Golf Shoe – Stillman and Birn Gamma, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
I’m doing a bit of catch-up this morning. We just got back from a few days in Ottawa and things have piled up a bit. I should be able to post some of the sketches I did in Ottawa in the next day or so but until that time, here are a couple I did at the museum on a rainy day before we left.
Stillman & Birn Gamma, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
We’ve finally gotten a couple days where we could sketch outdoors and we’ve taken advantage of it. A group of us met to wander the alleyways and do some sketching together and we had a lot of fun doing just that. What alleyways may lack in terms of esthetics, they more than make up for in the form of interesting shape complexes and textures. If only there were fewer stairs to draw (grin).
Stillman & Birn Delta, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Every gathering of sketchers has periods where we ignore one another because we’re lost in our sketching but eventually we get hungry and we come together. This day was no exception and we gathered at the local coffee shop for food and to chatter away about pens and paper. Then it was back on the streets, or alleyways in this case, in search of something else to draw.
I decided to sketch a sketcher. Yvan was sketching up a storm when I sat down to sketch him and while I don’t do him justice, he was a cooperative model. All in all, it was a wonderful day. We were teased by those couple days of good weather and I’m looking forward to more of them. Yesterday it snowed.
Stillman & Birn Gamma, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
A week or so ago I walked to Bassin Louise, which is the part of our port area where private owners keep their boats. All winter they (the boats) sit on land, wrapped in their cocoons of blue plastic. When spring does arrive there’s a mad dash to get them in the water so their owners can enjoy them during our all-to-short summer.
During my visit I noticed two things. There were no boats in the water in spite of it being May. In fact, in shaded parts of the port there was still ice in the water. At the time it occurred to me that sailors may be the only people more frustrated with our lack of spring than we sketchers.
It does seem that we’re finally getting hints that winter isn’t going to last forever and I’ve managed a flurry of outdoor sketching activity this week. I decided to head back to Bassin Louise to see how the sailors were doing. When I arrived I saw that a few boats had been put in the water – maybe a dozen of the couple hundred that will eventually fill the harbor. I’m not sure the lock that lets them exit into the St. Lawrence River is functional yet but there were people working on sails, polishing chrome, etc.
While my face is incapable of launching a thousand ships, I thought that maybe my imagination might get one of them moving so I sat down to do a quick sketch of one of the boats moored in the harbor. It’s seen here, heading out into the St. Lawrence.
Stillman & Birn Gamma (9×6) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Last Sunday was our May sketchcrawl through the alleyways of Limoilu but things didn’t go as planned. My first sketch was interrupted by rain, big drops hitting the sketch before the ink had dried that created ink splats to form on the page. A quick run to the coffee shop where Yvan and Ginette shaking off their own rain.
This was Ginette’s first sketchcrawl and we had a great time getting to know each other as we sat in the cafe, sketching people. Clearly she was the highlight of this sketchcrawl as it just went downhill from here.
We are almost desperate to sketch outdoors and the sketchcrawl was supposed to be our first outdoor sketchcrawl of the year, so when the rain stopped we headed out again to do the proverbial try, try again. Same results, and in my case it was worse – another sketch ruined. We decided to pack it in and that was probably a good thing because almost immediately the rain started coming down in buckets.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
The attempts to sketch alleyways put me in the mood to try again as in Quebec City alleyways provide large shape-clusters that are both appealing to me and challenging, particularly all the stairways going up the back of the structures. So, when the weather turned nice on Wednesday, I headed out to sketch. Here are two sketches I did that day. They don’t have any color on them because I forgot to put my watercolor kit in my bag. Hope you like them.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
It’s baseball season and that means watching the Blue Jays, win or lose. But I confess that I’m not good at watching TV without doing something else at the same time. I’m writing this as I watch the Jays about to take on the San Francisco Giants in inter-league play..
Most of the time, however, while I’m watching the game, I’m doodling. Sometimes it’s from imagination, sometimes I’ll doodle from an image on my cell phone, sometimes I’ll find something around the house to draw, and sometimes I’ll just practice drawing ellipses, do hatching or shade odd forms. Anything to move a pointy device across paper.
I don’t normally scan those doodles as they never really amount to much but once in a while I like to share such doodles as a contrast to my more finished sketches. Here are a few I did while the Jays were losing to the Dodgers.
