A half-drawn dog, disappearing flowers: A Vancouver artist captures life in motion on Granville Island

Sometimes, the stories behind the stories are better than the stories themselves.

Jurgen, who we met sketching on Granville Island, can tell you all about that.

He was sketching a sail boat when some workers pulled another boat in front of it. He said this kind of thing happens often. It is part of the excitement of sketching things.

He showed us a half-done drawing a dog. It was half-done because it walked away before the other half was done. Then there were the flowers which went out of sight when a car parked next to them.

Jurgen is adaptable. He has sketched all his life. Sometimes still life: buildings and bridges, which stand still, and sometimes things that don’t stand still.

When the boat was blocked by another boat, he started on yet another boat. Sketching in real life takes determination.

And that is when we saw him and started taking pictures—of him drawing pictures.

But then, in front of that second boat, a forklift pulled up and stopped.

Now this is not just art; this is a challenge.

“Can you draw that?” we asked.

“If I’m quick,” he replied.

And he is super quick, so nothing else could happen, right?

Wrong.

“Can I ask where you are from?” a security guard on a bicycle asked.

We showed him the CTV logo on the microphone.

“You are okay,” he said.

That was a relief. We went back to watching Jurgen’s pencil flying over the paper, turning black lines into a forklift.

But the security guard returned.

He said we would have to contact the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which manages Granville Island, the nature of what we were doing.

“Crazy,” said Jurgen.

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We do not argue. We smile. The security guard rides away, and we go on taking video for CTV of a pencil making an image of a forklift with a smiling fellow on it, happy to be part of the art of the waterfront.

“Cool,” said the forklift driver.

And as we left, he went back to drawing the second boat, and that would be another sketch that went along with a story—of the forklift, the security guard and us—just like the dog getting up and walking away.

The art makes you open your eyes, but the story makes them smile.