While many are counting spring flowers, Quebec City lags behind planet Earth as we still have lots of snow. I’m hopeful it will melt away ‘real soon’ and it was with that optimistic view that I decided to go outside and draw.
It was still too cold. It was windy and I had to stand up while drawing, something I’m not good at, but by standing against a wall, out of the wind, it wasn’t too bad. Here’s my first outdoor sketch of 2018.
We made a weekend trip to Montreal to visit our daughter, which meant that within a couple hours of arriving we were standing in Notebene, my favorite pen/paper/pencil store. I was there to talk to Carol about a pen and to pick up some Platinum Carbon Black cartridges.
It was to be a ‘no spend’ visit because I didn’t need much. But, you know, a guy’s got to look around and, you know, it’s hard to resist, you know, finding stuff I “needed.” Of course I “needed” a dozen Tombow Mono 2B pencils I found. Not too bad, though. We were twenty minutes into the visit and the pencils were all I “needed.”
Then it happened. My daughter handed me a notebook and said, “This feels so good.” It was an A6-size book that must have had a couple hundred pages in it, nice cream-colored blank, as in could be used as a sketchbook, pages. And she was right, it felt right. It was heavier than I like in a sketchbook but holding it made me feel like I had something important in my hands. I could tell my daughter wanted it badly. She did her best to argue that I shouldn’t buy it for her but her heart wasn’t really in it. By then, my wife was there and she wanted one too.
I now had nearly $60 worth of books in my hands and I was sort of wishing they had a third one for me. I say sort of because they also had a thinner version of the book that was just as elegant but much lighter and it suited my “needs” better than the thicker book. One of those ($14 CDN) ended up on the pile. And with smiles all around, my “no spend” day warmed up the credit card quite a bit.
So what is this sketchbook? It’s a Paperlarias Emilio Braga notebook with blank, cream-colored 90gsm paper. These notebooks are handmade and both sewn and glued together. They lay flat. The covers are cardboard covered with brown paper and reinforced with a fabric spine and corners. The blank page books come with a writing guide with lines on one side and a grid on the other.
Because the paper is only 90gsm it’s best used with dry media, or at most light washes as it will buckle if you add a lot of water. In the one drawing I’ve done, I did get some buckling but no bleedthrough or ghosting. I’m really happy with it; it feels so good in the hand. I just might have to get one of the thicker ones the next time I’m in Montreal.
It’s now 2018 and I’m hoping there will be fewer doctor and physio appointments this year. I’ve tried to doodle my way through the last few months of 2017, working on using my elbow and shoulder more and my wrists less. I draw small, though and find that transition to be tough sledding, particularly for drawing small-size curves that my wrist just won’t do.
Nevertheless, if I made any resolution for 2018 it was to get back to drawing. This morning I decided to draw a scene from a photo. My wrist was feeling “pretty good” which is my shorthand term for “it’s not locked up and doesn’t hurt constantly” and so I grabbed a Platinum Carbon pen and a 5×7 piece of Fabriano Artistico CP and tried to capture a photo I had of Quebec’s Finance Building. The pen isn’t flowing like it once did, probably because I’m being too careful about how I’m moving my hand, but I did produce a sketch and I share it with you here.
Hopefully things will improve as I get back into it. I sure hope so because Liz Steel’s new watercolour course starts January 10th and I hope to do a lot of fuzzy stick practice ‘real soon.’
I’m used to working with the subject in front of me. I rely upon it to provide me with proportions and relationships. When I leave that world and rely only upon my imagination, I feel lost, needing something to grab onto that is simply not there.
This morning I sat down with a piece of hot-press watercolor paper. I’m trying to figure out how to use it so I thought I’d doodle a bit. This sketch started with an eye. Then I added some hairs around it. This led to the addition of a nose and I was off in never-never-land, trying to figure out how to draw a mouse.
I don’t know how to draw a mouse. I’m sure I got the proportions wrong but my serendipitous road took me to needing a mouse all scrunched up while trying to hold onto something. Where are a mouse’s feet anyways? I don’t really know. I was just doodling. Anyways, here it is. Mice, even poorly proportioned mice are cute.
My buddy Yvan has told me that I needed to spend more time drawing from imagination. According to him, if you do this you will never look at the world the same because you’ll always be building a vocabulary so you can draw from imagination. I think he’s right. I need to go look at some mice.
As a street sketcher, I’m used to coming to these blog posts with stories about where I went, what I saw, and why I drew what I drew. What do studio artists talk about anyways?
Here’s a little sketch from my imagination. I spent a few minutes trying out some Fabriano Artistico hot-press paper. Watercolor acts very differently than on cold-press paper and It’ll take a while to figure out how to use it.
My wife has been way too nice to me as I’ve hobbled through life for the past few weeks. I feel guilty about the burden I’ve placed upon her, but I’m grateful that she’s been there for me. She’s very special.
A couple days ago she came home with a wad of nature in her hand. She put it on the table and said, “I thought you might like to draw this.” She is a sly one. She knows I’ve been fighting motivation and energy levels but she also knows that when she gives me something I feel a compulsion to draw it. She also knew that it would only remain draw-worthy for a couple days.
And so, I drew it. I decided to skip pen hatching, one of my favorite things, and rely upon watercolor for shading and once again I demonstrated how little understanding of watercolor. I should stick with pen (grin).
Several weeks ago I got to meet a new sketcher. She and her husband had moved to Quebec City and she wanted to hook up with local sketchers. We met for a sketching session and had a great time.
Then I started having mobility problems and time after time, we couldn’t manage to get together for another session. I was both frustrated and embarrassed by this and so when she asked if we could go sketching last week I said yes and we agreed to meet near the large fountain in front of the Quebec Parliament. Yvan came along as well.
I limped my way to the site and sat on a bench. It was really great to be out in the fresh air and to get to talk with friends but I was hurting so much that sketching didn’t seem important. Still, there I was and so I started by drawing three young children who are part of the fountain.
I spent more time just sitting than I did drawing but I just kept adding small sketches of things I could see from my position. No rhyme or reason to it; I was just sketching, or trying. It wasn’t urban sketching at its best but it was urban sketching I suppose (grin). For what it’s worth, the guy in front of the lamp post wasn’t actually leaning against it; he was part of the fountain too. The lamp post was actually across the street from the fountain. While he is shirtless, we were wearing jackets.
Have you ever lost pens, paints, brushes, etc. while out urban sketching. I have. Several years ago I lost my entire paint kit somewhere between sketching site and home and that loss was traumatic. The palette was inexpensive, the case was a favorite, and that kit contained several Escoda sable travel brushes. I nearly cried. But all of it was replaceable and my sketching regime hardly skipped a beat.
I’m dealing with another loss, however, and I while I hope it’s temporary, it’s much harder to overcome. I’ve lost my ability to walk more than across the room. It started with my ankle and then my knee. Right now the leg between the two is the size of a telephone pole and I’m spending a lot of time with doctors.
If I were a “true” urban sketcher I suppose I’d be sharing lots of sketches of medical machinery but I’m not that kind of urban sketcher, I suppose. Besides, the pain and stress have been distracting. I won’t bore you with details but I’ve been diagnosed and I’ve just started some physiotherapy yesterday that sounds encouraging. The ramifications for this blog is that because I can’t wander the streets of Quebec City, I can’t draw the streets of Quebec City so the nature of my sketches will probably change, at least in the short term. Irony of ironies, I’ve waited all summer for decent weather and we’re finally getting a string of beautiful days. Such is my luck sometimes.
The upside is that this is a good opportunity to do some experimentation and maybe I can even convince myself that I can draw from a photograph and enjoy it. For now, I leave you with a sketch I did after hobbling along a beach on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River last week.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
We made our final trip to Ottawa for a while. Our daughter just graduated from University of Ottawa and we moved her to Montreal where she’s entering law school at McGill. I gotta tell ya, I’m too old to be moving from school to school. Been there, done that, even have souvenir t-shirts.
But since we were there, it seemed only appropriate that I should do some sketching. The first chance came when we agreed to meet our daughter in Rideau River Park. I don’t know if that’s what it’s really called but it runs along the Rideau River and Chantal and I had parked our butts on a bench while we waited, so its Rideau River park to me.
I got out a Stillman & Birn 6×6 Beta spiral book and just started quick-sketching everything and anything. No rhyme or reason to it, which is fun sometimes. Find a white space on the paper and fill it – easy peasy. Here’s a couple of the pages I did.
I drew stuff; I drew people, and I even drew some of the birds on the river. But then my daughter showed up and there were other things to do. We hadn’t seen her in a while.
A couple days later, Chantal and I went down to the Parliament area and sat on a picnic bench in the shade. I’m showing this next sketch to make a point to those who feel “I’m not good enough” to sketch around other people. I was scribbling this teeny, tiny sketch (3×4) in the tiny sketchbook I mentioned in a previous blog post. I’ve been having fun doing these really tiny sketches but they’re really crude and mostly just warm up sketches. Even that gives them too much credential.
Anyways, a really nice lady from Italy asked if she could sit because she was waiting to take the Parliament tour. Chantal started talking with her, she saw my sketch and got genuinely excited about it. She took a photo of it to show to her friends. My point is, people are amazed that anyone can draw anything. You don’t have to be good to sketch in public. You just have to sketch in public for people to think you’re good (grin).
I started drawing this next sketch because we were sitting right near the corner of a building called East Block on the Parliament grounds and we were on a hill, affording an interesting view where I wasn’t having to look up a lot to see the top of the building.
While I was working, a Chinese family from Manitoba came to sit. They were waiting for a tour too. Their son, a young teenager was excited to see someone drawing and showed us a couple of the sketches he’d done. He wanted to be an animator and was making a good start at it. They watched as I did this sketch and I confess that half a dozen people asking questions was a bit distracting, but Chantal fielded many of them so we sort of formed a temporary clan as I sketched and they waited for their tour.
Chantal and I were both getting hungry so we headed off to forage. Once sustained we decided to go sit in the center of the busiest intersection in Ottawa. Well, sorta. There is a triangular piece of land near Parliament with a lot of traffic passing on all sides. This place is filled with statues, including a memorial to Canadian military actions complete with honor guard.
I drew the Laura Secord statue, the famous candy lady. Some defend her statue status with stories of her running for kilometers to warn the British of an impending attack by Americans during the war of 1812 but I know its the chain of chocolate stores that brought her fame. It just had to be, though most deny she had anything to do with the candy business.
When I finished that sketch I was getting pretty tired but I quickly draw this part of Chateau Laurier, a posh hotel that’s nearby. All sorts of errors in this one but it was a fitting end to the sketching day. When I was done we headed off to meet our daughter for dinner.
I shouldn’t write titles like that. Some of my Francophone buddies will be saying, “Ca va dire quoi?” and file it away as further evidence that I’m a crazy person. Apologies.
It’s been a week since I’ve posted. The reason, in part, is because I’ve been gone for a week, to Ottawa and Montreal. While I had to share my sketching time with other activities, I’ve got scanning to do before I can post my sketches from that trip. I’ve also got sketches from before the trip. I’m so disorganized at this point.
In the meantime, here’s a sketch I did before I left. It’s a small shed and basement access to the Maison Dorion-Coulomb, the home of the St. Charles River park association. Everyone draws the front of this beautiful, multi-gabled house from the front, including me, but I thought it fitting to give a bit of love to the lesser portions of the building. Besides, I could sit in the shade. Back soon, with more.
Stillman & Birn Beta (6×6 spiral)