Doodle your way to artistry
6th Annual Vancouver Draw Down
June 20 | Various locations
Info: vancouverdrawdown.com
1 Body-As-Site: Drawing, Dance & Architecture. This year’s Vancouver Draw Down features more than 30 workshops in community centres, shops, galleries, and outdoor locations. The workshops are free and all-inclusive (regardless of talent, or lack thereof). From mural drawing to comic jamming, still life techniques and blindfold drawing, the workshops explore myriad styles and techniques. In Body-As-Site, for example, dancer/choreographer Donna Redlick invites participants to explore bodies as sites, using dancers as models and rulers and grids as drawing aids. (1 to 4 p.m., Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre)
2 Comic Jam. The Cloudscape Comics Society, a coalition of independent and local comic artists, hosts this event, which invited artists of all calibres to draw one panel in a larger story. (11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Douglas Park Community Centre)
3 It’s a Doodle Storm. In recent years, cartoonist Lynda Barry has been celebrated as much for her books on creativity (What It Is, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor) as for her comics. In It’s a Doodle Storm, local artist Elisa Chee introduces participants to Barry’s work, helping them unleash their creativity in the process. (1 to 3 p.m., Champlain Heights Community Centre)
4 We’re in a Boat. Feel like you’re participating in two Vancouver events at once with We’re in a Boat. In this workshop, artists will be in an anchored drawing boat on False Creek during the Dragon Boat Festival, where they’ll be invited to draw inspiration from the paddlers and the city skyline for a watercolour using mini compact water colour palettes. (1 to 3 p.m., Creekside Community Centre)
5 Mongrel Vegetables. One of three connected Strathcona Drawing Party events (the others include workshops at Access Gallery and Cineworks Film Society Annex), Mongrel Vegetables finds artist Howie Tsui challenging budding Botticellis of broccoli to hybridize elements of vegetables into a portrait. (1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Hua Foundation/Mah Benevolent Society).