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My Toronto. Stay home and Urban sketching. Travel and Art. November, Winter mood. Part 10

ArtTravel

This post is a collection of my October daily sketches, but we’re jumping straight to winter. Because why follow a calendar like normal people?

Toronto’s winter is basically nature’s way of saying “time to stay indoors and contemplate your life choices.” Think snow, think wind, think your home suddenly becomes a cozy fortress where you can enjoy the view from your window while secretly judging people who actually venture outside. There’s ice skating (bring your bruises), and a festive Christmas-New Years atmosphere that makes you forget your heating bill exists.

Fair warning: All paintings in this post are refugees from previous seasons. Consider them time travelers.

Ontario Place in winter, immortalized in oil. Pro tip: If you squint really hard at this painting, you can spot the CN Tower looming in the distance—you know, that charming 0.5 km tall landmark that Toronto residents can see from literally everywhere, even from their nightmares.

Spot the CN Tower. No seriously, it’s in there somewhere.

Winter at Toronto Music Garden downtown? Chef’s kiss. Fancy lights everywhere, a stunning CN Tower backdrop, and—here’s the plot twist—a couple of bright yellow summer beach chairs just casually hanging out on the frozen Ontario lake, apparently on strike from summer and refusing to acknowledge they’re in the wrong season.

Beach chairs on ice. Summer is in denial.

Queens Quay West and Spadina: The year is ending, and Toronto’s streetcar is basically in a mad dash to the finish line! This imaginary masterpiece features a Toronto tram hurtling toward the New Year like it’s late for a very important date, complete with Christmas sled deer (yes, deer—stay with me), flying gifts, and a suspiciously placed bucket of champagne just waiting to get obliterated by a speeding tram. What could go wrong? Happy Holidays will be welcoming… especially this year :)

Yet another Toronto Music Garden watercolor! Featuring: one lonesome snowman, striking a philosophical pose with the CN Tower as his existential backdrop, and a shimmering silver Christmas ball judging his life choices. This was painted during a winter when Toronto actually got snow—yes, that rare, mythical phenomenon. Spoiler: snow doesn’t usually crash this far south near Ontario lake. When it does, locals act like they’ve discovered a new planet.

Or maybe it was a family having the time of their lives, engaged in the ancient tradition of hurling snowballs at each other and collaborating on a frosty monument to their own architectural ambitions.

Behold: A breathtakingly frosty twilight of downtown Toronto—complete with the Financial district’s fortress of high-risers, a cameo by the CN Tower, and Thompson Hall photobombing the party. I even threw in some gold powder because subtlety is overrated.

Gold dust included. You’re welcome.
Toronto in winter. Beautiful. Cold. Very cold.
Holiday vibes, zero heating bills pictured.

Gold fantasy extravaganza featuring the CN Tower, Thompson Hall, and Christmas balls so large they probably require their own zip codes.

Romantic. Festive. Definitely not freezing.

The romantic holiday painting with the beautiful night view of Toronto, featuring cheerful downtown during the holiday season. Clock counts down minutes to the New Year, Champagne is ready.

…and winter sunset skyline of Toronto downtown with CN Tower and Rogers centre. My dream shows lots of Christmas balls up in the air with my favorite places in Toronto – CN Tower, Rogers centre, Zoo, ROM Museum, Thompson Hall, Union station, AGO Museum, Pearson airport balls. Everybody can find their interesting places and buildings in the city. Watercolour painting with the landmarks and museums  of the City on the Christmas balls, impressionism

Blue hour. Deep thoughts. Frozen toes.

The Toronto Music Garden at night, now in moody blue. Very brooding. Very mysterious. Very “I’m contemplating why I’m standing outside in the snow.”

The snowman has seen things. He stares into the void.

Fingers crossed that my Toronto posts successfully convince you that this city is beautiful and welcoming! (The winter part is negotiable.)

Bon voyage! Until the next adventure :) Stay healthy, stay warm, stay away from icy patches.

All paintings belong to the author. No image is to be copied without permission. (Yes, I’m watching.)

Tools used for my painting: Watercolour by Charvin and Van Gogh brands (yes, THE Van Gogh—no big deal), Derwent watercolour pencils that cost more than my rent, and Faber Castell artist pens for the details. Paper by Strathmore Watercolour and Mixed Media albums, 15×20 cm (6×8 in.) – perfect for when you want your masterpieces portable-sized.

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My Toronto. Stay home and Urban sketching. Travel and Art. Music Garden, downtown. Part 9

ArtTravel

Welcome to the grand finale of my daily “travel and art” expedition through my home city Toronto—specifically October, when the weather couldn’t decide if it was summer or fall and everyone just wore a hoodie with the faint hope they’d covered all their bases. This post is about my neighborhood and that delightful little oasis called the Music Garden, where I pretend I’m culturally sophisticated when really I just wanted a place to sketch away from distracting squirrels.

Yes, that lamp is judging you.

The current unusual year with #stayhome and #lockdown is giving me the “opportunity” (read: forced chance) to discover the bright and friendly place I live in. Turns out when you can’t leave your city, you get really creative about appreciating it. Who knew?

The tram that never waited for anyone.

This painting is mostly for fun :) Honestly, the main subject is that bright yellow street sign screaming “Sidewalk maybe slippery” at the pedestrians—because nothing says “artistic endeavor” like immortalizing municipal warnings in watercolor. I may or may not have laughed while painting it.

I used to trudge this way every morning to my office like a regular working human. Not this year! Almost all locals are now professional Zoom dwellers, except for our essential and frontline workers—thank you, seriously! This particular bridge? It’s on Spadina avenue at Front street, where I stand looking artistically contemplative while secretly plotting which coffee shop to revisit.

Nature doing its best impression of a painting.
Still prettier than my apartment.

The Music Garden is still blooming, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that autumn exists. Apparently Mother Nature didn’t get the memo about the seasonal calendar this year, which honestly? Respect.

The garden, unbothered, thriving, iconic.

My fall “travel and art” adventure in October’s Toronto has officially concluded. Turns out there are buckets of lovely places in and around the city if you’re brave enough to venture beyond your kitchen during a lockdown. (Spoiler: I was.)

High Park in fall. No filter needed — but I used one anyway.

I documented some of my daily sketches this month, capturing my “art office” in all its chaotic glory—you know, that corner where I pretend to look professional while surrounded by paint-stained brushes, mysterious crumbs, and at least three empty coffee cups. It’s organized chaos. Mostly chaos.

Bon voyage! Until the next adventure :) Stay healthy—and more importantly, stay creative!

All paintings belong to the author. No image is to be copied without permission. (Yes, I’m protective of my work. You would be too if you’d spent this much time not getting paid for it.)

Tools used for my painting: Watercolor by Charvin and Van Gogh (the fancy stuff that makes you feel fancy for approximately 0.5 seconds before you drip it on your sleeve). Derwent watercolor pencils and Faber Castell artist pens (because I like to mix media and confuse myself). Paper: Strathmore Watercolor and Mixed Media albums, 15×20 cm (6×8 in.)—perfect for when you want to create art but also maintain your sanity by keeping it to a manageable size.

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Summer vacation, lakes, boats and travel in Ontario, Canada

ArtTravel

Summer vacation is basically nature’s way of saying “Go forth and create art!” So naturally, the only sensible thing to do is pack paint supplies and pretend you’re not sweating through your shirt. What do you actually need to paint masterpieces in the great outdoors? Just some simple art tools and the delusion that you won’t spill watercolors all over your lap.

Love the summer feeling with this hat

Behold! My beloved art bag—the tiny vessel that somehow holds a travel brush, a modest watercolor paint box, a sketchbook for doodling my failures, AND a silk scarf. That scarf serves dual purposes: it makes me look artistically sophisticated and doubles as a mask when I need to hide from other hikers questioning my life choices.

The whole studio. It fits in a bag. Take that, real artists.

So there I was at #Toronto #downtown, perched on the shore of #Ontario lake, racing against an impending #downpour because apparently I make terrible weather-based decisions. The park was eerily quiet—that perfectly calm, slightly ominous feeling right before a storm hits, with only a few boats gently creaking and swaying on the waves, as if they, too, were nervously waiting for nature’s tantrum to begin.

Boats patiently waiting for the storm. Relatable.

I could literally smell the ozone (which sounds more dramatic than it actually is), so I wisely abandoned ship and sprinted away just before the rain started its assault. But plot twist: I totally captured the pre-storm atmosphere in my painting—see those actual raindrops? I didn’t accidentally get water on the paper; those are intentional artistic choices. I absolutely love summer storms, even when they’re chasing me away like an angry mob.

Those dots are raindrops. On purpose. Obviously.

#Ontario #Kawarta #lakes—This watercolor was painted directly on a boat during a warm summer evening while my husband was fishing approximately one foot away from me in the same tiny boat. The artistic process is truly romantic, except for when you realize you’re both taking up maximum space and someone’s going to accidentally knock over the paint water.

Painted this while my husband caught fish. We both tried our best.

My mission: capture the soft, dreamy evening hues of a charming little cottage on the shore, surrounded by lush green leaves and moody monochrome stones. The lake and those two birches on the high shore? They took me straight back to #Belarus, my motherland—minus the actual traveling part, which is the real dream during #lockdown.

A cottage so cosy it made me homesick for a place I’ve never lived.

Bon voyage, you absolute legends! Until our next adventure. Now go forth and create some art before something terrible happens on the weather front!

All paintings belong to the author and are protected by the international law of “I made this and you can’t copy it.” No image is to be copied without permission. Seriously, don’t do it.

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Urban sketching. Calm water and sky above Toronto island’s Billy Bishop airport, with no flights. Spring 2020.

ArtTravel

Behold: Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, the adorably tiny airfield tucked on Toronto Island like a boutique coffee shop in a corporate office park. This spring, however, 2020 decided to crash the party—and by crash, I mean everything literally stopped. No boats. No airplanes. No noise. Just the lake doing its best impression of a yoga retreat while the world had a collective panic attack. Spoiler alert: it was eerily peaceful.

It feels so unusual to see this normally busy lake so quiet and empty. As I work on these three paintings – morning, late morning/noon, and afternoon – a few people pause at a little distance, gently saying hello and offering kind words of support to us as artists. Their warmth has touched me, and I know I will carry the memory of this day with me for a long time.

Morning. The lake is barely awake. Same.

A watercolour painting I did at noon by Ontario Lake (which, let’s be honest, was probably the most exciting thing happening in Toronto that day).

Late morning. The light warmed up. So did the lake.

Afternoon vibes: the lake is serving calm waves with a side of tired, melancholic yellow sun—nature’s way of saying, “Yeah, I’m exhausted too. Let’s just rest.” By evening, Ontario Lake had achieved what none of us could: the zen state of not caring about literally anything.

Afternoon. Everything glowing, everything shifting. Nature, clocking in.

Leonardo da Vinci, history’s ultimate Renaissance overachiever, was obsessed with water. He called it “vetturale di natura”—”the vehicle of nature.” Translation: the man understood that water is basically nature’s delivery service, and honestly? He wasn’t wrong. Water shows up, does all the work, and everyone else takes the credit.

Bon voyage! Until our next adventure (hopefully with fewer apocalyptic vibes). Stay healthy and keep painting!

All paintings are mine. Like, I actually made them with my own two hands. No stealing, copycats! Seriously though, I worked hard on these—respect the artist hustle.

My artist toolkit of choice: Van Gogh and Cotman watercolours (for when you want your paintings to have that authentic starry-night-versus-budget-friendly chaos), plus a Canson Mix Media album at 28×35 cm (11×14 in.)—the Goldilocks size of art paper.

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Water ripples. Why I look at circles on the water when throwing stones into a lake.

ArtTravel

There’s an old joke—and I’m about to prove its timelessness—that there are only three things worth watching forever: fire, water, and other people working. (Presumably while you avoid doing any of those three yourself.)

Me, pretending this 5-min walk counts as ‘travel’.

So there I was, “travelling” to Ontario Lake—which is basically a five-minute walk from my downtown Toronto apartment, but let’s call it travel and feel adventurous—doing art between sips of coffee and existential dread.

Spring morning fog was performing its usual magic trick: making water ripples look like they’ve achieved enlightenment before 9 AM, while I was still figuring out which end of the paintbrush to hold.

Fog: nature’s way of saying ‘not a morning person either’.

Here’s where it gets philosophical (buckle up): when I throw a rock into the water and watch those perfect circles expand outward, I’m basically witnessing the universe’s most patient motivational poster. Each ripple is like the water’s way of saying, “Hey, something happened here. Everything matters.” Which is beautiful, except when you realize most of my “important actions” are just throwing rocks at nature. Still counts as meaning-making, right?

Throwing rocks at water. This is my art practice. I’m serious.

But here’s the kicker—and this is where my brain decided to get uncomfortably deep—if you DON’T look at the circles, if you just throw the rock and walk away, then the whole thing is pointless. It’s not the throwing that matters; it’s witnessing the ripples. Which is basically life, except we’re all terrible at the “witnessing” part because we’re too busy scrolling through our phones. (No judgment. I’m absolutely guilty of this.)

The lake’s reflection — two skylines for the price of zero effort.

Think about it: all our accomplishments, our achievements, our “I finally got my life together” moments—they’re all like circles on the water. Here today, dispersed by tomorrow, absorbed back into the lake of indifference. The point isn’t that they disappear; the point is that we actually LOOKED at them, that we paid attention to our own ripples. We cared about what we left behind. Which, admittedly, is a lot more meaningful than most of what I do on a Tuesday afternoon—and that’s precisely why this spring is giving me permission to be delightfully philosophical about it. :)

The lake’s waves are pulling off their own art project—reflecting trees, buildings, the skyline—basically acting as nature’s Instagram filter, but with better composition and no ads.

Some spring raindrops plunge into the lake like tiny philosophers themselves, joining the water’s existential crisis. (The lake is very moody this time of year.)

Nature’s Instagram filter. No ads. No sponsored content. Just vibes.

Reflection of trees and water in the lake—basically nature’s way of saying, “Let me show you everything twice so you don’t miss it the first time.”

Ripples: the universe’s polite reminder that something happened here.
Raindrops joining the lake’s existential crisis. Relatable.

Claude Monet—a man who clearly understood obsession—once said: “The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.” Which is a fancy way of saying, “Water is always changing, so you better pay attention.” He gets it. He spent years painting the same water lilies from every possible angle because he understood that meaning isn’t fixed. It’s fluid. (I’ll see myself out.)

Bon voyage to you, dear reader! May your next travel adventure be as profound as a pebble hitting water—or at least half as pretentious. Until next time, stay healthy and keep looking at your ripples! :)

All paintings belong to the author. No image is to be copied without permission. (The ripples, however, are free for everyone.)

The tools I use for my paintings—including Watercolour brands Van Gogh and Cotman, plus Canson Mix Media and Watercolour albums (sizes 28×35 cm and 25×35 cm). Everything an artist needs to obsess over water ripples professionally!

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