Just a quick reminder that Saturday, January 25th, at 10AM will begin a grand day of sketching as we celebrate the 42nd Worldwide Sketchcrawl at the Musée de la Civilisation. It’s free to all but bring sketching materials and a lunch, though the museum will be most happy to sell you food as well. You can see details here, in my original post about the sketchcrawl. See you there.
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Quebec Sketchcrawl: Musee De La Civilisation
Saturday, January 25th is the date for the 42nd Worldwide Sketchcrawl. It’s very cold in Quebec City this time of year so we’ll be having our sketchcrawl indoors at the Musée de la Civilisation. We’ll be at the museum from 10h to 16h, breaking for lunch at mid-day. Bring a lunch or buy it at the museum but we’ll gather at the museum cafeteria around 12:30.
Participation, of course, is free. Normally, entrance to the museum is only available from 10h to 12h but the museum has generously offered free admission to all participants regardless of your time of arrival. Just let them know that you’re with the sketching group. Coat check is also free.
It should be a great day as there’s plenty to tempt you to put pen to paper. While a bit bizarre, the Haiti In Extremis exhibit offers some macabre sketching possibilities.
The newly refurbished and expanded Native American exhibit is also full of goodies to sketch, from snowshoes, utensils, weapons, carvings, paintings, mannikins all waiting for interest a sketcher.
There is a large computer games exhibit and while it’s mostly a bunch of boxes on which you can play video games, there are a number of possibilities for sketching as well, including a full-sized sculpture of the lead character for the Assassin’s Creed III video game.
There are also a lot of interior architecture possibilities as the building itself has a lobby area that is an architect’s dream. I still need to do some sketching there.
Of course the star of the show right now is the Paris: 1899-1914 exhibit. Here you’ll find a room filled with old camera and movie projector equipment and ongoing movies from the period.
There are a lot of sculptures, busts, and vases if that’s your preference. You’ll also find a number of early vehicles, including a steam-powered car.
The exhibit also holds a lot of very large posters as well as floor-to-ceiling projections of photos, taken in Paris in the 1900s. I did this sketch from one of those.
And, of course, a Paris exhibit wouldn’t be complete without pieces that represent the cabaret scene of the era. Lots of great stuff to sketch in that part of the exhibit.
In short, you won’t want to miss this sketchcrawl as we’re going to have a ball. I hope you’ll join us. And from the organizers, Yvan Breton and Celine Poulin:
———————EN FRANÇAIS———————
Bonjour chers croquistes,
La prochaine sortie de croquis du 42e Sketchcrawl à Québec aura lieu au chaud du Musée de la Civilisation samedi le 25 janvierprochain.
Nous nous retrouverons à partir de 10h (accès gratuit).
Pour plus d’information, voir l’annonce à la page suivante :
Au plaisir de faire du croquis en votre compagnie.
Yvan Breton et Céline Poulin
Just Say No: Resolve Not To Resolve
This is the time of year when everyone starts talking about New Year’s resolutions. “I’m going to lose 20 lbs.” “I’m going to exercise more this year.” “I’m going to be nicer.”
A few decades ago I realized that all this is just “talk” and that, most the time, the smart money is on people forgetting all about their resolution within a week or so of making it. That’s why we’re all fat, don’t exercise enough, and not very nice.
But not me. Year after year I keep my resolution – 100%. That’s because I resolved not to resolve anything, and it works every year. Pretty cool, eh? So, think hard about what your New Year’s resolution will be. I think there are two ways to go with this, unless you’re just blowing smoke during resolution season in which case, just keep talking about how serious you about sticking to your resolution “this year.” Otherwise, read on.
Option One
Do like I’ve done. Resolve something that is self-fulfilling, and/or automatic. How about “I’m going to breathe every day” or “I won’t change my gender during the whole year.” Well, that last one might not work for some people but you get the idea. Then, like me, you can proudly crow to everyone you meet, “I kept my New Year’s Resolution. How about you?” This accomplishes nothing, of course, but at least you can be confident of success… sort of like Congress saying they did nothing because that was their goal.
Option Two
This is the alternative for those of you who actually want to change something in their life, whether it be to lose weight, take up a new hobby, learn to play an instrument, or whatever. This is the hard alternative of the two but it does pay dividends.
To do Option Two get a small notebook and for each of the first 30 pages in that notebook, write a number from 1 to 30 at the top of the page. THEN, do whatever your resolution demands, EVERY day, for 30 days. It takes that long to develop a habit, to integrate it into your life, and to find out if it’s actually something you want to do. Giving up after a week cuz it’s too hard or rationalizing your way out of something hard by saying “I don’t like it” is not an option here. Each day, after you’ve done whatever it is your resolution requires, make a note of what it was you did that day. Keep it up for 30 days.
At the end of that 30 days the activity will be something you’re doing every day. You might still want to stop doing it because you’ve decided that you really didn’t want to become an underwater basket weaver but you won’t be able to say “I don’t have time for this.” You’ve just spent 30 days doing it – you have the time. It’s likely that you won’t be able to say “This is too hard” as you will have done ‘it’ enough that you will have made considerable progress in the endeavor, enough that you can see the results. And most important, it will have become a habit in your life, not just a spoken, vague goal.
BTW, this is how I started sketching. I decided I want to try it but wasn’t sure I could. In fact, long ago I was told I had no talent for art but I’m old now and don’t have any elders to pay attention to anymore. But I also realized that it would be hard as I couldn’t even draw a darn cube without it looking like it’d been run over by a truck. So I set the 30-day goal and I drew a lot of bad cubes for 30 days…until I saw that I was improving. At the end of that 30-days my cubes were pretty darn good and and I’ve been sketching nearly every day since.
So, what’s your New Years Resolution? Option One, Option Two, or are you just talking. In any case,
Happy New Years, Everyone
A Merry “Sketcher” Christmas To All
I thought about sketching the proverbial Santa Claus for this post but geez…that red suit and white beard are everywhere. The world doesn’t need another. But you can hardly imagine a case where there would be too many fire hydrant sketches in the world and this acts as a great stand-in for Mr. Claus, don’t you think?
Merry Christmas Everyone!
dd
The Future Of Sketching Is Good In Quebec City
Every year, Le Soleil, the premier newspaper in Quebec, conducts a writing and drawing contest for young, creative citizens. The Musee de la Civilisation just set up a display of the art entries and it is truly inspiring. As I looked at all the great drawings I couldn’t help but think of a quote from Danny Gregory’s The Creative License:
When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked one day what I did at work. I told her that I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” – Howard Ikewoko
Kids do know how to draw. And we adults do seem to forget, both how to do it and how much fun it can be. We in Quebec City are lucky that Le Soleil puts so much effort and resources behind fostering creative activity from our youth. Thanks, Le Soleil.
Here’s a few photos to give you some idea of the variety and quality of these drawings. These kids are good.
