Quebec City, particularly the older parts of the city, has many street scenes that are worthy of a sketcher’s time. Often the streets are narrow and the buildings are connected to one another.
These form great urban scenes and the only thing that limits a sketcher is time and the place to sit while doing the sketch. Time, scene and place to sit came together and I sketched this autumn scene.
Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9); Pilot Prera w/Platinum Carbon Black ink
Here in North America our society is becoming more and more coarse. The rhetoric of our politicians has become downright rude, we all walk around with headphones one, barely acknowledging one and other and, frankly, too many of us are too afraid of too many things. So it’s hard to continue to believe an axiom that makes life bearable – that people are good.
But then something happens and things snap back into perspective. That happened to me when I went to my mailbox and pulled this from the box.
It was addressed to me with a flair that one rarely sees. It came from Singapore. Singapore??? Who did I know in Singapore? I immediately thought of the Urban Sketchers of Singapore but I’ve never met any of them. Who could be sending me something?
And so I opened it in the hopes of gaining some insights. Indeed, the contents were sketcher-oriented. There was a nice toned-paper sketchbook, a leatherette cover for that sketchbook, two Uniball Signo UM-120 pens, and a couple refills for those pens. WOW! The motherlode. Being old I don’t think as quickly as I once did and I was still baffled about who might have sent these items. And then I found the little card, from Patrick Ng.
Patrick is a great guy, who went out of his way to obtain a couple Hero pens for me that I couldn’t have purchased without his help. And we ‘chat’ on Facebook, where we are ‘friends.’ He had been shopping for materials and remembered me, remembered discussions we’d had about the toned-paper sketchbooks made by a friend of his, and he bought me one, and a cover for it so I could fill the sketchbook, get another one and replace it, reusing the cover. He’d sent a couple of the pens he uses regularly because he knew that Uniball don’t import them to the US. People are still good, and Patrick is one of the best.
The first thing I did was to test bunch of pens on the paper, which must be 200lb tan-color paper. It’s not heavily sized but it does take watercolors quick nicely. You notice the lack of sizing when you try to do larger washes. But being able to use the paper as a mid-tone and working on both sides towards dark (pen) and lights (colored pencil) is lots of fun.
The first full sketch I did was this one, done in Parc Brebeuf, a park not far from my house. The ring-billed gulls like to sit on lamp posts and this one sat around while I drew him…or her.
I decided that since Patrick had been so nice to send me a sketchbook, the least I could do was walk a mile in his shoes, in a sketching sense. He does a lot of sketches inside restaurants and coffee shops. Sometimes he does them on toned-brown paper, sometimes not. They are always wonderful sketches.
So, I took one of my Hero 578 ‘asian calligraphy’ pens (tip is bent upward), my new sketchbook, and headed to a mall. It was morning and not very busy, which suited me fine.
I actually sketched this while standing up, just outside the restaurant, resting the sketchbook on the wall in the foreground of the sketch. Me, standing, looking in at the restraurant was likely to be disconcerting so after I’d done a bit of the sketch I walked to the three women featured in it and showed them what I was doing.
Normally I would not do such a thing as typically this causes people to start posing. But in this case, it was necessary. The sketch was lots of fun and very much in honor of Patrick Ng. Thanks, Patrick. You really made my day, week, month.
Fall officially came to Quebec a couple weeks ago. Many of the trees, and certainly Mr Weathermaker, didn’t get the memo. We’ve had very warm temperatures for a last couple weeks and the trees are very confused as daylength tells them to drop their leaves but the temps are saying “not yet.”
But, slowly and as surely as politicians will screw things up, winter is approaching. For me, a street sketcher, it’s a time of transition. It’s a time when I start figuring out what/where I’m going to sketch once it gets too cold outside to do what I love – sketch on the streets.
To that end I’m thinking about museums, have convinced myself that I should try, again, to sketch from photos, and that I should use Google Maps “pegman” to sketch in exotic places while snow blankets my world. We’ll see.
toned paper; Pilot Prera and Prismacolor white pencil
In the meantime I’ve been doing some sketching. I received a handmade tan-paper sketchbook from my buddy Pat Ng in Singapore and did this sketch to sort of break it in. The gulls love to sit on the lamp posts around here so I had plenty of source material for this sketch.
This sketch was done in celebration of the show the trees put on for us every year. Fairly simple, I combined a Uniball UM-120 black pen (.5) with a Uniball UM-151 brown-black (.38) pen and did it in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6) sketchbook. The fence lets me call it an ‘urban sketch’ 🙂
I spent Monday night looking at a bunch of sketches done by Liz Steel, a very talented architect/sketcher. She talks about how she works very quickly and why. The next day I was walking down a street and saw this little house. I decided to try out Liz’s philosophy/approach and while I didn’t produce anything near the quality of her sketches, once I buried the ‘ooooo…that’s not right’ and ‘oops…left that out’ I found the results interesting and I’ll probably do some more like this. Took less than 10 minutes, including the time to get out my watercolor kit and waterbrush. It was done in my ‘el cheapo’ 3×5 notebook and my Uniball UM-120 (.5) pen.
Sketching, no matter how it’s done, is fun and after two years of doing it, I can’t imagine a day without it in my life.
I finally got out sketching and it was a fantastic day. Unseasonably warm and not much wind so I headed back to Ile d’Orleans where I sketched and froze the last time I was on the island. This steeple is attached to a church that’s on the eastern end of the island, in the town of St. Jean. Its bright orange roof must serve as a visible beacon for the cargo ships that come from the Atlantic and are making their way towards Quebec City.
The church is across the street from a place that sells great brioche and coffee. Last time I was there they’d lost electricity because of high winds so there was no coffee but it’s a regular stop for me when I get out to the island.
Moleskine watercolor (3×5), Pilot G-TEC-C3 pen
Once I sketched the steeple, I walked across the street to get my coffee and danish and this time it was closed because, it seems, it is closed on Mondays. Disappointment didn’t last too long, though. They have a lot of chairs in a very pleasant garden area so I took one and set it up so that I could sketch one of the unique lamp posts in St. Jean.
Moleskine watercolor (3×5), Pilot G-TEC-C3 pen
Have you noticed that some sketches are more ‘relaxed’ than others as you do them? That’s certainly the case for me. In this case, I’d just finished staring hard at all the detail in the steeple and mostly just wanted to sit. Because of the situation, I was sitting on a gorgeous ‘throne’ in the form of a sculpted, cast-iron chair, with grass beneath my feet. The temperature was perfect, the sun was shining, and I was sitting in the shade. If I’d gotten any more relaxed I would have fallen asleep. The worst day sketching is a good day but some are better than others.
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.’