There’s supposed to be half a million spectators on hand at Parliament in Ottawa for today’s Canada Day celebration. I’m glad I’m not there. On the other hand, living in Quebec City means I experience hardly a peep in celebration. It’s sad.
But I’m here, an ex-American, proud Canadian, waving the flag. Happy Canada Day everyone.
When I was in Ottawa I visited a stationary/card store because, well, that’s what I do. It was a delightful store, though their pricing on fountain pens was really high ($68 for a Lamy Safari) but it costs nothing to look. There were several things I wanted to buy but I guess I was in a “do I REALLY need that” mood and I didn’t buy most of them. The one exception was this tiny notebook made by Clairfontaine. It contains really smooth, thin paper that’s not idea for drawing but gosh it’s cute. I had to have one.
I’ve only done a couple sketches in it but it’s fun to draw this small on occasion. I think I’ll get $4.00 worth of fun from it.
The day of my daughter’s graduation we did some more shopping and returned to Andrew Haydon Park. It was still windy and still stormy but we like this park because there are a lots of geese and you can see the St. Lawrence River from there.
As a chipmunk foraged around us, I drew this sketch of a spit of land that sticks out on the other side of the marina associated with the park. I forgot to include it in yesterday’s post.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (8×5), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
For the last few years I’ve gotten to draw in the museums of Ottawa because my daughter was going to school there. This past weekend was the end point of that part of her life as she graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Ottawa. We went there to spend some time with her and to attend her graduation.
I didn’t make it to any of the museums because we spent the weekend doing more exciting things, like laundry, shopping and grocery shopping (grin).
It was a hectic weekend, made a bit more unsettled by the fact that high humidity and high temps combined to provide a near constant threat of thunderstorms. There was even a tornado warning at one point.
As it turned out, we didn’t see a lot of rain but there was a lot of wind. We did sit in Andrew Haydon Park, though, and I did some quick sketches. It’s hard for me to spend much time on sketches when I am with other people who are not sketching.
Stillman & Birn Epsilon (3×5), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
Stillman & Birn Alpha (8×5)
Just before I left for Ottawa our group went to an exhibit of Claude Simard’s work at the Centre d’interprétation historique de Sainte-Foy. This is a very large house on the grounds of a large church/cemetery. The church is a stone building that was gutted by fire a while back and was renovated into a place for semi-outdoor (walls but no roof) theatre. Anyways, the grounds of this building complex are very nice and very sketchable.
We spent some time sketching outdoors before going to the Simard exhibition and I drew this small building where they used to keep corpses in winter when the ground was too frozen for burials to take place. I apologize for the “lines” in the color. These were produced when I used a cheap gray marker to indicate locations of tone because I ran out of time and needed some guidance for later when I added color.
Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black
I really enjoyed Claude Simard’s work. His paintings, mostly done in acrylic are bright, very colorful and impressionistic. While it’s clear from sketches on display that he is an excellent draftsman, this is not reflected in his paintings, which are almost caricatures of their subjects. Nevertheless, it’s clear where he got the moniker as the Happy Painter.
What excited me the most, however, were the cabinets that displayed some of his sketches. Some were in sketchbooks while others were done on watercolor paper. All were simple sketches with loose watercolors added to them. I loved them all. In fact, I started drawing some of them with the idea of playing with watercolors in as close as I could get to his style. This was a lot of fun and I did several of them. Here’s one example. The original was about 5×7, as is my copy of it. I’m afraid I fell short of doing his watercolors justice.
