The Croquistes de Québec will hold a sketchcrawl at the Jardin des Gouverneurs on September 11th, starting at 10 AM. That’s the little gem of a park just south of the Chateau Frontenac. It should be lots of fun as the park is beautiful, with lots of great sketching subjects. I hope to see you there.
Category Archives: Art
Repaving The Neighborhood
Quebec City is in the midst of a major infrastructure improvement program that includes replacing our sidewalks, curbs, some of the water and sewer lines, and ultimately, repaving our street. Right now, though, it’s a mess.
We live, from 6:30AM until 5:30 with a near constant beep..beep…beep as big machines and trucks back up, and lots of general construction noise, but the activity does provide sketching opportunities. Sadly, I haven’t take advantage of it because staying indoors or leaving is the only way to buffer against the noise driving me nuts.
When the workers go home, however, they do leave their toys behind and so I sat on my front porch and drew this large water truck whose job is to spray down the street to keep the dust down. Not the most esthetically pleasing sketch but I had fun doing it.
Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5×8.5)
The Fun Of Being Stumped
My friend, Hubert Langevin, is on vacation but he took the time to send me this photo. He knows I don’t sketch from photos but he thought I might make an exception in the case of this big, beautiful stump. I suspect that he might also have been smiling with the thought of me trying to draw it (grin).
It did seem to be a worthy challenge so I dove in with pointy device flying and more confidence than was reasonable. It’s a subject where you could easily get lost so I started very slowly, placing marks at major intersections. Speed picked up as the overall shape was established and I started drawing the internal shapes. More than once I thought of the Cathy Johnson mantra – “they’re only shapes” as I tried to ‘see’ how everything fit together. Once it was drawn I switched to a brush pen (Kuretake #13) to lay in some of the darks.
It was a really fun drawing to do and it was nice to sit at a desk, with no wind, no tripod stool, and the ability to have good light on both photo (actually my computer monitor) and sketchbook.
Thanks, Hubert. This was lots of fun.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550, diluted DeAtramentis Document Black
A Church Spire To Rule Them All
I suspect that Quebec City has more church towers per capita than most place on Earth so a sketcher has many to draw, but none of them comes close to the this amazing structure. It reminds me of structures that the Legos folks come up with when trying to show off the complexity they can produce with colored blocks This church is for sale, by the way, if you need a spacious art studio with some flare.
Anyways, on a sunny, but very windy day, I drew it, having a ball in spite of the wind and having to chase my hat on a couple occasions. Hope you like it too.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (6×9) softcover, Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Brown
Karen Casper – Part 4
Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Part 3 here.
We’d agreed to meet at a park near Karen’s hotel. There’s a large statue of Joan of Arc that she wanted to sketch. Sadly, this was Karen’s last day here and only the morning at that, but with smiles on our faces, we embraced the morning.
Smiles broadened as our mystery sketcher, who turned out to be Alex Gouelky, from Winter Park, Florida arrived. He’s only been sketching for a year but he gets to do it with Thomas Throspecken in a place with no snow so I consider him a lucky guy. We talked a bit about sketching swapped sketchbooks and then sat down to sketch.
Both Karen and Alex drew Joan. I’d drawn her a couple times and decided this would be an opportunity to draw Karen instead. Because it was a simple drawing, I had time to do a small sketch of one of the lamp posts that surround the garden. Have I mentioned lately how much I love to draw lamp posts (grin)?
Karen lamented the loss of Joan’s sword to her “zooming” but her color more than made up for it. I think Joan would be happy.
It’s always fun to draw someone who is sketching because you know they’re not going anywhere for a while. Karen was typical in that regard.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (3×5), Esterbrook J9550
I hated to see Karen go. She was heading towards Tadoussac to do some whale-watching and camping. I was heading home where I had put off replacing a set of stairs. I was certain that she would be having more fun. Thanks, Karen, for such a inspiring few days. And thanks to USK for letting her find me.