This summer has become one for the record books in terms of how little sketching I’ve been able to do. The lousy weather was bad enough but being rushed to the hospital with heart problems really put a damper on my sketching just when we started getting some good sketching days. Happy as a clam following recovery from that, though, I was starting to get out sketching until…
My daughter is still in Ottawa and she decided to fall down a bunch of stairs. It could have been worse, but she badly sprained her ankle and was suddenly on crutches. To put this in context, she’s in Ottawa alone and needs to walk 20-25 min each way to work every day. To make matters worse, her timing was unfortunate because she had arranged to take the bus to Montreal to pick up the keys for her new apartment. And so she called mom and dad.
The result was that we dropped everything and drove five hours to Ottawa and the next morning we drove to Montreal and back (another four hours). Back in Ottawa, we spent the night and the next day we drove back to Quebec City (another five hours). What a weekend. I’m old; I was exhausted.
So…not much sketching time that weekend, but we did sit in a park or about an hour and once we got Jodie sitting and her leg propped up I did some quick sketching.
Certainly not the best scene ever but this is what I could see over the trees. It was nice to scratch out this sketch in a Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10).
I then go out a small Stillman & Birn Epsilon (3×5) book, looked around and quickly drew these two apartment buildings on the other side of the Rideau River from where I was sitting.
I took a short break and took a walk along the river. The Rideau River has bike/pedestrian paths on both sides of the river and it was nice to get out and do some walking. When I got back I drew this little scene, again, viewed across the Rideau River.