I Went Sketching – Yippee!

As I look out my window I can only barely see the house across the street.  This is because we’ve got a rip-roaring blizzard going on.  This winter has been a doozy thus far.  We’ve already had 11-12 feet of snow and it’s only mid-February.

Many of us have gotten some chuckles listening to the people in Seattle and Vancouver try to deal with snowfall and I include myself among them.  Sure, they’re not used to it, aren’t equipped for it, and are even somewhat surprised by the snowfall, I suppose, but it’s fun to poke fun at them nevertheless.  I’m just glad they took some snow off our hands as we’ve got so much my snowblower is having a hard time throwing the snow to the top of the snowbanks that line my driveway.

But it wasn’t snowing on Monday and Yvan and I headed for the Quebec Federation of Hunters and Fishermen offices.  They have an amazing exhibit of taxidermy animals and it’s a delightful place to sketch.

My hand was hurting a bit, but my real problem was that I’d lost my ability to “see.”  Nothing was automatic and I struggled to see the shapes and volumes of the coyote skull I decided to draw.  I should have chosen something more simple.  I guess I should have known that “out of practice” would include all aspects of drawing, but I figured that once I trained my brain, it would stay trained.  Then again, I forget where I put my keys so…  Anyway, here’s my version of a coyote skull, which has an eye socket drawn way too small.

Stillman & Birn Nova (5.5×8.5), Pilot Metropolitan, DeAtramentis Black

I took a short break to get a drink and rub my hand a bit.  Then I sat down to draw a duck.  I felt a bit more confident by this point and I didn’t need to second guess myself so much.  We’d decided to stop at noon for lunch and so I rushed a bit to finish this one but I was happy, and a bit tired.

Stillman & Birn Nova (5.5×8.5), Platinum 3776, diluted DeAtramentis Document Black

We ate lunch with the idea that we would return to sketching but we didn’t.  My hand was hurting and Yvan suggested that we call it a day since it was my first day back to location sketching.  Instead, we decided to go have coffee where we talked about composition, tactics for blocking in drawings and identifying simple shapes in a scene.  We topped off the day with a stop at an art store and then I got to look over a bunch of Yvan’s art.  The day couldn’t have been more perfect.

100 People – Day 4

#oneweek100people2018 – It occurs to me that my attempts to ‘catch up’ after missing the first two days of this five day challenge is becoming a “how can Larry embarrass himself further?” affair.  So be it.  I’m scrambling for numbers and it seems almost comical how I’m stumbling to the finish line of this challenge.

I woke this morning determined to get from 42 (done yesterday) to 70 or so to give myself a chance to complete the challenge on Friday.  I started today’s activities by ‘experimenting’ with the notion of doing a bunch of people direct with watercolor.  These were done on a 5×7 piece of watercolor paper.  What I learned is that I don’t know how but I’m going to count the eight little people I did during this experiment.  Once this challenge is over I’ll continue this experiment and maybe, after a few hundred of them, I’ll figure out how to paint people.

Since that wasn’t going to work for me I grabbed a sketchbook, a Pilot parallel pen, and a Pilot Metropolitan and I headed to the coffee shop.  There is a bus stop across the street so I figured I could sit in the coffee shop window and have lots of ‘targets.’  A couple things were wrong with that idea.

The first problem is that I was reminded that if a large truck gets between me and my subject, I have a hard time drawing that subject.  And, it seemed, every time the street light changed, a large truck had to stop – right in front of the people waiting at the bus stop.  This slowed progress considerably, but I was enjoying a nice coffee so my patience, while challenged, was sufficient.

I was sketching along with the parallel pen when it ran out of ink.  No big deal; I just switched to the Metropolitan.  I like the Metropolitan and don’t use it enough.  I was sketching along, though visibility was becoming reduced by a blizzard and the fact that people waiting for the bus started huddling inside the bus stop cubicle.  Then my Metropolitan ran out of ink.  This pen sits on my desk at home and I realized that it had been a long time since I’d checked its ink load.  My sketching session was over for the day.

The 25 people I had scribbled brought my total for the week to 75 so I do have a chance to make it to 100 if I can get out an about tomorrow.  Sorry for the sad lot of kinda-sorta-maybe people on display here.

Life Of A Sketchless Sketcher

I made another trip to our museum.  I’m still amazed at how tired I can become just getting there, but got there I did.  It’s the last week of the Hergé exhibition and I hadn’t actually viewed it seriously.  The exhibit emphasizes the process of creating Tin Tin, Herge’s famous comic series and so there’s lots to read and look at.  Not much to draw.

I hobbled around the exhibit, reading everything and studying the artwork.  It’s a really good exhibit in my opinion.  But finally I had to sit down, completely exhausted.  It must be the weight of the cane that’s wearing me out (grin).

After a while I decided that I needed to draw something, so I combined getting a cup of coffee with drawing one of the weather vanes on display in the cafeteria.  It’s not much and like eating a single Gummi bear, not quite enough, but it formed a satisfying end to yet another sketchless sketcher day.

Thursday Sketchers At The Museum

18th Century Armor

18th Century armor – Canson XL watercolor, Pilot Metropolitan, DeAtramentis Document Black

Our small group of “Thursday sketchers,” met at the Musee de La Civilisation.  I put the name in quotes because there’s nothing formal about us except that we meet at the museum on Thursdays.  Not surprisingly, we were there on Thursday (grin).

We scattered around the Quebec exhibition, which is part of the permanent collection, they’re planning on shutting it down for reorganision ‘real soon.’ Nothing motivates sketchers more than being told they weren’t going to lose access to something and so it went that day.

I’d made a short list of things I wanted to sketch before this happened so I set to work, not wanting to spend too much time on any one subject.  It was a great day and we had a lot of fun together.

2016-02-04rooster

This goofy-looking, sheetmetal rooster came from a Church Steeple.   Pilot Metropolitan, DeAtramentis Document Black

cannonball mold

Half of a cannonball mold. Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

A Sketching Challenge: Chapel Altar

I love drawing the ornaments and carvings in churches but confess that I find most churches to be pretentious.  Still, there I was, in the chapel associated with the Musée d’Amérique francophone when I got the bright idea to sketch the huge, monolithic, altar.  Because of the complicated nature of it, doing a proper, accurate drawing would have required many hours.  I only had two.

So I “steeled” myself (i.e. tried to channel Liz Steel) and set to work.  My eyes crossed several times as I tried to draw all the bits and details of this 30-foot high structure.  It was both fun and tiring, and it humbled me a bit, which I guess is the goal of such structures.

Musee d'Amerique chapel altar

Fabriano Artistico CP (7.5×11), Pilot Metropolitan, DeAtramentis Document Black