The Royal Winter Fair

The Royal Winter Fair here in Toronto is something my girlfriend and I usually visit every year to get our fix of farm animal drawing not to mention fresh, sticky, cinnamon buns as well as some good mennonite sausage. Got all my drawing supplies in order before heading out only to forget them all as I head out the door. This ALWAYS happens to me. The more I focus on something, the more I'll forget it at the final, most crucial moment. Really, really bad habit. Luckily I still had my sketchbook and a blue ballpoint pen but I was still looking forward to busting out some Copic Marker tones, ink washes, watercolour paper and even pencil which I don't use enough. I even forgot my somewhat new Lumix LX5 digital camera which I was hoping to take some sweet 1080p reference footage with :( I guess forgetting all these toys makes you just focus on just drawing.

Nice, well behaved Alpaca. Some stupid little girl threw hay in it's face after it wouldn't eat from her hand. How rude!

My feet got pretty sore from standing around and drawing sheep all day so I sat in the stands and watched people take pictures of this girl who had won a competition where they and their sheep would dress up. Most sheep just had some nice scarves though I spotted some with glitter in their wool and one with a striped touque on!

A girl and her winning sheep.

No drawings of horses from me this year. As soon as I enter the horse stables and arena, my throat swells up, my nose flows like Niagara Falls and I literally find it quite difficult to breathe. My meager little allergy pill is no match for the potent animal hair flying about which means I can stick around to watch/draw the horses for a maximum of 20 minutes before I have to get some fresh air and spend the rest of my day trying to breathe normally again.