A Short Trip To Levis

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Larry Marshall

To both of you who follow this blog, I apologize for my absence. It’s embarrassing to admit but without my laptop I’m dead in the water, and I had a hard drive crash late last week. I got the problem diagnosed by Friday night and then began waiting for a hard drive to arrive in the mail. This is not something you want to be doing as the weekend is just beginning.

So, I scuttled around in my basement and, using ancient computer parts, cobbled together something that looked like a computer and ran almost as fast as an abacus. But it did get me email and limited web access. The drive arrived on Tuesday and I’m now back in business Thank goodness for backups as not much was lost except for a lot of time.

3×5 – Pilot Prera w/Lex Gray ink

During that time I went for a long sketching walk. First stop was to do a quick sketch of sailboats in the harbor. Me and sailboats don’t get along well, mostly because I don’t know much about the rigging and doo-dads that encrust the top surface of sailboats and, from my distant vantage point, these things are hard to make out. But I continue to try and this sketch consumed ten minutes of my time. The fact that I was standing up didn’t help much. I do wish I could get better at sketching while standing 🙁

I wandered around downtown for a while and then got the notion to head to Levis as the sun was out and I always look for an excuse to ride the ferry. On my way over I recalled a small, but rather ornate house I’d seen while I was in Levis sketching with fellow sketcher, Yvan. This is it. The people got sort of faked in using people who were walking by. I ran out of room while adding the woman and I’m not sure she has a left arm. If she does, it’s somewhere in the guy’s right side (grin).

Stillman & Birn Zeta (5x8), Pilot Prera w/ Platinum Carbon Black ink

Stillman & Birn Zeta (5×8), Pilot Prera w/ Platinum Carbon Black ink

The Variety That Comes From Sketching

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Larry Marshall

If I did a statistical analysis of the my sketching subjects, it would be clear that I’m a building portrait kind of guy. I just love ’em and enjoy going out, finding them, and sketching them. In fact, being out in the city, sitting on a stool as people walk by, is a major part of what I enjoy about it. I’ve never been much for sketching from photos and this is probably why.

This little guy was hanging out over a path I was walking on in the park. He was actually moving quite quickly, for him, but I had time to do this quick sketch.

I guess it’s true for most people, regardless of how or what kind of art they do; we all have a preferred subject type, whether it is flowers, landscapes, boats, or still lifes. But sketching provides something that other forms do not – the ability to sketch something quickly. This translates into sketchers drawing a much wider variety of things than an artist who must set up an easel and has a mindset of hanging the result on a wall.

I was out for a long walk and sat down in a park. Something suggested that I sketch this basketball hoop that was sitting idle. Definitely a ‘no big deal’ sketch. Took less than ten minutes but it was ten minutes of fun.

We sketchers are happy with these quick sketches, often of subjects that no other group would ever do. We proudly show off our sketch of a garbage can, a fire hydrant or maybe even a dead fish. Why our brains work that way I do not know but I do know that our ability to do this without devoting a lot of time to it is the reason we do it so regularly.

They’re repaving a street near my house and I thought this small roller was unique.

This occurred to me as I was looking at the last few sketches I did in my little Moleskine watercolor book (3×5). Excepting the roller, which took me twenty minutes or so, these sketches were done very quickly, with no particular goal in mind other than to be sketching. All were fun.

I went birding on a ‘too windy’ day and ended up huddled behind a tree. Did this sketch of a fungus.

Stillman & Birn Zeta: A Pen Sketcher’s Dream

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Back in November of 2011 I bought my first Stillman & Birn sketchbook. It was a 5×8, hardcover Alpha-series book. I wrote about the Alpha Series here. In that blog post I said that I liked it very much and I gave several reasons why I felt it outperformed the other sketchbooks I’d tried. I also ran out and bought several more. But as I’d only had it for a short time I added the caveat that “It’s probably premature to draw conclusions that will stick.”

Well, nearly two years and ten S&B sketchbooks in use or filled, I think I can be a bit more definitive…but with another caveat. Stillman & Birn just keeps getting better and better so who knows what ‘best’ will look like in the future.

I find the colors are brighter on Zeta paper, probably because they aren’t absorbed into the paper as much. Makes lifting easier as well.

As I filled sketchbooks, I tried the other Stillman & Birn papers. For the pen & ink work I do, the Epsilon sketchbooks are wonderful to draw on. It took me a while to get used to how the smoother paper accepts watercolor as they stay wet longer and sit on the surface more, which is neither good or bad but different from the more absorbent Alpha. The best equivalency I know is to the differences between cold-press and hot-press watercolor papers. Both of these papers are 100lb papers that, while they outperform any papers of this weight I’ve ever used, they still have a tendency to curl somewhat when lots of water are applied. You can see a bit of shadowing if you use both sides of the paper.

And then I tried Beta, S&B’s 180lb paper. This is surfaced very much like a cold-press paper and provides a fantastic surface for watercolors but not as nice as Epsilon for pen use. By the end of the summer of 2012 I wrote a summary post on these different sketchbooks. I was completely hooked on Stillman & Birn papers and their amazing double-stitched bindings which are second to none. But at the time I thought “They need thick “Epsilon” paper.

Notice how flat S&B sketchbooks lay once they've been broken in.

Notice how flat S&B Zeta sketchbooks lay once they’ve been broken in.

And this is the thing about Stillman & Birn. If you dream it, they magically know you were dreaming and they make it. The Zeta sketchbooks were release a few months ago in response to my dream. I’m betting others were dreaming the same thing.

I use several S&B sketchbooks (different sizes and papers) simultaneously and when the Zeta series was released, I immediately started using one. It quickly became a favorite for my kind of sketching (pen/ink and wash). It’s a merging of best of Beta and Epsilon into one paper as it’s 180lb Epsilon paper. I’m working in my second Zeta sketchbook and it’s hard for me to see any reason to use any other, if the size I want is available with this paper.

There lies the rub as I still use Alpha in 4×6 and 10×7 formats. I will likely buy a 7×10 spiral bound Zeta as a substitute for my 10×7 Alphas but, so far, S&B haven’t produced a truly small sketchbook (thin, 3×5) – my current dream. I hope that when they do it will contain Zeta paper (grin).

Do You Experiment With Sketching Styles?

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Larry Marshall

In the two years that I’ve been sketching I’ve actually developed a ‘style’, which surprises me somewhat as it seemed not long ago I was wondering if I would ever be able to draw anything, let alone have a ‘style.’

I like my style, which is more ‘illustrative’ than artistic. Some might even claim it to be cartoonish. I sometimes call it that. In any case, when I sit down to draw something, the resultant sketch reflects that style.

My style has two drawbacks. The first is that those who don’t speak sketcher try to fit it into ‘fine art’ and, well, it just doesn’t. Some day ‘finished’ sketching will be acknowledged by the art community at large but so far, it’s tough slogging. The other drawback to my style is that it’s not ‘fast’. My sketches take longer than those done by people using looser, less detailed approaches. This is not bad or good but sometimes it limits my ability to quickly capture a scene.

So, I sometimes experiment with quicker, looser ways of sketching. Of course I do a fair amount of quick-sketching of people but here I’m talking about sketching things. Here are a few examples of those attempts.

I did this little sketch of a piece of the Quebec City skyline, experimenting not only with very quick (only a couple minutes) sketch but also with a washable red ink. I kinda-sorta liked the result. It’s no more than two inches square.

Using the same pen/ink combo I decided to see if I could grab enough detail from a very complex hotel facade in 3-4 minutes to make me happy. Can’t say this pleased me much but maybe…with lots of practice… naw…not working for me 🙂

Here’s another experiment. It’s only about 2×2 and my thoughts were to do a quick, small sketch that could be part of a journal page. I really would like to start adding annotations to some of my sketches and to that end I sketched this tiny house in about five minutes, including the watercolor.

I was sitting in a park in ‘lower town’ of Quebec City and there’s a row of buildings that look down on the park, trees filling the area in between. I decided to quick-sketch it. Probably took me 10-15 minutes, which for some is not ‘quick’ but if I were to do this with my ‘style’ it would take at least four times that long.

I sort of like the results. The trees aren’t sufficiently developed for my taste and I hate restated lines on buildings (buildings aren’t supposed to look like they’re vibrating). This one was done on two pages of a 3×5 notebook so it’s a bit larger than the others.

I’ll continue experimenting with different styles and approaches as I think I learn something every time I do it. Who knows what my ‘style’ will be in another year. Do you experiment with styles?

Sketching at Chute Montmorency

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Chute Montmorency is a large waterfall just east of Quebec City. It’s a major tourist attraction, a mini-Niagara Falls I suppose. It has all the tourist amenities. Large facility at the base of the falls greets tourists and there’s a large parking lot to accommodate a constant parade of vehicles.

There’s also a tram and a smiling attendant with their hand out. You can pay the price or you can climb a veritable labyrinth of stairs up to the top of the falls. We did neither.

Locals, wanting to get to the top take a metro bus that drops them near the top and next to a hotel that sits at the tram terminus. There’s a wonderful boardwalk that tourists walk along to the falls and it provides spectacular views of the falls as well as the St. Lawrence River. We took the bus.

I met my sketching buddy, Claudette, on the bus and we walked the short trail down to the west end of a large pedestrian bridge that runs right across the top of the falls. The views are pretty spectacular from there. So, what do a couple of urban sketchers do? We set up at the end of the bridge and drew the bridge. We’ll draw the trees, beautiful canyon, and the falls themselves some other day. I guess it truly is a mindset as both of us did this without much thought.

I decided to work in a small format as I’ve been doing a series of smaller sketches. I got out my little Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and started drawing. Claudette did likewise with her 5×8 Strathmore 467-series sketchbook. These are beautiful, brown-covered watercolor sketchbooks, though they are in landscape mode which is not idea in my view.

It seemed that we both finished our linework about the same time as I noticed that she was getting out her watercolors as I reached for mine. She had hers. I did not. I’d left my watercolor kit sitting on my desk.

While disappointing, it allowed me to stand up and move around, giving my old knees a stretch. Then I sat down and did a quick, small sketch of Claudette working on her sketch. Obviously, I added color to my sketches when I got home.

Claudette composed an interesting view of the bridge, sort of zooming in on just the entrance area. I decided to capture more of the entirety of the scene. I like hers better. I always do.

We wandered up Avenue Royale which is a very old street lined with older, though often completely renovated houses. These are majestic houses with lots of what my dad used to call ‘gingerbread’ trim, large front doors and porch areas.

We only found a few dozen things we wanted to sketch but it was time for lunch. Feeling recharged by good food and conversation, we returned to the falls area and I sketched this little snack kiosk, again in my 3×5 watercolor book. Then, we hopped on the bus and came home. Paraphrasing the Terminator…”we’ll be back.”