#iamp Montreal

[sams-scribbles]

Drawn 12/23

More tomfoolery with my friends ocs

Edmonton OC belongs to @allbeendonebefore

Montréal OC belongs to @randomoranges

[acetechne]

some warm up sketches as well as a wip from BoAB from the stream last night

[ultimate-quartz]

don’t mind me, I’m just quietly falling in love with friendship over here

[itukaakana]

Ottawa and Toronto and Montreal that I drew is from Misharoyuki.

[surfingthesealand]

Lucas Wilson, Etienne Maisonneuve & Vernon Mann

Calvin McCall & Edward Murphy

A major new change has come to the weekly exhibition: from now on, doodles and drawings created in Autodesk SketchBook will be included! SketchBook combines the best of Photoshop with Microsoft Paint to quickly and easily create with artists’ favourite tools, including pencils, drawing pens, paintbrushes and Copic markers.

While any colours can be used in SketchBook, I prefer colouring with the Copic palette, as it brings my digital art closer to how it would be if it had been coloured traditionally – with a black inking pen and markers (not necessarily Copic).

To try out these exciting features, I drew some more doodles of some of the city fan characters from the IAmMatthewian Project (Project Canada).

Lucas Wilson, Etienne Maisonneuve & Vernon Mann

First up is a redrawing of this doodle, starring Toronto (Lucas Wilson), Montreal (Etienne Maisonneuve) and Vancouver (Vernon Mann). With bold black outlines and more muted colours, this version is much cleaner and less louder than the other. In an attempt to diversify my artworks, each of the characters are given differing skin tones, which due to the wide Copic range of colours is easier than ever. The characters’ names are written in a custom downloaded font to add a more personal and professional touch. As before, their outfits are based on the hometowns’ flags, which can be seen in the aforementioned post.

Calvin McCall & Edward Murphy

Fan favourites Calgary (Calvin McCall) and Edmonton (Edward Murphy) – both created by Hapo on Tumblr – also get doodled. The patches on Calgary’s Stetson hat were created using the rough pastel tool in black, while his spurs are sprayed with grey glow paint to give a silvery sheen. Diverse skin tones are also played with in Edmonton’s brown flesh, where previously I had coloured him with white skin. By colouring him brown, this is more faithful to Hapo’s portrayal of Edmonton.

(IAMP/PC) More City Doodles (2018) A major new change has come to the weekly exhibition: from now on, doodles and drawings created in Autodesk SketchBook will be included!

[project-canada]

Upcoming Dates and Challenges!

Hello everyone!

September is starting soon and I bet for a lot of us it is back to school time (even for me - I’ll be moderating online classes even though this is my first year not going back to school since kindergarten!). Even if this is normally a time of excitement for some of us, this year has an extra level of anxiety and uncertainty attached.

I thought I’d try to alleviate that with something to look forward to every month. Between September and December, I will try to release a monthly prompt you can use to create and share works with the IAMP / PC fandom. There is no obligation to participate and no deadline, this is just for fun.

That said, here are a few rules:

1. Please use discretion when dealing with sensitive topics or recent events. As a general rule in the broader Hetalia fandom, if you are not sure about whether something is inappropriate or “too soon”, it probably is and is best left alone.

2. Be kind to each other! Even a small supportive comment could make someone’s day. If a creator asks for critique, please give it! If they do not, try to comment on something you enjoy about their work instead!

3. As always, have fun first: you can follow the prompts without sharing, you can create a piece that is unfinished or silly, you can try to challenge yourself and reach outside of your comfort zone, whatever most pushes you to create!

The prompt for September is... LEAF!

Flowers and trees have leaves of course (while hockey jerseys might have “Leafs” instead), but one might also leaf through papers or a good book, and if leaf in French is “feuille” isn’t a millefeuille cake fair game as well...?

And finally, here’s a short list of some events in Canadian history for us to reflect on. This is by no means an exhaustive timeline, just a few dates of national or provincial importance I thought were interesting!

Birthdays and Events

Sep 1: Alberta and Saskatchewan - the prairie provinces entered confederation on this day in 1905 (which means they have been provinces for 115 years this week!)

Sep 6: On this day in 1952, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Radio-Canada first launched in Montreal

Sep 11: On this day in 2001, Gander, NL hosted thousands of people whose flights were diverted from the United States. This event would inspire the musical Come From Away.

Sep 14: The Forest Reserve that would become Jasper National Park was established on this day in 1907

Sep 20: Some (but not all) women won the right to vote in Canada in 1917 on this date. Some (but not all) women had won this right provincially years before!

Sep 27: Vancouver’s famous Stanley Park, which later would become a Canadian National Historic Site, was opened on this day in 1888

Sep 28: Canada won a historic victory in hockey during their eighth and final game of the Summit Series against the USSR this day in 1972

Sep 29: Alouette is Canada’s first satellite launched into space, making Canada the third country after the USSR and the United States to do so

That’s all for now, I’ll be back at the end of the month to get ready for October! If these next four months are successful, I’ll consider bringing the challenge into 2021!

Hapo

[allbeendonebefore]

part 2 quebec timeline

[part 1] [full timeline]

1950s

After the war, Quebec enjoyed the same prosperity and flood of goods and services that other parts of Canada did. However, Quebec was still trailing behind the rest of the country in some areas, and the tension between “modernizing” and “assimilating” was starting to become more palpable. In the meantime, the federal government was taking (unconstitutional) steps towards a welfare state and was needling the provinces about creating a national pension plan- Quebec’s draft of his own plan was the best received of the propositions. Canada had not given up wartime responsibilities for tax collecting in order to fund this, and quite a few provinces were salty about it- Quebec comparing the federal government to “a thief who stole your watch and returned the chain as a gift”. After Ontario gave in, Quebec was left alone... still contributing money, but receiving none of the benefits. The federal government also transgressed again into cultural territory with the Massey Commission to the irritation of a growing sense of Quebec nationalism. The Quebec government became increasingly anti-union during this decade as well. During this decade, Toronto finally surpassed Montreal as the economic capital of Canada, a trend which had been continuing for decades and would progress further.

 1960s

The decade of the Quiet Revolution, a period of rapid social change. The Church’s power declined to the point that what was once the most religious province in Canada became the least. Secularization meant the decline of the Church’s role in education, health, and welfare, but also the decline in importance of Catholicism in French Canadian identity, and therefore the rise of the French language to replace it. The sharp division between anglophone businessmen and francophone labour became even more visible and intense, and contributed to increasing frustration and pressure to put more francophones in positions of management. This was also a period of global interaction- at the same time Quebec was asserting itself amongst other francophone nations, France itself included, throngs of immigrants settled and changed the fabric of the province. To the frustration of nationalists, many immigrants assimilated to the anglophone culture, which continued to dominate nationally. (Originally I was debating about showing Jean with a maîtres chez nous sign, but the phrase has become increasingly charged with anti-immigrant anti-religious minority sentiments... so I decided to leave it alone!)

1970s

I have a tendency to draw characters going through bad times as physically lowered somehow in these timelines, and this was a violent and frightening couple of decades in the history of Quebec and Quebec nationalism. The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) created a series of bomb threats and kidnappings of political figures in order to pressure both the provincial and federal governments towards separation. The RCMP regarded the group as “misguided youths” and did not take very serious steps against them at first; as a result some innocent people were killed, several thousand homes were searched by the army and the RCMP, and hundreds of people with no connection to the loose organization were arrested and questioned. It was one of the few times the War Measures Act was invoked in peacetime- an imposition that infuriated Quebec but was immensely popular in other parts of the country, where Prime Minister Trudeau was seen as “putting Quebec in its place”. At the end of the decade, the Parti Québécois, the first separatist government of the province, was elected on a platform of governance rather than explicit independence. 

1995

After an attempt at putting together a referendum to negotiate a possible separatism with the federal government and fifteen years of failed negotiations with the rest of the country, it was time for a simple, straightforward referendum: leave Canada? yes or no. The federal government again did not pay much attention until the day of the referendum was drawing closer and closer and the result looked to be more and more likely “oui” for separation. With some (illegal!) interference from the federal government including a huge rally against separation in Montreal, the vote was an astonishingly close 50.4% vote ‘Non’ to 49.5% ‘Oui’; a slight difference the Clarity Act of 2000 made sure would never be a deciding margin for separation again. After this referendum, interest in Quebec separatism has dwindled. 

Today

I’ll come clean with you, I’m a filthy anglo 90s kid from another province that also likes to hoot and holler about independence and separation (though on a smaller scale and with a lot more cowboy-boot-and-truck-based campaigns). I grew up surrounded by the opinion that “Quebec should just separate already and put us out of our misery” with a slight aftertaste of “oh and maybe we should let the others bite the dust and leave as well, or at least hoard all our resources for ourselves”. But nowadays with separation less fresh in everyone’s minds, I think there’s a calmer atmosphere and with advancements in travel and communication I’ve discovered that Quebec isn’t really some weird dour and prickly alternate universe after all... even if they made the unfortunate mistake of banning Red Lobster... It’s a stereotype that needs to be understood more than it needs to be maintained, and I really hope that’s a sentiment any future representations of the IAMP/PC carry with them. I think there remains a HUGE disconnect between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and a LOT of misunderstandings that need to be corrected... but I’m learning more every day. 

I’m pleased to wrap up TWO YEARS worth of investigation into regional history with one of the places I and presumably many others have always considered so geographically and socially distant, and though I’m by no means an expert in any area of history (kicks my M.A. thesis under my desk) I think this little side-project of mine was overwhelmingly useful in my on-again-off-again relationship with my crazy country, my political perspective as an adult, and the small remaining flicker of patriotism and belief in the future left in my heart. Thank you so much for staying with me, and I’ll try to get that full timeline done soon.

[golden-aster]

I got to visit Whitehorse last summer. 

When I lived back east, it was about a day’s drive to get to Montreal. I knew it was an old city—older than anything else I’d seen—and tried to press as much of it into my memory as possible, saving the smell of rain on the cobblestones and the sounds of piano from a third-story apartment for my next murky Connecticut day. 

Living on the west coast kind of sucks. The weather never changes. Back in August, my mother got some ticket discount from Alaska Airlines. I convinced her to book a trip north. It was always our inside joke that I wanted to see Whitehorse, a tiny industrial town in the middle of nowhere. We spent a few days in Alaska and drove over the mountains to Yukon. As we reached 6,000 feet, my water bottle burst open and soaked the carpeting in our rental car. 

We stayed at a sled-dog lodge a few miles outside the city, down two kilometers of unpaved and unmarked road. We spent a few days hiking and visiting museums and admiring the plant life. I was recovering from a head cold that hit the morning we flew out, aggravated by the chilly, damp Alaskan summer. It was weird to finally realize I dream I’d had since sixth grade. 

That was the year I emerged from my childhood cocoon. Looking back, it’s the watershed moment when I began to use the internet and uncover the world in earnest. I don’t remember how I found Project Canada, then called the IAMP. I think Yukon was my favorite character, even back then. Nascent admiration for butch gals, I guess. Actually, my trip north wasn’t even the first time I’d gotten my family to visit Canada because of something in the IAMP. The summer between sixth and seventh grade I convinced my parents to see more of Eastern Canada. We did a multi-week tour of the maritimes, driving from one side of Newfoundland to the other in our packed minivan. 

I’ll never forget Belle Isle, or Lanse-aux-Meadows, or the iceberg in St. John’s harbor. I’ll never forget picking bakeapples as we made our way along the boardwalks, or the furious winds at North America’s most eastern point. I’ll never forget the majesty of the fjords, like something out of a Decemberists’ song, or the taste of cod cheeks and pineapple crush (which I still haven’t found outside Newf). 

Thank you, Project Canada, for making my world a little bit bigger. 

[sams-scribbles]

Drawn 2/24

@randomoranges has been really jazzed about PWHL hockey lately and of course we have to involve the twins in anything Montreal related

Yes I know it should be frère I was too lazy to fix it

Étienne and Élysée belong to the hockey nut @randomoranges

[sams-scribbles]

Drawn 1/24

More airport drawings. I just love the idea of putting Étienne in slutty little tops sue me

Montreal OC belongs to @randomoranges

[ultimate-quartz]

Just some more doodles — the third drawing is when you’re just trying to make it through a mountain of work but men are dramatic

[ultimate-quartz]

Happy holidays have some questionably platonic Emma-Étienne content

[ultimate-quartz]

-peeks head in- hello I’m just gonna leave these here there might be more real soon I missed my children omg okay bye

[surfingthesealand]

Did a few more sketches for my game Freddy for Action and some festive drawings for the Christmas season!

[surfingthesealand]

IAMP/PC: The City Gang (2015)

IAMP/PC: The City Gang (2015)

It’s been quite a long while since I last saw these kids – in fact, just before I jetted off to Canada. That wasn’t the first time I drew them, however – this is. And it also happens to be my first artwork of 2015! 🙆🏽 I often draw the province and territory characters of the IAmMatthewian Project (now Project Canada), but their city counterparts much less. This is because, unlike their provincial…