Location Sketching On Ile d’Orleans

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Larry Marshall

“In 1814 we took a little trip,

along with Colonel Jackson

down the mighty Mississip.

We took a little bacon,

and we took a little beans,

and we fought the bloody British

in a town called New Orleans.”

These lyrics, sung long ago by Johnny Horton, tell of the final battle of the War of 1812 where Americans defeated a British invasion force. The song was a big hit when I was a kid and every time I head to Quebec’s Ile d’Orleans that song rattles around in my brain. Truth is, the French had their own battle against a British invasion and Wolfe, the leader of that invasion force, nearly died when his ship ran aground just off the coast of the island, and within cannon distance of the French forces.

But war is not the topic of today’s post. Rather, it is about a trip I took recently to Ile d’Orleans to sketch. I use ‘trip’ loosely as it takes all of fifteen minutes to get there as you can see Ile d’Orleans from Quebec City and vice versa. Going to the mall takes longer.

Ile d’Orleans is a big island in the St. Lawrence River, just as it widens from its narrowest point, at Quebec City, on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. There are six municipalities on the island, though I have a hard time determining where one begins and another ends. What I know is that the island is gorgeous and I love my time there. A lot of vegetable and fruit growing goes on, and it’s a very popular tourist location.

I’ve sketched on the island but I’ve never gone there alone, with the singular goal of sketching. This day, I was on a mission. The sun was out, I had sketchbooks a plenty, and I’d arranged to have our car for the day. I arrived on the island about 8:45 and drove to the backside of the island to a pier that juts out into the St. Lawrence. I discovered it when I was with my buddy Nicolas and we were like a couple kids, chasing the Queen Elizabeth II as she passed along the southern coast of the island on her approach to Quebec City.

Moleskine watercolor (3×5), Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Black

I walked out onto the pier, set up my stool and began sketching. You know what? Sun doesn’t help much when there’s a 20-30km/h wind blowing across a large body of water and its hyper-cooled air is cutting you in half. I was COLD!!! At one point I went back and sat in the car for a while to warm up but, finally I finished the sketch. I was a bit too much in a hurry, do you blame me, and ended up with some paint blooms in the foliage because my previous wash wasn’t yet dry, but them’s the breaks.

I was really cold when I finished and so headed for a place I knew that serves wonderful brioche and good, hot coffee. Unfortunately, the winds had blown out their electricity – no coffee. So, I bought a brioche and sat in the car, with the heater running, to warm up.

Stillman & Birn Zeta (5×8), Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Black

Across the street from the café is a church and a cemetery. I keep telling myself that I should draw more in cemeteries as I love the shapes of the grave stones and their helter-skelter orientations, probably caused by the annual freezing and thawing of the ground. I found a view I liked, went back to the car to get my stuff and I was soon sitting in the cemetery sketching. This was a little better as there was a stone wall around the area that broke some of the wind. I was only semi-frozen when I finished this one.

I was getting ready to leave. Actually I was turning around in the church parking lot when my eye caught a “Privé” sign and a lamp post. I love to have such things in my sketches and so I decided to sketch this scene. Once again, however, I would be fully-exposed to that darn wind coming off the St. Lawrence. I am old but even I can learn new tricks. I positioned the car so I could sketch while sitting inside. About halfway through I was wishing I had a hacksaw to eliminate the steering wheel but it worked out ok once I got the hang of it.

Stillman & Birn Zeta (5×8), Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Black

There’s so much to sketch on the island that I could go there every day and not get bored. In another couple weeks the trees should be putting on their annual ‘fall colors’ light show and I’m going back ‘real soon.’

Le Carnet Des Escaliers De Quebec

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Sometimes it seems there is a gap between the art world and the exploding popularity occurring in the sketching world. Regularly we hear people define ‘sketch’ as an ‘unfinished work’, a definition that might have been fine when Monet was noodling his ideas about lily pads. But this is not what modern nature sketchers, urban sketchers, travel journalists, etc. are doing. Our sketches are finished works and they’re ending up on stamps and in books. They’re being sold, either as originals or as prints.

Sketching has become a representational art form unto itself. There are new books on sketching or containing sketches being released so regularly that it’s hard to keep up with them. Typically modern sketches are done in sketchbooks, in limited periods of time. Often the artist is sitting on a tripod stool, on location, possibly chatting with passers-by. For most sketchers, their emphasis has shifted from the creation of art to hang on walls to simply enjoying the process of art. Some sketch with precision. Others sketch in very loose fashion. Some border on doing caricatures of their world. Somehow, in spite of these different approaches, there is a unity in what sketchers do, mostly related to the process of doing.

While different from studio art, sketching nevertheless shares many aspects with it and I sometimes lament the fact that so many artists don’t understand, or even know of in this growing part of the art world. But something happened in Quebec City last week that was one of those “we’ve come a long way baby” moments.

It came in the form of a book launch for a wonderful book titled Le Carnet Des Escaliers De Québec. The book was a collaborative effort organized by Natalie St-Pierre. It contains 180 pages of great sketches that represent the majority of the staircases that exist in Quebec City. As an aside, we have a LOT of them because of the nature of the city, including several containing hundreds of steps. The artists involved were, Natalie, Hugette Asselin, Guylaine Côté, Louise Denault, Magelline Gagnon, Louise Grenier, Sylvie Riverin, Monique Rousseau and Pierre Toupin, the token male in the group. Marie Dagenais wrote the text for the book.

The book is not just a great compilation of sketches, however. It’s truly a tourist guide to the stairways. Maps, beautiful sketches themselves, locate all of the stairways ane descriptions and histories of each stairway provide insights into Quebec and its development.

The quality of the book is sufficient reason to write this post but the book launch says something about just how far the sketching world has come. This launch was held at City Hall. It was an invitation only event and was hosted by the mayor. Now if you live in a small town, you might expect a mayor to host a book launch by a group of locals. But Quebec City has 700,000 people in it; our mayor is a busy guy and yet he spent an hour at the book launch. Roughly 100 people were in attendance and we were served amazing hors d’ouevres and wine, along with great conversations. It was truly an inspired and inspiring gathering.

Do You Experiment With Sketching Styles?

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Larry Marshall

In the two years that I’ve been sketching I’ve actually developed a ‘style’, which surprises me somewhat as it seemed not long ago I was wondering if I would ever be able to draw anything, let alone have a ‘style.’

I like my style, which is more ‘illustrative’ than artistic. Some might even claim it to be cartoonish. I sometimes call it that. In any case, when I sit down to draw something, the resultant sketch reflects that style.

My style has two drawbacks. The first is that those who don’t speak sketcher try to fit it into ‘fine art’ and, well, it just doesn’t. Some day ‘finished’ sketching will be acknowledged by the art community at large but so far, it’s tough slogging. The other drawback to my style is that it’s not ‘fast’. My sketches take longer than those done by people using looser, less detailed approaches. This is not bad or good but sometimes it limits my ability to quickly capture a scene.

So, I sometimes experiment with quicker, looser ways of sketching. Of course I do a fair amount of quick-sketching of people but here I’m talking about sketching things. Here are a few examples of those attempts.

I did this little sketch of a piece of the Quebec City skyline, experimenting not only with very quick (only a couple minutes) sketch but also with a washable red ink. I kinda-sorta liked the result. It’s no more than two inches square.

Using the same pen/ink combo I decided to see if I could grab enough detail from a very complex hotel facade in 3-4 minutes to make me happy. Can’t say this pleased me much but maybe…with lots of practice… naw…not working for me 🙂

Here’s another experiment. It’s only about 2×2 and my thoughts were to do a quick, small sketch that could be part of a journal page. I really would like to start adding annotations to some of my sketches and to that end I sketched this tiny house in about five minutes, including the watercolor.

I was sitting in a park in ‘lower town’ of Quebec City and there’s a row of buildings that look down on the park, trees filling the area in between. I decided to quick-sketch it. Probably took me 10-15 minutes, which for some is not ‘quick’ but if I were to do this with my ‘style’ it would take at least four times that long.

I sort of like the results. The trees aren’t sufficiently developed for my taste and I hate restated lines on buildings (buildings aren’t supposed to look like they’re vibrating). This one was done on two pages of a 3×5 notebook so it’s a bit larger than the others.

I’ll continue experimenting with different styles and approaches as I think I learn something every time I do it. Who knows what my ‘style’ will be in another year. Do you experiment with styles?

Sketching at Chute Montmorency

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Chute Montmorency is a large waterfall just east of Quebec City. It’s a major tourist attraction, a mini-Niagara Falls I suppose. It has all the tourist amenities. Large facility at the base of the falls greets tourists and there’s a large parking lot to accommodate a constant parade of vehicles.

There’s also a tram and a smiling attendant with their hand out. You can pay the price or you can climb a veritable labyrinth of stairs up to the top of the falls. We did neither.

Locals, wanting to get to the top take a metro bus that drops them near the top and next to a hotel that sits at the tram terminus. There’s a wonderful boardwalk that tourists walk along to the falls and it provides spectacular views of the falls as well as the St. Lawrence River. We took the bus.

I met my sketching buddy, Claudette, on the bus and we walked the short trail down to the west end of a large pedestrian bridge that runs right across the top of the falls. The views are pretty spectacular from there. So, what do a couple of urban sketchers do? We set up at the end of the bridge and drew the bridge. We’ll draw the trees, beautiful canyon, and the falls themselves some other day. I guess it truly is a mindset as both of us did this without much thought.

I decided to work in a small format as I’ve been doing a series of smaller sketches. I got out my little Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and started drawing. Claudette did likewise with her 5×8 Strathmore 467-series sketchbook. These are beautiful, brown-covered watercolor sketchbooks, though they are in landscape mode which is not idea in my view.

It seemed that we both finished our linework about the same time as I noticed that she was getting out her watercolors as I reached for mine. She had hers. I did not. I’d left my watercolor kit sitting on my desk.

While disappointing, it allowed me to stand up and move around, giving my old knees a stretch. Then I sat down and did a quick, small sketch of Claudette working on her sketch. Obviously, I added color to my sketches when I got home.

Claudette composed an interesting view of the bridge, sort of zooming in on just the entrance area. I decided to capture more of the entirety of the scene. I like hers better. I always do.

We wandered up Avenue Royale which is a very old street lined with older, though often completely renovated houses. These are majestic houses with lots of what my dad used to call ‘gingerbread’ trim, large front doors and porch areas.

We only found a few dozen things we wanted to sketch but it was time for lunch. Feeling recharged by good food and conversation, we returned to the falls area and I sketched this little snack kiosk, again in my 3×5 watercolor book. Then, we hopped on the bus and came home. Paraphrasing the Terminator…”we’ll be back.”

Taxi Guys Need A Place Too!

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Firemen have their firehouse. Policemen have donut shops. Sketchers have libraries, coffee shops, and street corners. And taxi cab drivers need a place too. In Quebec it looks like this:

At least the one not far from my house looks like this. I’m not exactly sure what they do in there but they have a washing machine outside. I suspect it’s something of an oasis that lets the drivers get out of the car once in a while. The bright yellow building and the orange background wall conspired to insist that I draw them, and so I did. Stillman & Birn Zeta (5×8) using a Uniball Signo UM151 pen. It’s hard for a fountain pen guy to admit it, but I love these pens and their waterproof ink.