Holiday diary for #Canada and #Alaska. First two days in #Banff

I have been doing odd sketches on several occasions capturing scenes at home and abroad. Recently, after seeing a excellent holiday sketch diary, created by a member of my art club Liz Ackerley, I decided to have a go myself.

I had booked a holiday to Canada and Alaska and this seemed an excellent opportunity for my first attempt. I wanted to try and do a drawing for everywhere my wife and I travelled to. However, some of the scenery was so breath taking that a photograph was all that was needed and so I mainly sketched snippets of lifestyle and images that interested me. For those of you who follow my work you know that I much prefer the smaller more intimate scenes rather than expansive views.

We arrived in Banff and were dropped off at our hotel, which was set in a wooded area just outside the town. The view from the hotel was stunning and at nigh, sitting in the bar with a welcome drink, I did my first sketch. 

The following day we walked down into town and decided to visit the local waterfall. After a pleasant stroll along the river, we arrived at the waterfall and sat down to admire the beauty of the scene. It was impressive; the force of the water showing nature's pure power. A busy place but I decided a hard scene to capture.

We returned to town and I found a quiet spot by the river to do my next study, whilst my wife captured the scene in prose.. This was going well until the mosquitoes decided it was feeding time. We decided to move and had a walk around the local park. This proved a safer place to draw so I found a bench and did a study from there. 
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I mentioned earlier the stunning situation of our hotel. It ran a transfer shuttle into town, which we used in the morning. This finished early evening so we decided to walk back as it was only a 25 minute journey. This was not a good idea. To start with, it was a long busy road; the footpath crossed a railway line and another major road as well as a set of cattle type grids, so we had to use a path that ran alongside them. 
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The major problem was part of the path went through marshland and the mosquitoes were out in force. Although we had plenty of repellent on they had obviously been trained in the special forces and breached our defences several times. The next day we made sure we caught the transfer back!
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To sum up a good start to the diary and some interesting lessons learnt.