I became a Canadian citizen about a month ago and it seemed only fitting that I should do a sketch in honor of Canada Day. Happy Canada Day everyone.
Stillman & Birn Alpha, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Happy Canada Day 2016
Tag Archives: Stillman & Birn softcover
Sketching At Jardin botanique Roger-Van den Hende
When I want to draw some plants I head to Jardin botanique Roger-Van den Hende. It’s a very large garden that is something of a large library of plants rather than a coordinated esthetic garden. So many textures, so many shapes.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Our sketching group met there on Thursday and the weather couldn’t be better. Lots of sun, little wind, and it was warm enough that even I was searching for some shade. I was planning on drawing flowers but didn’t draw a single petal. Funny how fickle the sketching eye is and I went down a different path. We’ve scheduled a sketchcrawl in the garden for July so many I’ll get to the flowers then.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5×8), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Sketching Around Bassin Louise
A popular place in Quebec City is Bassin Louise, the sheltered harbor area where people keep their sailboats and mini-yachts. There’s also a large market complex that is popular with tourists and locals alike. And that’s where our sketching group was on Tuesday morning. We’re finally getting decent sketching weather so we’re taking advantage of it.
This is a view I’ve wanted to sketch for a while. It’s nothing special but the trees frame up a group of building shapes that has always attracted my eye.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Sometimes I’m attracted by a shape, sometimes a texture. Unlike a lot of artists, I’m not driven to find “great scenes” but rather I like things that look like they’d be fun to draw. I think this sketch illustrates this point. I was walking along the harbor and found the sacks that cover furled sails create an interesting draped fabric shape and I thought they’d be fun to draw one… and so I did. Ain’t sketching fun?
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5×8), Platinum 3776
While Out For A Walk
Lots of people get their exercise and their dose of mental health by wandering through forests. I’m more likely to do my walking through our old city, an almost fantasy world from the 18th Century. Soon it will get really crowded as the tourists start to show up but right now it’s a restful place to walk.
This was a blustery day, putting a chill in my bones as I walked along so I was reluctant to stop to sketch. I was looking for something I could sketch quickly, before the wind took its toll. There are a series of large stone sculptures that form a fence near the seminary. I hid from the wind behind a large statue and did this sketch as quickly as I could. Hope you like it.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (8×5), Platinum 3776
Ferns In Captivity
I live on a part of the Earth where you can go into forests and find wild ferns hanging out as part of the forest understory. So much so, in fact, that fern leaves, before they’ve unrolled, are collected and sold as Fiddlehead greens in our grocery stores during late spring. This is novel to a guy who grew up in Arizona.
Of course you can also find them kept in captivity, kept by those with greener thumbs than mine. There were a bunch of them in the same place as the Chinese statues I talked about in my last blog post and I drew one of them as they live in really nice clay pots. I should have posted the sketch with the statue sketch but I forgot all about it. I post it here to make up for that omission.
Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black