Part of the reason for this blog’s existence is to give me a place to document my sketching journey.  Today is a day of recording, not one of presenting good sketches.

I was out for a walk yesterday, in Quebec City, where January high temperatures average around 20F (-7C).  Of course, the low temps are, well lower.  So typically, street sketching doesn’t happen in January.

But as I walked, on the 8th of January, I realized just how warm it was as I took my hat and gloves off because I was overheating.  Some minutes later I came upon one of the impressive old mansions here and I decided to see if I could do a quick-sketch while standing on the sidewalk, in January.

I grabbed my 4×6 toned paper sketchbook and went at it, very quickly, and very loosely trying to capture the house’s complex structure.  I failed miserably but it didn’t matter.  I had sketched on location, outdoors, in January.  I’ve joked with a few climate change denialists that I was planning on selling citrus and palm trees to the residents of Quebec City in the not so distant future.  Maybe I was right.

Since that sketch is so poor, I’ll try to improve the esthetics of the post by showing you my latest “mustache book,”  As much as I love these little books, the felt glasses and mustaches glued to the cover leave much to be desired so I glued one of my sketches to the cover and then covered it with laminating material.  What’cha think?