Why I’m Not Doing InkTober, Or Am I?

1Near the end of September I was asked, “Are you doing InkTober?”  I gave a simple answer of “No, I don’t really like challenges.”  Actually, I love InkTober because I get to see so many ink sketches done by many people who don’t normally work in ink and/or who use InkTober to do quicker, simpler sketches than they normally do.

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A couple days into InkTober I was asked, “Why aren’t you doing InkTober?”  I answered that “I draw in ink all the time.  I don’t need a challenge to get me to do it.”  The response that came back was a surprise.  It implied that there was something wrong with me and that I would draw more regularly and improve my ink skills if I did InkTober and that I should be participating.

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56After I came down off the ceiling over someone telling me what I should or should not do with my chosen hobby, I got to thinking and those thoughts ran along these lines.  How can this person, who follows my blog, not know that 1) I draw almost EVERYTHING in ink and 2) that I draw constantly without needing a challenge to get me to draw daily?

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Out of curiosity, and possibly with just a hint of grumbling over this out of the blue indictment, I looked at what I’ve posted on my blog so far this year.  Here’s the arithmetic:

9posts during first 9 months of this year: 289
number of months: 9
ink drawings done and posted per month: 31

I’ve done and posted InkTober numbers of sketches EVERY month this year.  I’m not bragging here.  It’s just what I do.  Others do more…much more.  I don’t think a lot of people realize just how much sketching/art is done by many artists.   I thought maybe these numbers would give you some indication.

10 1112I realized, however, that this isn’t the whole picture.  Those 31 sketches per month are only the ones I decided to scan and post.  I do dozens of smaller, experimental, dare I say trivial sketches every month.  Many are done on location but often they’re done while I watch TV.  While I don’t waste time scanning/posting them, they are a very important part of my learning process.

So, I went through the books that hold these sketches and scanned a few of them.  Decisions of which sketches to scan were made to give some indication of the variation in quality of those sketches and variation in subject matter.

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So, when I tell you I don’t do InkTober, realize that it’s not that I don’t like InkTober.  It’s that I’m doing it all the time.  I just don’t acknowledge that October is any different from any other month.  Hope you like at least a couple of these tiny sketches and, if you’re doing InkTober, that you have a lot of fun doing it.  I’ll enjoy looking at your sketches.

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Getting Away From The Noise

For the last few weeks our street has been under construction.  The city is replacing sewer/water lines, repaving the street, replacing our sidewalks, installing new streetlights and, hopefully, they’re going to re-sod the parts of our lawns that are currently torn up.

What does this have to do with sketching?  Not much I suppose except that Chantal and I were all full up with the noise, particularly the beep, beep, beep of trucks and machinery backing up.  So we left.

We drove out to Ile d’Orleans, the large island I mentioned a couple posts ago.  We headed directly to La Boulange, a little slice of heaven that overlooks the St. Lawrence and that has great coffee and pastries.  During our visit we also learned that they have fantastic pesto pizza.  We enjoyed good food, sunshine and some quiet as we at on their veranda.

2016-09-21-60laboulangestatueThe only sketch I did from that location was this little quickie (maybe five minutes) that I scribbled into a small Stillman & Birn (3.5×5.5) sketchbook.  The bit of color was splashed on from a 4-color palette I carry, using a waterbrush as my splashing device.

When the pizza, coffee and pastry was gone we decided to head to the other side of the island (north side) to visit the large church, and its associated park because it’s a great place to sketch.  Chantal wanted to sketch the gazebo that sits at one end of the park.  I decided that was a pretty good idea and we enjoyed some more sun as we sat together sketching.  This was my result.  It was really nice to get away from the noise and we returned refreshed and ready for another round of beep, beep, beep.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (8.5x5.5), Platinum 3776

Stillman & Birn Alpha (8.5×5.5), Platinum 3776

A Perfect Sketching Day On Ile d’Orleans

Just east of Quebec City, in the St. Lawrence River, there is a huge island that is filled with farms, vineyards, and about a gazillion apple trees.  We go there in early summer to pick strawberries.  Mostly though, we go there to sketch because the small towns that run around its perimeter are full of sketchable subjects and because it’s “out in the country.”

At one of our gatherings Miram Blair came to sketch with us and she offered for us to come to her summer cottage on the island and since there aren’t many outdoor sketching days left in our year, I decided to contact her and arrange for us to descend upon her like sketchbook-carrying locusts.  She graciously agreed to host us.

As it turned out, only three of us could go but go we did, arriving about 10AM on a cold, blustery day.  As it turned out, Miriam doesn’t just have a cottage.  She has a huge barn and a bunch of land associated with her cottage and her cottage has a huge room that serves as kitchen, dining room, and studio.  It’s also a little slice of heaven.  No wonder Miriam is always in a good mood.

We decided to sketch outdoors first, in spite of the wind and the threat of rain.  We figured we could sketch until we got too cold and then head indoors to sketch the amazing stuff Miriam has hanging on her walls, sitting in window frames, and on cabinets in the large room.

I, being the consummate sissy, decided that I couldn’t sit in the wind so I took up a position just inside the door of the barn and drew this scene.  I’d taken a large folding chair with me because my back was still barking at me and, as it turned out, I was really comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I never really finished the sketch.  I just stopped when everyone went inside.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10), Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Brown, Zig brush pen

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Brown, Zig brush pen

The brave folks, the ones who sat in the wind and drew the barn, were cold so we made our way into the house and for the rest of our time with Miriam, that’s where we stayed.  It was soooooooo much fun.

I spent a lot of time just looking at all the stuff Miriam has collected, mostly during local walks from the looks of the bird nests, shells, driftwood, etc. that graced her room.  She has two long tables, set end to end and a dozen beautiful wooden chairs lining their sides.  We used a few of them as we ate lunch, flipped through art books, and talked.

Eventually, though, we got back to drawing and I chose this scene.  When I started I wasn’t sure how successful I could be with it but I sure had fun doing it.  It’s a very different kind of drawing than my typical building sketches as I had to do a bunch of visual planning to get the bottles in the right places.  In the end, though, I was really happy with it as it captured the spirit that is Miriam’s place.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10), Platinum 3776

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Platinum 3776

Stillman & Birn (4x6), Duke 209, DeAtramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5), Duke 209, DeAtramentis Document Black

Miriam has a small dog named Nicki.  He and I became friends and he sat with me while I did my first sketch and because I gave him a bite of my sandwich 🙂  But as we were packing up to leave, Nicki was laying on the floor and in spite of three sketchers who were all around him as we packed up our gear, he wouldn’t budge.  I grabbed my small sketchbook and did this quick sketch of him.  It was a great end to a perfect day.

The Spires of Quebec City

If you follow my blog you know that there are a lot of pointy things that rise up from the citiscape and that I love to draw them.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the old city area where there seems to be more churches, tall fountains and statues than there are people.  I’m trying to work my way through some severe back pain that’s limiting my ability to sketch (can’t sit on my stool as it’s too low), but I found a bench facing a nice stack of those pointy things and I drew this.  The statue is in front of the old post office and I’m looking west, towards City Hall.

Stillman & Birn Beta (8x10)

Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10)

Five Years A Sketcher, I Am

Tina Koyama just did a blog post about completing five years as a sketcher.  It reminded me that I’ve been sketching for five years as well so I thought I should do a short post about that fact.

When I began as a sketcher I couldn’t draw anything.  I’d read Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters and bought into the idea that being good wasn’t important; the process of doing it was what was important.  This was an important epiphany for me at the time because I’d been convinced that I had no “talent” for art.

These days I know that “talent” is something you create by passion and persistence; you’re not born with it.  Anyway, I started drawing cubes and doing simple drawings of things.  I started posting a few things on Russ Stutler’s sketching site, which is where I first ‘met’ Tina.  At that time I was drawing on photocopy paper and throwing the results away when I was done.  Someone on that group explained what a bad idea that was and that I should keep my early sketches.

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This was my first location sketch. It's dated Oct 2011.

This was my first location sketch. It’s dated Oct 2011.

I wish I had some of them to post here but instead I’ll post the first location sketch I did (Oct 2011), a window manikin (I figured she wouldn’t mind me sketching her) and one of my first building sketches (done in Oct 2011 from a photo).  I’ll add to this the last location sketch I did just a few days ago.  Hope you can see a difference as there have been several thousand sketches done in between these.  With a bit more persistence, maybe I’ll improve by the end of year six.  In any case, sketching has improved my life so much that it doesn’t really matter.

This one was done Sept 2016

This one was done Sept 2016