Sketching a Mutoscope

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Larry Marshall

I met Fernande at the Musée de la Civilisation on Saturday morning for a sketching session. We’re having so much fun with these weekly meetings. I like sketching by myself. I love sketching with someone else. Besides, the tea and sketching talk that follows our sketching is priceless. The museum exhibit, “Paris on Stage, 1899-1914”, holds a lot of potential for sketchers, if you keep an open mind about your subject matter. On this day I decided to sketch a “mutoscope.”

Long before a short film of a train arriving in a station scared the be-geezus out of people who were seeing their first “moving picture” and before George Méliès shot the moon with a large bullet full of people, there was the mutoscope.

Early ‘moving pictures’ were created not by a long piece of multi-framed film but rather by a whole bunch of pictures, shown in rapid sequence to the viewer. As kids we’ve all played with ‘flip books’ that did the same thing. A sophisticated version of this approach was the mutoscope, a device that held, by my guess, about a gazillion and one sequenced pictures in a large, round canister. You deposit a coin, look through a viewer, turn the crank, and watch the movie. Of course, to entice people to do just that, these machines were well-decorated, providing a really time-consuming subject for a sketcher like myself. I tried to simplify it but it still took forever to draw all the scrollwork. Lots of fun, though. I did this in a Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9) sketchbook, with a TWSBI Mini pen filled with Platinum Carbon Black ink.

What do you mean you don’t know who George Méliès is? He almost invented the genre of action films (grin). Go to Netflix or your favorite video store and rent Hugo, in which George plays a significant role. And keep your pause button handy as there’s lots of great stuff to sketch in that movie 🙂

Thick Lines and Quick Hands

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Larry Marshall

One of the days that I was waiting for my hard drive to arrive it rained. I’m not one for sketching from photos but desperation will drive me to such extremes. My pointy device of choice is a very fine pen and I thought it might be an opportunity to play with pens that produce a heavier line and to use them in a more loose fashion than is my norm.

And so I did some quick sketches in a 3×5 sketchbook. Here are four of them.

Done with a Hero 578 ‘bent nib’ pen

Done with Sharpie ‘fine’ pen (not marker)

TWSBI Mini w/Platinum Carbon Black

Done with Hero 578 “bent nib” pen in about five minutes.

The next day I went out sketching and continued the experiment. I stopped to pick up a coffee and drew the car across the street.

Done with Hero 578 “bent nib” pen

I was walking along the St. Charles River and decided to stop and sketch these rudbeckia. I’m not much of a flower sketcher but this was fun.

There is a large water regulation reservoir along the banks of the river and I decided to draw it as quickly as I could. I spent less than 15 minutes on it, which is something of a world record for me when it comes to doing buildings. I found the format too small for a building with all those fiddly bits.

Done with TWSBI Mini w/Platinum Carbon Black

Sketching Tiny Town

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Larry Marshall

The Ursuline Convent in Quebec City was founded in 1639, which makes it the earliest learning institution for woman in North America. It’s also seems that they owned half the old city at one point. Ok…maybe that’s an exaggeration but they owned a lot of land and buildings and still do. But most of the private residences and some of the other large buildings have been sold off. The curent compound is home to the convent, a school, and it’s a popular tourist stop.

2013-07-02UrsulinesSite

One of the private residences still held by the Ursulines is this place. I’m not sure how big it is but it’s got to have the smallest entrances of any on Quebec. Its unique nature made it a great sketching subject, though gray on gray isn’t the ideal color scheme, I suppose.

The building on the left if the Ursuline library and museum. If you get to Quebec City, be sure to visit, if only to talk to the very nice people who work there. After we were done sketching, they let us browse through their library where we found several books used to teach drawing to students. While I’ve yet to tour the museum, they told me that there is a section on how drawing was taught to students. I’ve got to get back there to see that.

I did the sketch in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) sketchbook using a TWSBI Mini with Platinum Carbon Black ink. I added some color… well, gray… with W&N artist watercolors.

2013-07-02Ursulines

Downtown Sketching Event

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Larry Marshall

There is a series of outdoor sketching events, in Quebec City, this year. Time will tell how organized, or not, they are but Yvan and I attended on a week ago.

We were to meet downtown in a small park near the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City’s challenge to Hogwarts. It’s a grand hotel and there’s a huge fountain in the park next to it.

While waiting to meet up with Yvan to walk downtown, I did this little sketch of a branch that caught my eye. It doesn’t take much to get my pen moving.

When we arrived there were four other sketchers there and we all scattered about and got busy sketching. Yvan and I took advantage of the fact that they’d been working on the fountain and it was dry. We climbed into the fountain, sat on its perimeter and started sketching some of the fountain details.

We broke for a quick lunch and then it was back to sketching. I love this large steeple and so it became my target. About half an hour into the sketch it started to rain so we hot-footed it to the Subway a block away. We got lucky and got a seat by the window and we drank coffee and sketched through the window. There was a bike race going on and the rain didn’t stop it so we had plenty to sketch. I’ll spare you my quick sketches from that session as they’re particularly bad.

Once the rain stopped, though, we returned to finish our sketches. Here’s the steeple. Done in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) using a TWSBI Mini and Platinum Carbon Black.

It was a great day, though I remember being particularly tired at the end of it.

The Summer Rush To Sketch

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Larry Marshall

I waited so long for it to come. Now summer is here and I’ve been sketching up a storm. I’ve also forgotten to post anything on my blog so consider this a catch-up post.

I do some sketching on buses, though I find them too bumpy and bouncy for my untrained eye and hand. Still, here’s one of the many sketches I’ve done of seated passengers. I do these in a small, cheap sketchbook I buy at the dollar store.

I love boats and our marina is, once again, full of boats. Most are sailboats but this one is one of my favorites. This one was done in an S&B Alpha (10×7) with a TWSBI Mini and Platinum Carbon Black ink.

I was at my mother-in-law’s 3rd floor apartment for dinner one night and after dinner I went out on the balcony and got this birds-eye view of a tall church steeple. This church is going to be turned into an indoor skateboard place this fall. S&B Alpha (4×6) with TWSBI Mini/Platinum Carbon Black.

This is a paper mill that’s near the old port area in Quebec City. It’s been the center of brisk debate where one day it was going to close and the next it wasn’t. So far it’s stayed open and they seem to be doing well.

Those are a few of the sketches I’ve done recently. I’ll try to remember to post some more but heck, it’s summer. Around here, when the sun’s out, you go out cuz it doesn’t happen all that often.