Family Day At Cap Tourmente

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The Cap Tourmente National Wildlife Area is a great place to get out into nature.  It’s a place with lots of short hiking trails through several habitats and, if you go during the week and outside ‘goose season’ it’s largely devoid of humans so it’s QUIET.  We city-dwellers don’t get quiet anymore and I think it affects us more deeply than we think..if we think about it at all.

I mentioned goose season.  Cap Tourmente is a major stop-over area for migrating geese.  In October/November and thousands of geese aggregate there during their journey south.  It’s pretty cool to see them turn a marsh white with their presence and fill the sky in squadron-like fashion.  But geese bring with them hundreds of humans, filling over-flow parking lots with their pollution devices and that pretty much ruins the experience for me.

But on this day, we were there on a Monday, out of season.  The day was delightful.  We watched a lot of young hummingbirds at feeders, enjoyed the presence of a young porcupine, saw egrets, blue herons, marsh and red-tail hawks, and we even saw the Perigrine Falcons that nest in the cliffs that overlook the refuge.  They told us to beware of bears but the only ones we saw were on the beware of bear signs on the garbage cans.

It wasn’t a sketching day but I couldn’t resist the urge so I did this little landscape while wife and daughter were off investigating the building featured in this sketch.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5x8.5), Esterbrook J9550

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550

We stopped for lunch and sat near the information center because there is a gaggle of picnic tables there and we were the only ones using them besides a few tussock moth caterpillars.

Once we were sufficiently nourished we decided to head out in the opposite direction, but I spent 2-3 minutes doing this really quick sketch of a copse of trees.  Not much but it was still good fun.  The washable ink made it even more fun/quick.

Mostly, this day allowed us to fill up on quiet and that’s worth doing.  Give it a try, it’s refreshing, particularly during an election year.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5x5.5)

Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5), Pilot Metropolitan, J.Herbin Cacao de Brezil washable ink.

Liz Steel’s New 5-Minute Sketching Book

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LizSteelArchitectureBookThere are many sketchers who have helped me climb the treacherous learning curve that comes with wanting to learn to draw, but Cathy Johnson, Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel have provided the most advice, inspiration and models for who I want to be when I grow up.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet and sketch with Marc Taro Holmes but I’ve never met Cathy or Liz but I feel I know them well because of the internet.  All three are ever-present when I’m sketching.

If you’re a sketcher you know Liz Steel but if you’re an economist following an errant URL from Google, Liz is one of the most prolific purveyors of sketching information on the planet.  She blogs incessantly, has several online classes that are among the best, and she has a new book coming out called 5-Minute Sketching: Architecture.  It won’t be available until October 1st but you can pre-order it as I just did.  You won’t be disappointed.

While I’m at it, Liz’s new course, SketchingNow Buildings: Essential Concepts for Sketching Architecture will be starting September 7th.  Her courses are packed with information, in video and written form so if you’re struggling with drawing architecture, this 6-week course is for you.

 

September Sketchcrawl At Jardin Des Gouverneurs

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jardin-des-gouverneursThe 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.

Repaving The Neighborhood

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Quebec City is in the midst of a major infrastructure improvement program that includes replacing our sidewalks, curbs, some of the water and sewer lines, and ultimately, repaving our street.  Right now, though, it’s a mess.

We live, from 6:30AM until 5:30 with a near constant beep..beep…beep as big machines and trucks back up, and lots of general construction noise, but the activity does provide sketching opportunities.  Sadly, I haven’t take advantage of it because staying indoors or leaving is the only way to buffer against the noise driving me nuts.

When the workers go home, however, they do leave their toys behind and so I sat on my front porch and drew this large water truck whose job is to spray down the street to keep the dust down.  Not the most esthetically pleasing sketch but I had fun doing it.

Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5x8.5)

Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5×8.5)

The Fun Of Being Stumped

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stumpMy friend, Hubert Langevin, is on vacation but he took the time to send me this photo.  He knows I don’t sketch from photos but he thought I might make an exception in the case of this big, beautiful stump.  I suspect that he might also have been smiling with the thought of me trying to draw it (grin).

It did seem to be a worthy challenge so I dove in with pointy device flying and more confidence than was reasonable.  It’s a subject where you could easily get lost so I started very slowly, placing marks at major intersections.  Speed picked up as the overall shape was established and I started drawing the internal shapes. More than once I thought of the Cathy Johnson mantra – “they’re only shapes” as I tried to ‘see’ how everything fit together.  Once it was drawn I switched to a brush pen (Kuretake #13) to lay in some of the darks.

It was a really fun drawing to do and it was nice to sit at a desk, with no wind, no tripod stool, and the ability to have good light on both photo (actually my computer monitor) and sketchbook.

Thanks, Hubert.  This was lots of fun.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5x8.5), Esterbrook J9550, diluted DeAtramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550, diluted DeAtramentis Document Black