I got up yesterday morning full of enthusiasm. I was going to drive to Montreal and sketch with some Montreal urban sketchers and I was going to get to meet Koosje Koene of Sketchbook Skool fame. My trusty weather app reassured me that I would be greeted in Montreal with 15-17C and sunny skies. So off I went, listening to CBC radio and doing my normal “Oh, that would be great to sketch” dialog with myself as I sped through the countryside.
I was going to arrive a couple hours before everyone else but Jane Hannah said she’d meet me, but a bit later. I parked in a very convenient parking dungeon (seven stories below ground) that Jane gave me coordinates to and walked out into the beautiful sunshine ugly rain. Hmm…not so good. But I was confident the rain would stop and I’d never been to old Montreal before so I just started walking around, taking photos of the amazing architecture and statues. Tourist am me.
Eventually I wandered back to the meeting place and there was Jane. And the rain had stopped. We talked for a bit but eventually sat down to draw. Not being versed in the rules of Montreal, I didn’t realize that this was the cue for the rain to begin. It did.
This was the extent of my sketching. I increased the contrast so you could see my mental discussion with shapes and proportions in anticipation of actually drawing this structure.
Jane suggested we walk to a restaurant she wanted to show me. We did but it was closed so we walked a bit more.
The rain stopped. Of course it had; we weren’t sketching. We decided to draw part of an amazing building so we set up, sat down and I started block in the basic shapes I wanted to capture and, you guessed it – it started to rain again.
It was getting near time to meet Koosje so we headed back to the meet location, stood with a few urban sketchers and along came Koosje. It was not going to be much of a sketching day so we went to a restaurant and spent the next three hours talking, eating, and some sketched people. I’m not much for sketching in restaurants so mostly I watched and kibbitzed. There were a dozen of us so there was lots of potential for kibbitzing.
In the end, the day was a big success because of the people. I’ll do sketching some other time. It did seem that I needed a souvenir of the day, however, so this morning I did this quick drawing of part of city hall, depicting the dreary nature of the day, I hope.
Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
But small formats fit into the walks and don’t pain the hand too much so I’ve used my trusty 3.5×5.5 Stillman & Birn Epsilon book to work some sketching into my walks. Here’s a couple of those results. I might have gotten carried away with the color but I’m trying to figure out the why and how other sketchers do this sort of thing. I think I like the results. Do you?
