Canada and caught up on lots and lots of conversation. I played with my friend’s baby (who for being born and bred in California was a really good sport in the cold weather and put up with one very slushy miserable day like the true British Columbian she’s to become), took loads of photos, went snowshoeing with my boyfriend on a lovely sparkly, sunny day and did absolutely no drawing whatsoever. Time away from work and out of the studio is good.

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Happiness is…

| kirsti

Happiness is...

…new books for Christmas.

It was a booky Christmas. I gave some books, I got some books, and I just couldn’t help myself… I bought more than a few for myself in the process. We are now officially experiencing bookcase overflow.

Gift books from the top:

The Last Wild Wolves – Ghosts of the Rainforest, Ian McAllister, Greystone Books – I first saw the documentary and then some weeks later came across the book while Christmas shopping. I immediately bought it for a family member’s Christmas present. As it turned out, my mum had also bought me a copy. This is a beautiful book full of gorgeous photographs documenting the unique behaviour of a population of genetically distinct wolves. But, as it seems with any fabulously untouched ecosystem in this world, this place, along with its unique wildlife, is being threatened by human industry. The author Ian McAllister was interviewed on the Quarks and Quarks holiday book show on December 15th and he touched on this issue at the end of the interview. I am always amazed at how biologists can maintain their composure when discussing the possible demise of the corner of the earth where they have spent so much time studying, and in this author’s case, living. It must be incredibly heart breaking. It is from where I am sitting, hundreds of kilometers away in the city where the largest predatory mammals around a with unique hunting behaviour are cat-eating coyotes.

Play Pen – New Children’s Book Illustration, Martin Salisbury, Laurence King Publishing (there’s a review here with some images from the book). There are lots of inspiring illustrations and biographies in this book. It’s also nice that the illustrations are shown in page format with the typography. This book does make me a bit sad that we don’t have access to the more ‘brave’ European-style books here in Canada.

Jenny Saville, Simon Schama. Sensual paint. Brave, beautiful, loose, form-building, spontaneous-yet-intended brush strokes. Enough said.

Process Recess vol 2, James Jean. Some lovely draughtsmanship in this one.

I’m looking forward to putting aside some time to really get into these.

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Our Street As A Line Drawing

| kirsti

The other day, we were checking out the opening credits for the film Juno (which are great) and suddenly recognised our street – drawn in detail right down to one of our neighbour’s cars and the no parking signs on his fence.

Here’s one of the photos I took from our kitchen window of the filming that happened back in March.

Juno from the kitchen window

We felt sorry for the crew who had to make the street look like fall by tying bunches of leaves onto the bare branches while it poured with rain. The day of shooting was dry, but the next day poured again while they undid all the trees and swept up the leaves they’d scattered on the road. In the background, behind all the fake fall foliage, the fruit trees were in full bloom.

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What to Give?

| kirsti

Book Store Cat

The Phoenix on Bowen Cat | Canon 40D| 50mm 1.4

Give a book! CWILL BC authors and illustrators make it a bit easier with themed book pairings over at the CWILL BC blog. The wonderful idea was borrowed from MotherReader and given a British Columbian twist.

I was visiting Phoenix, the bookstore (and more) on Bowen Island, when I came across a bunch of books I remember from when I was a kid. I just had to buy them. I’m not sure how to adequately express this, but reading them today, as an adult, I realised that I was enjoying them on two levels – for how my adult mind appreciated the writing and the illustrations and for the way my child mind suddenly swam to the surface when I saw something familiar from a long time ago. I loved these books in a totally different way when I was a kid, unhampered by the 31 years of experience that influence me today. Seeing them again today I got back a bit of what was wonderful about childhood. Not only did I recall the book, I remembered where I was when the book was read to me – details about the house we lived in at the time. I remembered what I felt about the book, how my parents read it to me, what my favourite pages were, what pages my brother liked best and what it was like to be able to finally read it to myself. It seems that I’m getting all sentimental and nostalgic in my adult age.

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Book Store Cat

The Phoenix on Bowen Cat | Canon 40D | 50mm 1.4

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Painting Detail

| kirsti

oil on canvas

The middle of the week came and went and I’m still working on it. But it’s much closer to being done. I started off painting it upside down, now that I’m working on the foreground unreflected elements I’ve flipped it the right way up. The previous photo is upside down.

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