 they come in. So just wanted to welcome everyone once again. Welcome to an afternoon with Emma Fitzgerald and welcome to West Vancouver Memorial Library. I don't know if you can see our library in the background there. I'd like to set it up as best as I could. My name is Ellen Zemi-Pema and I'm a librarian at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge that this event is taking place on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish people. We recognize and respect in particular the Squamish, Sleewa Tooth and Musgrim as nations in this territory, as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us. We would like to invite each of us today to think about one thing we appreciate or love about living on these lands and in this territory. For me, I'm super grateful to be in British Columbia and specifically in North Vancouver, working in West Vancouver. During these unprecedented times, the having, you know, this beautiful nature around me has really helped me stay calm and happy while we're going through these struggles. So I'm very, I'm incredibly grateful for nature around us. So just wanted to say, so we're just gonna start our presentation in just a few more minutes, but before we do that, I'd like to just give you some important information. Oh, no, it's not working. Oh, there you go. I just wanted to let you know where you can actually purchase copies of Handdrawn Vancouver. So I don't know if some of you have tried purchasing copies. It wasn't available until today. So today was the launch day. So copies of Handdrawn Vancouver are available at 32 books and gallery in Edgmont Village in North Vancouver. There will be copies available at Kits Books in Kitsilano and Edgmont Village as well as Red Horses Gallery in Dundrave in West Vancouver. So also just a note for for those of you going to 32 books and gallery, if you mentioned that you're coming from the library, you will get 15% off as a discount. So just keep that in mind when you when you do go to purchase a copy. And sorry, last thing, if you have any questions or comments for Emma, feel free to use the chat below. And I'll be monitoring the questions as well. And we'll have a proper question and answer session at the end of the presentation. So you're more than welcome to put in your questions as you remember them. But also, just if you want to add questions at the end, you can do that as well. So I'll definitely be giving those questions to Emma, and she'll be answering them for you. And now I'm delighted to introduce the talented author that we have all been waiting for. Amethyst Gerald was born to Irish parents in Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom in Southern Africa. She moved to Canada at a young age and spent most of her childhood in West Vancouver. She went to West Bay Elementary School and attended Hillside Middle School for seventh grade before it was demolished, and then attended Croftong House School. Emma gained an early appreciation for art during painting classes at the Silk First Art Gallery, while also pursuing ballet and contemporary dance at Anna Waiman Dance School. Her artistic talents, coupled with a keen interest in people and places, led her to become an author and illustrator by way of architecture. Emma received her BFA in Visual Art at UBC and her master's in architecture at Dalauzi University. She now calls Halifax Nova Scotia home, but will often travel for her creative projects. Her latest book, Handdrawn Vancouver, was the logical next step after documenting Atlantic Canada's capital in hand-drawn Halifax. She draws mainly on location using a fine pen, adding color later in Photoshop. She's currently living in Victoria, working on hand-drawn Victoria. Please join me in welcoming Emma Fitzgeralds. I'm going to clap on everyone's behalf here. Hello. Thank you so much, Alam. No problem. That was a wonderful welcome, and I was very moved. I was kind of almost crying as you expressed your gratitude for where we live. And for me, it's where I grew up, the North Shore of Vancouver. So yeah, I spent my elementary school years in Dundrave and West Van Library would have been the library. I went to probably about once a week and I have very visceral memories of, I don't think it exists anymore, but the children's nook that was sort of over the river. And as I got a little older and started going more to the reference section of the library, and in particular, my dad set out a rule that I had to get out equal amount of nonfiction to fiction books. So, you know, I was caught up with reading a lot of novels and he insisted that I read nonfiction. So that's when I discovered the art history section of the West Van Library. And I would go there also to the gardening section. And I took out so many books on Western wildflowers. So it's very special that as it turned out, I could have a launch even during COVID and that the library was able to host me. For those of you who don't know, the West Van Library has also been hosting an exhibition of images from the book, specifically the West Van images. So that can be found on their website. And Taryn's colleague, sorry, Elham's colleague, Taryn, recorded my voice and integrated that into the exhibition. So you get to be read to basically and told a story with pictures, which is, I think, something even as adults, we need and crave. And maybe we don't realize we crave it until we have that experience. But it's a really important thing, storytelling. So that's a big emphasis in my books is story as much as just a picture. So that's why I don't work from a photograph. I don't Google the place. I make sure I'm there on the street, sitting and listening. And people start to interact with me often because you're taking that much more interest in what's going on. So I'd like to share some of these images I'm talking about. And we'll start actually, can everyone see what's going on here? I'm trusting that you can hear me and see this. A lot of people are saying yes. So that's great. So we're starting actually with my very first book. This is hand drawn Halifax. And as Ellen mentioned, I live in Halifax most of the time now, ever since I moved there for architecture school. And this is the cover, the spine in the back of my very first book. And that began actually at a point in time when I was unemployed, I had been working as an architect and I needed to make some money. So I began drawing houses in my neighborhood as a business as a house portrait business. And from that, I was able to pitch an idea about a book about my neighborhood. And I did that at Word on the Street, which is a festival that happens across the country, but also in Halifax. And one of the publishers got back to me for Mac. And we decided it shouldn't be a book just about my neighborhood, because that would be quite limiting. It should be the whole of Halifax and even, you know, the more remote places. So that's what kind of ended up actually making it really special, is that people could see themselves in this book. It wasn't just the touristic spaces. So here actually is our library in downtown Halifax, which is fairly new. We've only had this library for five years and it's a more modern building. So this actually is directly beside the architecture building in Halifax, which is where I studied. And for my whole studies, it was just a parking lot. So it's a bit of the inverse of often we get very upset about old buildings being torn down. But in this case, the parking lot kind of got a new life as a library and it's been a very vibrant part of the city. So yeah, you can start to see my very quick way of drawing. I don't use pencil. I just go straight in with pen. And typically a very inexpensive pen that I purchased from Staples. So I find the more expensive pens I kind of grind to the ground within a day and they're no good to me. So I use cheap Uniball black pen and just white eight and a half by 11 paper that I then scan into the computer and add the color. And you'll see the text. So this is a font that was chosen by the designer of the book. It would have been too much work to do all handwritten and not practical. And of course, you have to go back in and change spelling or phrasing when the editing happens. So the text here is prom season in the public gardens one month later on Kijiji prom dress for $200 only worn for three hours. And so I'm not sure how much Kijiji is used here. But of course, it'd be like a Craigslist or, you know, an online selling option. So I remember just over here in one of the moms talking about Oh, yeah, they're just going to put this on Kijiji tomorrow. So there's this very temporal quality that I like to go after my drawings where this is just a one day event and then the next things have shifted again. But of course, I've also included the gazebo. So that's something that has more staying power and history in Halifax. And it's kind of the heart of this beautiful Victorian garden. This is downtown Halifax. It was only about five or six years ago that we began to even have one crane downtown and now that's changed quite a bit. So as soon as I saw this big, you know, construction site, I went there and I sketched it. And then if you go and read the book, my story that accompanies it, isn't necessarily about what I'm drawing. There's sort of a nice space between those two things sometimes. And this is on the street I live in in Halifax and kids playing. And now I'm on to my second book. So this is sketch by sketch along Nova Scotia's South Shore. So this deviates a bit from the hand drawn title, but it's the same concept. And I was working with the same publisher here. The South Shore goes from Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia all the way to the tip of the province, and includes lots of beautiful communities. So you can see here the very distinct architecture, one building cobblestones and other made out of wood, but with lots of kind of gingerbread details. And these are small communities that would have been very vibrant and bustling at a certain point. When shipbuilding was happening, and now are a little less frequented by people, but still have lots of stories and characters. So that was a big adventure. Here we have the Shore Club, which is in Hubbard's, which is only maybe 40 minutes from Halifax. And they've been serving lobster dinner since 1946. So there's shows and dances. And here you see the lobster pop outside and there the lobsters are and they're being boiled up. And there's a kind of a bit of a kitsch quality to this lobster painted up the stairway, but it was a lot of fun to figure out how to draw that and get that across. So these books mean a lot to me. And then when I came to BC, I wanted to focus on Vancouver. And actually, I didn't know at the time, would I just draw Vancouver or also the suburbs Richmond, Delta? But it, of course, Vancouver is a bigger city. So it was necessary for me to focus a little bit more. And just that there's so many neighborhoods in Vancouver that I couldn't even include in this book, but I tried to get as much of a breath as I could. I'm going to just switch gears here for a second if I can. And not sure if this is going to work for me. So this is a short animation that was made for me by a filmmaker, Jason Lung, who lives in Budapest, usually, but was here in Vancouver last summer. And he made this lovely animation. Yeah, sorry. It's not showing up on the on the interesting because it's what I can see. Sharing is paused. Okay, but bring your shared window to the front. resume share. Thanks for the flagging of that. So let's see here. Can you see it now? No, no, it's still the slide shows. Okay. Stop share. I'm just going to start again there for a second. So I might have been a little too ambitious to think I could share that but meetings. I'm trying to find you all again. Here we are. So I'm going to share my screen. And here we go. Great, we can see it working. Okay, so now I have to go back to the beginning. There we go. Okay, so that was made basically by me drawing a line. And then Jason took a photo drawing a line taking a photo. So it took a or sorry, it was actually just a time lapse video. So I was actually sitting at this very table at my dad's house in North Vancouver. And I was drawing. And in that case, I wasn't on location. We had already chosen the cover image. And it was a bit of a simulation. But in effect, when I'm drawing, I'm on location and I'm drawing in that same kind of pretty quick manner. And that's what gives my drawings that more lively feeling, I think. And yeah, I really appreciated his skill and expertise in helping bring that to life. So that's something that's being shared as promotion for the book. But I thought was kind of fun to share with you today. I also should mention behind me here is a drawing of the Sonja at Saint Gardens. So that's sort of a bigger, more blown up size, but you'll be able to find that drawing in the book too. So maybe I'll go back to sharing some more from the actual book itself. Okay, so can you all see the cover now of the book? Yes, we can. Awesome. Okay, so you might actually notice that there's two people on top of Science World here. For those of you who aren't familiar, the large circular building is Science World and is quite distinctive as a geodesic dome. And I was there sketching, must have been July 2017, with Justin Ting, who's actually a sketch or an urban sketcher, and he's he's had a book come out about Vancouver in the past year also. So we were together sketching, which normally I'm actually alone. But I think where this was actually a more ambitious thing to draw, like it's a little bit challenging to draw that dome, which has a lot of technicality to it in my free spirited way. But Justin has a very patient approach to his work, he was in water color doing watercolor beside me. And I think being in the presence of someone else actually helped me persevere. And then as it turned out, it became the cover image. And of course, the little details like the kayaks and the water taxi were all very just as important as the more iconic buildings. And this, when you open the book, you see the title page. So in addition to the cover, there's the title page. And my publisher's name appetite. So when it came to working in Vancouver, I needed to find a locally based publisher as my publisher, Nova Scotia is more regional, regionally based. So I was very lucky to find and work with appetite. And I believe some of the people who've worked on the book with me are listening in today, perhaps, Robert, the publisher, Lindsey Vermouin, Lindsey Patterson, who are both editors, Michelle Argus in Toronto, who's been working on promoting the book. And there were in fact, at least two designers who worked on the book, and I don't have their names in front of me. But it is a team effort. And I was just so blown away by how it all came together. So when you then go past the title page, we open up to a map of Vancouver, which all my books have a map in them. And this is a little more fiddly than just showing up and doing a drawing on location, there's a bit more pre meditation needed. But it's very satisfying after having gone to all these places to piece it together almost more like a puzzle. And still including lots of playful elements and not needing to be perfectly perfect. But, you know, it's still got kind of combed over with the fine comb in the editing process, making sure I had things in the right place with the right spelling. So this is a really fun part of the book for me as it was putting it all together into a map. And you can see we we did include the North Shore in the book, downtown West Side East Side, and Richmond even featured just a little bit of drawing on the Fraser River. So I'm starting in West Van because of course that's where my host is based. So the book doesn't start in West Van, but I just thought I'd share a few of these images. So this is fishing on the Capilana River. And a man from the Capilana River Reserve had created this fishing weir with stones. So you see these sort of circular patterns made of from the stones and that allows the salmon to get trapped in a pool and there's net set up and he's able to go in with a net as opposed to fishing. As you see across the river, there's two people with fishing rods. And it was important to me to include the reserve because when I grew up, we never talked about it. We studied the Haida, we studied the Inuit in elementary school, but we never talked about this idea of Coast Salish people or that we actually were on the land of indigenous people. So I think that's been a shift since I went to elementary school and then more and more it's being talked about and understood more widely. So this was a small gesture towards understanding a little bit more at this place that you know, we'd always drive by and drive over basically when going over the landscape bridge. And here's another image from the West Van book where are the West Van sections, did I say where it's the community gardens and very close to the Silk Purse where I studied painting as a child. And this was an image that almost didn't make it into the book because of course you're pressed for space, but I'm really glad it did because I have a lot of memories of being in this part of West Vancouver as a child near the water and near lots of beautiful plants growing and the view across the water to Stanley Park. And here we kind of enter into downtown. So this is looking down from the bridge itself onto the seawall and freighters. And you can even see the detail of the leaves were starting to change color and had fallen into the water. So yeah, the more time I spend in the place, the more layers you begin to notice. And if you look very carefully, there's also there's some people that will look out across the water or across in the trees. And then we arrive in downtown Vancouver, an iconic view of Robson Square and the Art Gallery. Again, important places to me personally, but I think also important to include places that speaks a lot of people. And there's so many people who come and use this space, whether it's for ballroom dancing in the skating rink when it's the summertime or skating or just hanging out. And of course, a lot of us probably know that the Art Gallery is going to move. So it was important for me to document it before it moved to its new location. And here we have another space that's really special to me, the Harbor Dance Dance Studios on Granville Street. So this is more personal. But looking down through the window, we see the Vogue Theater and Granville Street. So kind of giving people a bit of voyeuristic view into another world they might not have realized existed on Granville Street. As it turned out, one of my editors, one of the lenses he worked on the book has done tap dance classes here. So that was a fun thing to share. And you see the large poster for Anna Wyman Dance in the back. So that's who I grew up dancing with on the North Shore in West Vancouver. So maybe I'll read from this one at the corner of West Hastings in Canby, you'll see the brightly hewed Dominion building built in the Beaux Arts style between 1908 and 1910. Mark Emery's cannabis culture in the new Amsterdam Cafe, a vacant lot and a record store with the new Woodward's building visible behind. They all combined to create a kind of crazy quilt pattern to rival any of the fabrics found at the fabulous Dressaux supply limited, pardon me, Tudet as your selection store. So Dressaux is the bright yellow awning down below there. And then for me, this was a very kind of mosaic feeling of these buildings coming together. The new and the old and the kind of shabbier and brighter colored. And I noticed that Elizabeth Wilcox is listening in a friend from my childhood and my mom's good friend. And Elizabeth introduced us to Dressaux as the perfect place to go get party supplies for birthday parties. So the fact that this shop was there when I was 10 years old and it's where we go get fabric for crafts for my birthday parties. I felt a certain urgency like I need to draw this. But of course, then there's the history of the Dominion building and the newer building in behind. So all of that was coming into play when I was deciding where to go to draw. And then we also have Chinatown in the book. And this is actually a publishing company and bookstore in Chinatown with very distinct brightly colored painting of red and white on the bricks. A ginkgo tree drops golden yellow leaves in front of the Sino United Publishing's red and white painted storefront in Chinatown. Ginkgo trees survive the ice age and have been used medicinally to improve memory. Across the street, a woman paints the base of a condo building. She stops to make it call to the building superintendent. I want to make sure I have the right gray. So that was me sort of playfully but still acknowledging that the neighborhood is changing a lot in Chinatown with more condos being built. And as far as I understand, there is the heritage status of Chinatown but there's still concerns about affordability and the survival of the neighborhood. And here's that entranceway to the Sanyatsen Garden which I had the bigger drawing behind me. And there's something about the simplicity of just the doorway and that promise of something beyond it that intrigued me. And I love that the Sanyatsen Gardens and Park exist in the city and can be such a nice quiet refuge and such a source of nature. This is back in Chinatown in the Newtown Bakery which is a favorite place of mind to go get steam buns. And here we have the garden again inside the Sanyatsen Park. It is cool and calm. So you see this where I'm drawing more nature that the lines become kind of even more expressive and less up and down straight than when I draw my architectural renderings. And then I'm going to just share for fun. Sometimes what will happen is I'll end up here in my drawing. So there's bits along the way or moments in the process that are quite unexpected. And this was one of them where I turned off the layer that kind of contains all the color, the black lines and by mistake poured basically black everywhere. Even in the computer these kinds of unexpected disruptions can happen. And I really love this image. It kind of has a more nighttime mysterious and abstract feeling. So even though these images don't make it in the book I save them in a little folder in my desktop of my computer and sort of save them for a rainy day. I don't know if I'll print them one day but that's all part of the process is sort of at little moments that surprise you. And I think that's what helps it feel more experimental and refreshing that the work is in conversation with me also. And here we have Hogan's Alley, which I didn't know a lot about, but I knew I wanted to draw the Jimi Hendrix shrine on the corner because I had grown up seeing it when we drove by and was always intrigued. But in learning a bit more about it, I learned about Hogan's Alley. So I'll read this excerpt also. What is now Main Street and Union Street used to be Hogan's Alley, a black community near the still existing train station where many black men worked as porters on the trains. Some of the original black settlers in BC who had farmed on Salt Spring Island moved there. The neighborhood was raised in 1970 to make way for the Georgia Street viaduct, which will also soon come down. The only structures left from Hogan's Alley are blue building on the corner that is said to have been a boarding house and a small brick building that was adjacent to the famous bias chicken and steakhouse where Jimi Hendrix's grandmother Nora used to work. Jimi used to come up from Seattle to visit. Later, there was a Jimi Hendrix shrine at the site, but both buildings were slated for demolition as I drew in a victory for the community. Affordable modular housing has been built since the demolition named Nora Hendrix Place to honor her memory. So kind of an exploring deeper this knowledge that I had that those buildings had something to do with Jimi Hendrix. I learned about a black neighborhood that had been erased and then going further, learning about, you know, really the only job for black men at the time was at the train station as porters and which necessitated the neighborhood being there. And then the erasure of that neighborhood being quite similar to what I've learned about in Nova Scotia and Afrikville. So building kind of on my own, some of this history that doesn't get taught, but with conversations that are happening now, they're hopefully going to be taught more in the school system and get talked about and understood. I do have also this house in Strathcona, which is not far from the previous slide. The Chan house is a significant building in Strathcona, Vancouver's oldest neighborhood. Former residents Walter and Mary Lee Chan stood up against urban renewal projects in the 1960s when there were plans to raise houses to make way for a freeway through downtown. So at one point, both Strathcona and Chinatown would have been demolished and we would have had a freeway that probably we'd be taking down now again. So that is a history of activism that I didn't know about before until I started to walk around that Strathcona neighborhood. And there's actually a plaque in front that alerted me to the history, which is why there's so many beautiful, colorful houses in Strathcona that I could have drawn, but it was important to choose this one. And I've since been in touch with the current owners, who are the son and daughter in law of Walter and Mary Lee. And they've done a lot to keep the building up to code. It had to become earthquake proof. And that was a big expense of being a heritage building and they had to do it a very particular way. But they have managed to preserve this history for the neighborhood. So that was another incidence of a story and learning as I go and learning as I draw. So I think I'm almost at the end here. I do have this image of Trout Lake to end because I know we're all longing for these beautiful summer days that are kind of around the corner. This was probably around August. I went to Trout Lake, which is in East Van, just close to commercial drive. Summer is cresting and will soon be over. But people take advantage of any chance to be near water, including the beautiful Trout Lake in East Van. While sketching the popular swimming hole, I run into a friend I haven't seen since high school. Her young son crouches close to me in that familiar way that kids of a certain age do. How do you draw the wind? He asks. A very good question I answer as a warm breeze spans the surface of the water. So sometimes kids ask the best questions, but I look forward to answering your questions. And thank you so much for your time and attention. So I will just end there. Perfect. So there have been already a few questions. So I'm going to go right to the top there. So one question from Laurie. When you are drawing cobblestones, do you draw all the individual stones or bricks? Or do you impose some kind of pattern that is available on the computer? Okay, yeah, no. I just sort of go on automatic and I just keep drawing them. So in Nova Scotia we have a lot of shingles. So I get very used to sort of this L, L, L, L, basically that all fit together nice and closely. And then, yeah, same with the bricks or the cobblestones. And yeah, I don't actually have the technical know-how to know how to do it any other way. So there are sometimes moments where I forget to draw a window. For instance, if I get so gung-ho with my bricks that I forget to look up and see that there's a window. And then sometimes I'll draw the window off to one side and cut and paste in the computer and impose it in that way. Great, thank you. So if you have any questions, feel free to add the question in the chat box. Oh, I see lots pouring in now. So one question from Marilyn. I apologize that I tuned in late, but can you tell me if you're using an iPad Pro with Pro Create or what is your technology? Also, do you sketch on site or take a photo and finish up at home? Um, so I signed up for a course to learn how to use iPad in September and I never managed to find the time to do this online course. So I'm still using Photoshop. So I, I just scanned the drawing in and basically I became very comfortable with that in architecture offices. Often my boss would draw something by hand and want it to be colored whether it was a map or conceptual sketch. And it was only at the time when I started my house portrait business that I kind of brought those skills together with my more sketchy hand drawing style. And I did see a question someone else was wondering if I've used watercolor and that's what I used a lot as a kid, especially and even in my adult years. But I feel like I gained a lot of useful knowledge of color and contrast and what I'd like to achieve when I practiced watercolor. But when it came to my business and the books, I wanted something more uniform and predictable, even though of course I shared that sometimes the color spells everywhere and I get unexpected things, but I liked that that crispness paired with my more messy style. So I feel like if I was working in watercolor, a lot more is left up to chance, at least when I'm doing watercolor. I've never managed to master watercolor myself. So kudos to those to you and to those who can master it in the moment. That's perfect. And I should say that yes, I do draw on location and I generally don't take a photo. I'll usually actually take notes about the color. Even sometimes, you know, if the door is red, I'll just sketch a little R for red and erase that when I bring the drawing into the computer. And that's for no particular reason other than I think I like the process of working from my memory and flexing that muscle. The next question we have here is, do you ever lead neighborhood sketch walks in Vancouver? I would love to attend. Yeah, so I did do one of those when my Halifax book I launched it in West Van in 2016. I did a James walk. If people are familiar, there's these walks through the city that celebrate Jane Jacobs birthday. I'm sorry that there's a bit of beeping right now, but I'll just keep going. And definitely would like to do some more things like that. And I have taught adult workshops also. But yeah, with COVID, it's a little bit more uncertain when exactly that will happen and safely how can that happen safely. There is an organization called Urban Sketchers that you can all look up online and they have a Vancouver chapter that regularly meets up to do sketching together. But I know that since COVID, they've been doing that online. The next question we have here is any sneak peek of your current or next project? So the best place to find out about that would be if you are on Instagram, I'm mfits underscore art. And it's mfits underscore art. And I am kind of posting as I go my process. But as my editors and publisher know, we work at the very beginning stage of that process. So it's going to probably be two years at least. I think I don't know. Try not to think too much about that until maybe next week. But yeah, it's it'll be shared as I go online. And I imagine I might start selling cards and prints in shops even before the book comes out. But again, with COVID, everything's been a bit slowed down. So Emma, just to clarify, your next project is hand drawn Victoria. Is that right? Yeah. So that's why I'm living in Victoria right now. I moved there three months ago. And I'll be there for the whole year to draw all seasons and and get the real feel for the place because this is unusual in that I have never lived in Victoria before. And I don't have the same history I had with Halifax or Vancouver. But I'm finding it's a really interesting mix of what I love about both Vancouver and Halifax. It's got that, you know, smaller size and scale and a lot of history and heritage. But it also has the kind of nature that I'm used to growing up in Vancouver. And I'm actually really pulled away by how much animal life and plant life there is and really enjoying my walks in the neighborhood where I'm living right now. Yeah, I've been to Victoria before and it's beautiful. And I'm sure those of you who are from Victoria just watching this presentation today will agree with everything that Emma just said. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? From the audience? Can we turn is asking can we purchase any of the images from your book? Yeah, so I have just dropped off cards to 32 books in Edmont Village. So they're selling my cards as well as the blue teapot in Lonsdale Key, which is a tea shop owned by a friend of mine. So I'm going to slowly be getting more stock is and shops. I had previously been selling at Paper Yaw in Granville Island and Rath Art Supplies on Main Street. So again, like I keep saying COVID is kind of everyone's catching up with themselves. But as I'm here a bit longer, I will get more shops and that kind of thing going. And you can feel free if you have a shop that you feel like I'd really love if you had Emma's cards, you can, you know, give them my website and tell them about the book and they can get in touch with me. Great. And I'll be looking for that as well. Well, as people are as bookstores and other art stores are opening up. So I'll keep a look out for that as well. Our next question is, can you tell us a bit more about why you like exercising your memory muscle? Do you do color checkups? That's a good question. So this is a question from Naomi and you had mentioned that there was someone listening from the generative nest. So I should say a big gratitude to Naomi because she had a weekly writing group at her family home on Canby Street. So every Wednesday, I was going there and the discipline of that was so nice and really helped the project keep going. So I would say the discipline of memory is important to Naomi and maybe, yeah, if I were to be just relying on a photo, it would be different. So yeah, and I think color is such an emotional thing. Like it took a while to settle on the green for the book and now you see I'm wearing a green t-shirt and it's all about green. But initially I thought, well, what about a gray book? Because we can look outside today and it's very gray in Vancouver. But I'm really glad that we found a color that also defines Vancouver, the green and that kind of beautiful, fresh feeling you get here with all the nature. So color is something I think about a lot and hopefully that muscle won't go away anytime soon. But by chance, I'm also wearing green and it's totally uncoordinated. But I am glad that worked out. So the next question is from Escamol Recreation. Any recommendations regarding online Photoshop tutorials? Yeah, unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that. You will find that a lot of these urban sketches have their own websites and tutorials and there's something called Sketchbook School, which Danny Gregory began. He's an author and sketcher who lives in New York City. So if you look up Sketchbook School, but SKOL, you might find something useful there. For me, I was very lucky that I was never inclined to learn Photoshop. Even when I was in art school, I felt very overwhelming to me. And then it was only when I was forced to in architecture and I had classmates around who some who'd come out of, you know, graphic design programs. And I remember the very specific moments when I gathered the few skills that I still have. It was the midnight and last minute before a project is due. And I'd ask someone, how do I do this? And they'd help me. So I learned in a very by the seat of my pants kind of way. But I know there's resources out there. If people are looking for more tutorial, video tutorials, we do have lynda.com that's available to West Vancouver residents. If you'd like to check that out, YouTube has a ton of options as well. You can always call us at Library Connect and we can find we can create a list for you and we can send you that list of different options for you to explore. So feel free to use us as, you know, librarians to help you find those things. All right. So the next question for you is, can you tell us about the image behind you? So this was, I did a presentation a bit earlier or last week, I guess, with the Sun Yat Sen Garden. So I had this printed out large and just decided to put it up again. So it's the actual garden. And you see the koi, the fish in the pool and the little boy. And again, it was green. So it felt like the right thing to share with you today. Thank you. Next question is from Poppy. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. Are you still working as an architect? Not anymore. So for six years I've been self employed doing books. And then a lot of my income does come from selling cards and prints, whether in shops or craft fairs. And I take on different commissions. And sometimes I still work in an architectural way where I actually have my drawings are going to be in the rooms in a hospital for the IWK Hospital in Halifax. So children, when they're coming out of their coma, they're going to see my drawing on the wall. And that's going to be very satisfying. And I've also worked with restaurants and a tourism company where my drawings are on their band. So that kind of satisfies my itch for having a bigger scale or bigger impact. But I'm not interested in doing quotes and working with much more liability with the way you would as an architect. I'll give some people more time to ask questions. But Emma, actually, I have, oh, no, there, there is one more question. Okay, I'll leave my questions to the end then. Lindsay says, you mentioned Vancouver as feeling like a sort of gray city. Is there a color you associate with Victoria so far? What about Halifax? That's a good question. Well, I, the Halifax book, I think, I think this is sitting on a computer sitting on it, it turned out to be a blue color. But actually, this kind of Tiffany blue, Victoria has been very blue skies since I arrived there. So it's been quite amazing how often I wake up and it's beautiful blue sky. And then whereas in Halifax, so many of the buildings are brick. So there's a kind of red warm color that I associate with those brick buildings and even the brightly colored houses. So there's a lot of variety, I would say. Thank you for that. Okay, so I'll give some people extra time to write down their questions. But Emma, my question to you is, when when you, when you're sitting down and you're inspired to sketch, are there moments where you're like, oh, I don't like that. And, you know, like you want to change a few details. Do you do you just restart all over again? Or do you find that, oh, no, you know what, I'm going to, I'm just going to keep going, you know, and finish the final product. That's a really good question. I am, when I do teach, basically, I think the only thing that I really know how to teach is, is to sort of train people to keep going. Like that's my big philosophy is that you're always going to have those negative little voices. But if you keep starting over again, you're never pushing through and realizing, oh, this is actually going somewhere. So on the very rare occasion I'll realize, this is a four-story building and I don't have enough room and I really should have started, you know, possibly at the top and work my way down. But very often I actually start in the middle of my piece of paper and it grows out in all directions. And I think that just comes from enough practice that I can trust that I have it. So, yeah, more often than not, I keep going even when that little voice starts happening and I'm saying, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be or it's not so good or, yeah. That's actually very encouraging because I think a lot of us think, oh, artists, you know, they probably, whatever product that they create, it's always perfect and, you know, they purposely chose this or that, but I guess it's just a process of, I guess, a lot of artists kind of go through that and I would like to keep that in mind for my own work, definitely. So, thank you for sharing that. The follow-up question I have for you for that is for all those young artists just starting off with sketching and drawing and painting, what are some of the suggestions that you'd give as a starting point? Yeah, I mean, often when I'm working with kids, I'll talk about drawing and art as though it's a sport because I think the kids who love to draw, they don't need to be converted, but there's a lot of kids out there who think, well, I do soccer, but I don't draw and get kind of caught up in this is what I do and this is what I don't do. So for me, I grew up dancing and I feel like there's a lot of correlation between moving in space and drawing. So I'll give advice like, you know, just like when you look, when you're playing baseball, you're looking at the ball as much as you're thinking about what the bat is doing. So a lot of kids won't actually look at what they're drawing. A lot of people in general, you'll draw your idea of what it is and then that's actually when you kind of lose a big source of help because looking is what's going to help you know what to draw. If you're drawing what you think it is, but you're not kind of helping yourself out if you're not looking. So and even ideas of you wouldn't kick a soccer ball kind of like this unless you were going for that particular technique and same goes with drawing what why not try and relax your arm why not try and keep your wrists free and use a smooth line. Of course, if you want to create a dark, scary atmosphere or a light feathery feeling, you might go a little bit more jerkily, but yeah, I think that bringing in that dimension of the physicality of it helps kids. Thank you for sharing, Emma. And my last question to you is when you're when you're looking at a particular city, what aspects of the city do you do that attract you? Is it is it the history? Is it the cultural background? What particular aspects of the city stand out to you? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot for me that tied up with nostalgia. So if I've had a particular experience somewhere, but I think also having your finger on what other people might also be interested in. And often that just comes out of this kind of dance almost because I'm drawing in a neighborhood and then someone will talk to me and then I'll learn something that I didn't know before. So it's more about showing up. Like when I went to little India in Vancouver, I had memories of going there to buy my grad dress at one of these fabric and dress shops. And so I thought when I went there, that's what I was going to be drawing is one of these shops. But then the garden stood out to me so much that people planting their own vegetables and flowers for prayers. And so I ended up knocking on someone's door and asking them permission to draw their house. And they said no, but you can draw the garden. And then we had a conversation. So yeah, I went with a particular thought in mind, but it deviated, but it actually became even more meaningful because of that. Yeah. Thank you. Looks like we have one more question here from Lori. Your storytelling is beautiful, Emma. I love the way you overhear something and write about it. How do you nourish the writing side of your practice? So thanks for this question. Lori is a writer who lives in Victoria, who I've met fairly recently. And I really respect writers because in the same way that most people are, or a lot of people are intimidated to draw, I'm a bit intimidated about starting to write. So that's where the drawing really helps as a prompt for me. So I do the drawing first to have the experience. And then the writing kind of writes itself. And I think the word choice and phrasing comes just because I've read a lot. So going back to being a kid and reading a lot, I don't work at writing so much. But when I show up to do it, I'm glad, you know, oh, I have a lot of words at my disposal because I like to read. But I would like to experiment and see what would happen if I wrote for 10 pages straight, but I haven't done that since I was a kid. But I find that even the sketches are part of the storytelling as well, right? I find that a lot of, even just looking at the photos that you were, the sketches that you were sharing, there's a lot of detail and a lot of storytelling in itself. And it kind of each image kind of invokes a feeling from what I've been experiencing. So I find that your sketches are so good that you use words and the sketches so well to share that one particular story. So I just wanted to say kudos to you. Your drawings are incredible and I loved listening to your wonderful stories about Vancouver and West Vancouver. I'm sure everyone else loved it as well. So just wanted to say thank you so much Emma for being here today. We're incredibly lucky to have you. And just on last note, I'm just going to just share a couple of things. Let me see if I can share my screen here. Maybe I can quickly mention, I know you shared mostly the stores available on the North Shore to buy the book, but in fact anywhere you live, if you go and ask your independent bookstore, they should be able to stock the book. And there are online options, but right now, of course, it's really nice to support the independent bookstores, but for instance, Iron Dog or Paper Hound or Massey Books, all these bookstores, if you approach them, I'm sure they would have the book in for you. Great. Okay. And we can always, if you have questions about which bookstores, which local bookstores are that carry Emma's copies of her books, just give us a call at the library and we can help you find it as well. And just on a last note, I just wanted to share some of Emma's other titles. Let me just pop that over here. Here we go. So yeah, in case you're looking for other titles as Fitzgerald at the stores or at the libraries, these are her other titles. Again, you can give us a call at the library at Library Connect and we can help you locate some of those books. So in our library, we have hand-drawn Halifax as well as Sketch by Sketch along Nova Scotia South Shore. So just give us a call if you'd like to put a hold on it. And here are some of Emma's book recommendations. We're going to be talking more about setting and about Vancouver. We don't have the first one, but I will be just talking to our collections librarian to purchase that, but we do have Vanishing Vancouver by Michael Kutner in our collection as well if you'd like to place a hold on it. And that's it. Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you again, Emma, for being here. We're so grateful to have you. Thank you to all the audience members who joined us today and gave us such wonderful questions. We really appreciate it. I'm going to give a big round of applause to Emma if you could show your appreciation to Emma in your chat in the chat box. I would be grateful. So thank you Emma and thank you all and have a wonderful day. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you.