Tag Archives: watercolor

My Daily Carry Bag

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Thanks to everyone who commented on the new backpack I bought to replace the bag that I lost. I mentioned that this is for when I go on actual sketching adventures rather than a trip to the grocery store, doctor, or to have coffee with a friend.

Some were surprised by the size of it and I confess that my “serious” bag needs to be ample because it might be carrying a tripod, stool and have to handle gouache or oils in addition to my typical sketching needs.

It was suggested that I do a post on my daily carry bag. Because my loss included the contents of the bag, I’m struggling to fill both bags adequately/properly. Add this to my generally fickle nature regarding what I carry and the best I can do is throw out on the table its current contents at this point, but I can assure you that it will be different within a week. For instance, I don’t have a kneaded eraser (a must) in my daily carry bag because l lost my favorite little metal container where I carry carried it. This is why I didn’t talk in detail about my new bag contents as they are changing by the minute (grin). Anyways, here goes…

The main bag: This bag is really the baby version of my old main bag. They came in several sizes and I bought two of them.

Bag with flap open: With the flap open this is the view. As you can see, all my pointy devices are accessible. You can also see that these aren’t the same pointy devices as you see in the contents photo. Photos taken at different times and some of the stuff was on my desk when this photo was taken.

Top View: I’ve tried to open all the compartments so you can peak inside. There’s a pocket on the back of the bag that you can see but I stuff things like a plastic bag and paper towels in it.

Bag Contents: Treating this as two rows (LtoR), Uniball Vision – micro, Pentel Kerry 05 mech. pencil, Ticonderoga #2 pencil, Lamy Safari (F), Kaweco Lilliput (F), waterbrush, #10 pointed round travel brush, spritz bottle. 2nd row – Nalgen bottle for water, Portable Painter Micro, Kleenex.

A couple things to note that underscores the serendipity nature of these contents. That Lamy Safari isn’t something I carry. I wanted to do something with Lex Gray and so I filled it and it found its way into the bag. The sketchbooks I show in the second graphic aren’t permanent fixtures. I’ll always have a 3×5 scribbler and I keep meaning to fill the tiny sketchbook, but the other one will probably be jettisoned soon. I’m using sketchbooks less and less these days (see below).

My Paper Case and Drawing Board: I’ve played mental ping-pong over the sketchbooks vs single sheet approach to drawing, art or whatever you want to call it and single sheets are winning the day for me. The reason is pretty simple. Sometimes I like pen and ink. Sometimes I’ll draw with pencil. At other times I want to do watercolor, qouache, etc. Being able to choose a paper on a per sketch basis is wonderful. Being able to choose the color and format of paper on a per sketch basis is, well…let’s just say it’s a bonus.

And so, in both of my bags I carry a “paper case” which is nothing more than a couple pieces of pieces of Coroplast taped together to form a book. Inside I can put any quality, size, or color paper. I can select one and clip it to the exterior and the book becomes a backing board for drawing. The biggest that will fit in my small bag is 8″ tall. A bonus of this approach is that it’s a LOT lighter than carrying a couple sketchbooks all the time.

** Note that the bulldog clip shown here is really horrible. I lost a bunch of clips with my lost bag and need to get some replacements.

So, there you have it – my daily carry bag. I try to keep it light and not carrying sketchbooks really helps with that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Inspiration Comes To Town

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It’s been fairly obvious from my lack of posting and my comments that I’ve been lacking inspiration. That it’s still too cold to sketch outdoors hasn’t helped but the problem has been more basic than that.

So how can it be that I woke up this morning chomping at the bit to do material prep and to draw? It came from this past weekend when Laurel and Marc Holmes stopped to visit. Two of the best people I know, we had a great time, mostly while sitting and talking.

The idea was to sketch together and we did that, but not much. We bumped into two problems. The first was cold and windy weather that made sketching outdoors almost painful. From the looks of things, outdoor sketching is a couple weeks away for me.

The other problem was the Museum of Civilization here in Quebec City. Pre-pandemic this was my go to place to sketch when weather was bad because it was always full of stuff to sketch. I hadn’t been there since 2019 but it seemed like a good solution to our dilemma. I spent a bunch of money to renew my membership and Marc and Laurel spent a lot of money on tickets. We all wasted it.

You know those movies where someone returns to a place of fond memories only to find it devastated or inhabited by zombies? That was how I felt. The bedrock of this museum has always been two large permanent exhibits and four large exposition halls where expositions came and went, always providing good stuff to draw. What we faced were three of those halls permanently empty and one of the permanent exhibits gutted and closed off. What remained was horrible. The “big” exhibit was a historical presentation of a famous Quebec politician but it was just a bunch of large photos of him and a few trinkets from his life. There was very little to draw. And so I got to enjoy Laurel and Marc while sitting in restaurants or the drawing room of their B&B. And while I’m sure they were disappointed, I thoroughly enjoyed their presence and our discussions.

Marc showed me a bunch of 5×5 direct watercolors he’d done during the excursion they were returning from and they really excited me. I couldn’t think of much else. I’ve got to learn this approach to “sketching” (when Marc does it the results need to be framed and hung on a wall) and I’ve commited to doing his annual 30 paintings in 30 days event that starts in June. Hopefully I can figure out how to do it before then.

Here are a couple sketches that I did in our empty museum.

Sketching In My Front Yard

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This summer I’ve fallen in love with sketching Chantal’s flowers.  Why?  Cuz they’re beautiful, plentiful, and available.  But another reason is that they really help me hone the connection between my visual and motor cortex.  Some call this hand-eye coordination but there are no hands or eyes being trained here.  It’s all hind brain doing the work and the trick is to get this to happen without interference from the forebrain, be it left or right forebrain.  When artists say “get the brain out of the way,” this is what they mean whether they realize it or not.

Anyway, I spent a bunch of time “in the zone” drawing these black-eyed susans, locating them relative to one another.  During most of it I was “unavailable” to anyone walking by.  In the end I was both exhausted and exhilarated.  I think I got most of it right.  The leaves are not accurate.  I used lines representing some leaves to locate the flowers but otherwise the leaves were a by guess and by golly venture.  Hope you like it.

The Family Tree Of Excavators

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This year has been an odd one, with lots more rain than usual and very high temperatures with jacket days interspersed.  Our flowering plants have put on quite a show as a result but at the same time, insects have been scarce.  I’ve seen a single Monarch but no other butterflies.  No mosquitos, one moth, a few flies, but nothing like a typical Quebec summer cadre of insects.  And NO spiders.  I typically get to play with small jumping spiders and we normally end up with a bunch of web-building Theridids around our yard.  Not this year.

But one species that comes and goes like clockwork are the excavators.  These huge yellow and orange beasts trundle around Quebec City like they own the place, digging holes here and there, dragging a stream of orange traffic barrels in their wake.  They show up ever spring. They start to die out when it turns cold.

As a biologist I’m always interested in the life cycles of organisms and excavators are no exception.  The adult shown above is a prime example of the type.  I drew this one several years ago and confess that anyone who believes urban sketching should be done quickly would take offense to the couple hours I spent drawing this one.  There are several things to note beyond their overall size.  First, its feet are huge as are its muddy footprints.  Second, its head is sized to hold a single human and its small relative to its huge, elongated body that swings a long beak here and there.

While walking on my river, I came across a baby excavator.  It was hiding next to an apartment building being built along my river.  You can immediately see that it’s an infant.  Notice how large its head is relative to its body.  Its body is short and pudgy and its feet aren’t as developed as the adult versions.  If you see these little guys operate you’ll notice it bouncing around and rocking back and forth, unlike the adults who move steadily.  I wonder if they simply grow larger with age or maybe there’s a metamorphosis that takes place, maybe during the winter season.  More study is required.

 

Stillman & Birn Alpha (6×8), DeAtramentis Document Black.

Deer Sees Its Reflection

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I live not far from Quebec City’s exposition center, which is convenient because there’s a farmer’s market, park area, and a large activity area associated with it.  There’s also a very large statue.  It stands 30-40 feet high and represents, I think, a deer, walking across ice.  The deer is looking down and its reflection is depicted by a white version of itself.  It’s pretty impressive.

I decided to draw it and I found it more difficult than it looks.  The reason is that it’s an animal with four spindly legs balanced upon a second, upside down set of spindly legs.  Clearly, if I got the angles of those thin legs wrong, my sketch would look like it was falling over.  Not having the mass of the top animal balanced on those legs would, of course, have the same result.

So, I spent probably half an hour just triangulating all the points, getting the proportions figured out, and the result was a whole bunch of lines and dots that didn’t look like much.  Drawing it was easier and while painting always reveals my poor brush work, that wasn’t too bad either.  The one thing I regret was that I didn’t do it larger (sketch is only 6″ high).

Stillman & BIrn Nova Gray, pencil, Daniel Smith Watercolors