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: Croquistes de Quebec
2016 Nouvelle France Sketch Fest
The Croquistes de Quebec held their August sketchcrawl in conjunction with Quebec’s Nouvelle France event, a time when people dress in 18th Century garb, some act like pirates, minstrels, swordsmen, etc. and everyone has fun. This year was no exception.
I apologize for the blog going dark for a while but it seems that the busier I get sketching, the less time I have to write about it. I’m going to try to make a push to get caught up but this sketchcrawl event took place on August 4th so you can see how far behind I am.
My goal that day was to talk as much as possible, eat a lot, and do a bunch of quick sketches. No long sit-down sessions for me this day. They can be placed in two piles. The first are the people in costume and here are few examples of those:
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5, DeAtramentis Document Black
I didn’t limit myself to people, though. I did some quick vignettes of scenes surrounding the venue. Sorry that I haven’t written more but if a picture is worth a thousand words maybe the sketches make up for it. I’ll leave you to peruse these sketches cuz I’ve got a bunch of scanning to do 🙂
S&B Alpha (5.5×8.5)
Fetes de Nouvelle France Sketching
LtoR – Celine, Pierre, Yvan, Larry
Tomorrow starts a five day event called Fêtes de Nouvelle France. This is to commemorate the founding of Quebec but also a celebration of an earlier time of 3-cornered hats and beautiful clothes. Truth be told, the dress donned by participants varies from that of a peddler to that of a king and this provides infinite sketching subjects for those who can sketch while people are wandering around. They do sometimes stop to pose for people taking photos and sometimes actually stop and talk to one another. All these things help as we try to capture them on paper.
On Sunday, the last day of the event, the Croquistes de Québec will hold their August sketchcrawl event an I encourage any and all to show up to sketch with us. It’s always a lot of fun. If you come to the event on any other day, look for the fat guy with a sketchbook in his hand and we can sketch together.
June Sketchcrawl at Galerie Louise-Carrier in Levis
Our next monthly sketchcrawl (June 19) should be fantastic. We’re holding it in conjunction with an event that’s held every other year at Galerie Louise-Carrier in Levis. In addition to the gallery’s exhibition of nature artworks, the artists of those works will be on site and other activities will take place in a park area next to the gallery.
I went two years ago and they had art demonstrations, acrobats, activities for kids, and a woman doing trick horse riding. It was a real circus atmosphere and very much a target-rich environment for sketchers. if you’re interested in drawing architecture, the entire neighborhood can be your playground as the gallery is in the older part of Levis and the architecture is stunning.
You can get more information on the event from the Croquistes de Quebec website or the Louise-Carrier gallery website. Whatever you do, don’t miss this one. Bring a lunch, your pointy devices and some paper and be prepared for a great day.
Rain In The Alleyways
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