I’m a member of the Collective des ateliers libres en arts visuels de Québec.  And yes, the name’s too long but they do a great job of organizing life drawing workshops throughout the winter months.  I’m not very interested in drawing people but this group causes me to wish I were.  In the summer there is a great weekly event where we gather in a local park and draw people, mostly portraits.  They’ve also started to organize outdoor, group events with other sketching targets.

These stage masks are part of a very large raised-relief sculpture that is part of the Olympus exhibit. The holes for the eyes and mouth look sort of odd in this context but it is what it is.

So it was last weekend when we all gathered at the Musee de la Civilisation to sketch the Olympus exhibit.  It was a great day as it’s always fun to get together with people who like to do the things you do.  We sketched all morning, broke for lunch and sketching talk, and then some of us returned to sketch some more.

I worked in pencil the whole day and I’d forgotten my pencil case so I was using a Pentel Kerry (0.5mm) in my Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) sketchbook.  I love this pencil.  It’s pretty spendy but being able to put a cap on the pencil end (the entire red portion on the rear is the cap) is really nice for street sketching.  I do wish I’d bought the 0.7mm though.

Truthfully, while I love the Alpha series for my pen sketching, it’s got more tooth than I like for pencil.  I prefer their Epsilon series for pencil, though I’m not much of a pencil driver regardless of paper.  But I had a lot of fun and the museum was warm, unlike my normal stomping grounds of Quebec streets.

You can’t have Greek Gods without snakes.