A Bit of Urban Sketching

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Just as spring had sprung and it was starting to be warm enough to sketch outdoors, yours truly decided it was time to get sick. I spent more than a week feeling pretty bad, made all the worse by coming home one day to find water dripping from our first-floor ceiling. I still have a hole in the ceiling to fix but the pipes are holding water again.

Before getting sick, though, I did get out with my buddy Yvan and we rode our bikes on an adventure into Beauport, a suburb of Quebec City. We sketched this house, which I liked very much. I used my Pilot Prera for this one. Same Noodler’s Lexington Gray I normally use.

I did stop in the old city one day as I was returning from French school and I made this sketch in a Stillman & Birn Zeta (5.5×8.5) sketchbook, using a TWSBI Mini and Noodler’s Lexington Gray.

And so, as the weekend approached, and my energy had come back, I was chomping at the bit to go sketching. Mother Nature had other ideas and it rained all day Saturday. Yvan and I went sketching anyway. We headed to the Musee de la Civilisation and while it’s between major exhibitions, it was at least warm and dry and we figured we could find something to sketch there.

What we found was a small exhibit of architectural models of classic structures that were part of old Paris. I chose to sketch Cabaret Le Chat, one of the popular hot spots on the north side of Paris. The model was about 15″ high and fairly well-done, though the building to the right of it lacked any detail, which is how I drew it. Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook and TWSBI Mini fountain pen. I had switched up the ink and was using Platinum Carbon Black.

When we finished there it was still raining and we decided that we should board the ferry that goes between Quebec City and Levis, across the St. Lawrence River. The ferry has a nice, cozy passenger area with big windows and we figured we could sketch from there. We hadn’t included the heavy mist/fog in our calculations as you could hardly see the other side of the river, only a few hundred yards away.

So, we just rode across, got off, and decided to sketch out the windows of the ferry building, catching the next boat (30 minutes) for our return. I still have problems sketching while holding a sketchbook in one hand, pen in the other. I generally perch my sketchbook on my knee or on a table if one is available. I also have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time so maybe it’s just too much for my brain to hold one item (sketchbook) still while moving another (pen) around. This sketch suffers from a case of the wobbles and the fact that I was working quicker than my normal glacial pace. I did this it in a small Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6) with the same TWSBI Mini and Platinum Carbon Black. Color comes from some quick swipes with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils.

I went sketching. It was a wet day, but a good day.

Sketching Visualization And How To Miss Your Bus

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Larry Marshall

A very popular form of sports training is mental visualization, where the athlete visualizes himself doing whatever sport it is they are doing. You can see it in real time by watching a golfer set up for a shot. They’ll look towards their target, staring intently. They’re “seeing” (visualizing) the shot. Seeing the ball travel the ideal trajectory. Then they take a practice swing, again seeing that trajectory. Repeated visualization has been shown to produce positive results. Some suggest that this process is the very basis of positive thinking. It’s the ultimate in what you see is what you get.

I find myself doing this constantly relative to my sketching. During any dull moment you’ll find me ‘drawing’ something, anything, but without a pen and without paper. I envision running the pen around the outline of a house, a sign, a fire hydrant. At other times I’ll just mentally dissect the angles and relationships between pieces of some object. I think this constant practice of my ‘seeing’, making those all important eye/mind connections, has helped me quite a bit as a sketcher.

But there’s been one problem. It causes me to miss my bus. The first time this happened I was waiting for a bus across the street from a major shopping center. I was ‘drawing’ a large sign and got involved with noticing the various tones from the various planes that composed the sign. Only the sound of the bus pulling away brought me out of my trance.

Then there was the day I was waiting for the bus early in the morning. I was looking at rooftop angles, trying to see how they changed as I looked at a row of buildings along the street. It was an interesting mental experiment, until the bus went by as I obviously wasn’t interested in the bus. I was holding my finger up to analyze the angles.

We’ve got a great bus system in Quebec City but if you don’t get on them, they don’t take you anywhere. Lucky for me I always have something to do when I wait the 10 minutes for the next one to come along.

Newsflash: Weather Responds To Blog Post

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Last Thursday I wrote a blog post titled “Waiting for Spring.” I moaned and groaned that in spite of spring being a month old, it was still too cold to sketch outdoors.

Well guess what happened? On Friday our temperatures increased significantly. We had sun…LOTS of sun. Even the wind died down. So I tucked my sketchbook under my arm and headed out for a weekend of sketching. It was wonderful.

Here’s the first sketch I did. I was out with my buddy Yvan and we’d previously talked about sketching on Rue de la Remparts, which skirts the upper portion of our ‘old’ (founded in 1608) city. So, our first stop was there. I did this sketch in a Stillman & Birn 7×10 Alpha spiral sketchbook. Though I really dislike spiral-bound for storage, I love it for this larger format because I can fold the book back on itself , making it manageable while the book rests on my knees. I used a TWSBI Mini filled with Noodler’s Lexington Gray.

While “warm” by comparison to the previous day, it was still cool and we both ran out of body heat about the same time. So, I snapped the photo above and we headed for something warm to drink. I applied some color later and this was the result.

I suppose some might suggest that the weather changing had nothing to do with my blog post – that it was only a coincidence. I’ll continue to believe otherwise… I think.

The Future Of Sketching Is Good In Quebec City

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Every year, Le Soleil, the premier newspaper in Quebec, conducts a writing and drawing contest for young, creative citizens. The Musee de la Civilisation just set up a display of the art entries and it is truly inspiring. As I looked at all the great drawings I couldn’t help but think of a quote from Danny Gregory’s The Creative License:

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked one day what I did at work. I told her that I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” – Howard Ikewoko

Kids do know how to draw. And we adults do seem to forget, both how to do it and how much fun it can be. We in Quebec City are lucky that Le Soleil puts so much effort and resources behind fostering creative activity from our youth. Thanks, Le Soleil.

Here’s a few photos to give you some idea of the variety and quality of these drawings. These kids are good.

Have You Ever Gone Sketch Floating?

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Saturday was 39th Worldwide Sketchcrawl day and we held ours here in Quebec City. Unlike most parts of the world we’re still cold this time of year. In fact, we just got six inches of snow. But we were fortunate to have anticipated an unfriendly weather and scheduled our sketchcrawl so that we could be inside or out and still have fun.

This is a model of the ferry boat we were on all day.

We all met at the ferry boat dock and then spent the day going back and forth across the St. Lawrence River (takes about 10 minutes) between Quebec City and Levis, the town on the other side. There are actually two ferries and they change places from their respective sides of the St. Lawrence every 30 minutes.

Claudette, talking with one of the passengers

And the situation couldn’t have been better for sketching. It was too cold to go out onto the decks, at least for me, but inside the first-class passenger area it was warm and accommodating. The area is complete with toilette facilities, drink and snack vending machines, and comfy chairs. We were surrounded by large windows, complete with slightly sloped ‘shelves’ for us to rest our sketchbooks as we sketched outdoor scenes. Both sides of the St. Lawrence present great views of interesting architecture and there were things nautical all around us.

Susanne, showing proper use of the window “studios” we were provided.

The line up: Pierre, Celine, and Katherine

The line up: Pierre, Celine, and Catherine

Yvan, taking a break while talking with Peter.

Yvan, taking a break while talking with Jean-Marc.

We had ten people show up for the sketchcrawl and a lot of sketching got done. The one sad thing, for me, is that some didn’t seem to ‘get’ the notion that group sketching is a social event that should include a sharing of sketches as well as conversations about them. Some left without even saying goodbye. So, unfortunately, I don’t have the typical group-sketch photos and I don’t have sketches from other people to share.

Here’s a photo I took over Claudette’s shoulder. The quality of her sketches is surpassed only by her bubbly personality.

Of course, I do have my own sketches. This first one is a small sketch I did as an experiment, which demonstrated that I didn’t know what I was doing (grin). I tried to ‘draw’ the sketch using watercolors, adding some ink lines afterwards. It was done in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6) sketchbook. I have much to learn about using watercolors.

I did two other sketches, one from the front and the other from the back of the boat. Both were done with my new TWSBI Mini and Noodler’s Lexington Gray ink. I really enjoyed working in my new Stillman & Birn Zeta (5.5×8.5) sketchbook. I hope these sketches reflect the cold, dreary day you see in the accompanying photo.