Tag Archives: Pilot/Namiki Falcon

Mother Nature’s Playing Jokes On Us

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As in many places, high temps and humidities have been the norm.  Until yesterday.  I bopped out the door, heading for my walk and stopped.  It was COLD!!!  I had to change into long pants and put on a windbreaker to walk.  Mr Weather, a close friend of Mr. Google, told me that it was 58F.  During that day it barely cracked the 60s.  Today it’s very windy and rainy so I’m indoors.

 

Stillman & BIrn Alpha, Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black, Daniel Smith watercolors

I’ve decided to post a sketch I did last week.  I wasn’t going to share it because there are many things wrong with it, some due to my shortcomings and others due to the fact that it was so hot I had a hard time getting into it.

The sketch suffers a bit but the real problem is with the watercolor, which is too flat, with not enough contrast.  By the time the brush came out my shady perch had become open sun and I was burning up, so this was more slop and dash watercolor and it shows.

Careful What You Wish For…

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…you just might get it.

It’s all my fault.  For weeks I’ve been wishing that the snow would melt in Quebec.  Until a week ago, we Quebec City was still having below freezing temperatures so, I guess, my wish was more a dream than a real wish.

And then it came…the rain..the temps that got downright near reasonable and our record levels of snow started melting – QUICKLY.  Too quickly it seems because now we’ve got people in western Quebec being evacuated from their houses due to flooding.  The military has been called in to supply manpower.  I’m not proud of my selfish wish and I never wished it would all melt at once, but in a matter of days the 10-foot high snow banks that have surrounded my house have all but disappeared.  Today it’s 12C outside and the bright yellow ball has returned to our sky.

My task this weekend was to draw something “nature,” a task handed out by the Sketch With Me Facebook group.  I guess dirty snow banks are nature but the truth is, in the middle of a city just coming out of winter, there’s not a lot of nature to be found.  So I got the bright idea of drawing a small stick from a maple tree.  The maples are waiting for spring too.

So, I crunched up the snow hill in my backyard (major improvement over the mountain that used to be there) and clipped a branch.  Being a street sketcher, I’ve never done this sort of thing before and I was ill-prepared.  I found two problems.  First is that I was drawing too small, which caused the second problem, my tools were too big.  The smallest brush I own is a #6 and even my fine fountain pens were a struggle because my ‘stick’ was being drawn too small.  Nevertheless, it was fun and I’m going to do more of this, just as soon as I get a smaller brush.  With spring on my doorstep, I should have lots of subject matter available.

Sketching Rabbit/Hare Structure

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On Tuesday, Yvan, Claudette and myself headed to the hunting and fishing museum.  We’d just had a huge snowstorm that was a real struggle to clean up because the 11-12 feet of the stuff that has preceded it made it nearly impossible to find a place to put the new snow.  Anyways, it felt really good to head out for a day of sketching.

Unfortunately (for me), that same storm was beating up my joints.  I was limping a bit, but the real problem was my left hand and wrist which made it very hard (impossible?) to draw.  We had fun and I did three sketches, all of which were so full of errors and attempts to fix lines that went off willy-nilly that I’d be too embarrassed to share them.

We were drawing rabbits, however, and that got us discussing the structural underpinnings of a rabbit.  When they sit back on their hind legs, they start looking like a ball of fur and it’s hard to make out what’s really going on inside.  When we got home Yvan and I asked Mr. Google if he could provide us with a rabbit skeleton to study.  He obliged and this morning I drew a rabbit skeleton, well sort of.  My hand was a bit better this morning but it’s still hard to get my lines to flow.  But I do understand lagomorph anatomy just a bit better.

Stillman & Birn Beta (10×7), Pilot Falcon, Sketch Ink Thea (grey)

An Adventure To Rimouski And My Hatred For Hot-Press Paper.

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August 26th was our 30th wedding anniversary.  Thinking about that, Chantal deserves a medal for living with me that long.  We decided to celebrate by getting off planet Quebec City and spending a couple days in Rimouski, a smallish town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, just as it begins to open up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Originally I planned on it being just the two of us but Chantal thought it would be fun to bring Jodie along.  Turned out that was a great idea because my bum knee limited my ability to do some things and Jodie gave Chantal some company while she them.

We stayed at a rustic hotel that sits right on the coast, a rocky intertidal area right in front of the place.  Excepting that there was no coffee available on site and a 20-30 minute shopping trip to get some, it was an ideal place.

Our first day there wasn’t great because it was very windy and cold.  Yep…cold.  No heat wave that day.  We visited a museum/lighthouse/submarine place and Jodie and Chantal wanted to tour the submarine.  We weren’t sure that my knee could manage the bulkhead doors and the requisite steps downward so I went and sat in the car.  This allowed me to do this quick sketch of the rocks, etc. in front of me.

Rimouski is a fishing town and on every corner is a poissonerie (fresh fish store) and associated restaurant.  We went for Korean food and it was spectacular.  If you’re ever in Rimouski, foresake the crab dinner and head to Parfum of Korea, an oddly bilingual named restaurant.  We filled up on Bokkeum, grabbed coffee to go and headed back to the hotel, where we spent the evening staring at the river/ocean (you can’t see across at this point and the water is salty).

The next day we drove to Matane, a fishing/university town a couple hours north of Rimouski.  We did this mostly just to enjoy the trip and the wonderful coastline scenery along the way but also with a purpose.  I wanted to draw a fishing boat and Mr. Google told me they had lots of them.   When we got there I was disappointed.  Matane itself is nice enough.  We discovered a great beach covered with small round rocks and lots of sand.  We also discovered a fish ladder, all ready for the salmon run up the river… next week.  Oh well, it was cool to see even without the fish.

But we couldn’t find fishing boats anywhere.  So we went to the information center which exists in the form of an old lighthouse.   Chantal went to discuss the whereabouts of the fishing boats with the information folks.  I set up and started drawing the lighthouse.

We learned that the fishing boats are actually a bit south of Matane in their own artificial harbor area so we headed there.  It turned out that most of them were off somewhere, probably making a nuisance of themselves in the world of crabs, shrimps, and fish of several species.  But there were a few in port and a sketcher only needs one.  Here she be.  I was frustrated with the hot-press paper I was using and so this one never saw a brush.

What’s Up With Hot Pressed Paper?

We had a great time on that trip but my first use of hot-pressed paper was a disaster.  What’s up with it anyway?  I was using Fabriano Artistico HP.  Unlike the CP I normally use I couldn’t get this stuff to stay wet?  I was constantly fighting with lines in my washes.  And EVERYTHING just seemed ‘flat.’  It seemed to suck the life out of the paint.  What am I doing wrong?  Can anyone advise?

Sketching With The Artistes Du Parc

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Last week Yvan told me of a group, the Artistes du Parc, who were meeting at a large park, Domain Maizeret, and that he was going there to sketch with them.  They are a watercolor group and I tagged along. We had a great time in spite of the heat wave.

When we arrived there was only one person there.  She was painting the large community building that’s the centerpiece of the park.  It turned out that she was the organizer, Denise Bujold.  Denise is a bubbly, enthusiastic person whose personality says “Join us, we’re about to have fun.”  I now have a brochure with a schedule of another half a dozen events that she has planned.  If you look up the word organizer in a dictionary you might find her picture.  Yippee!

Yvan and I did the sketcher thing, which was to wander around, looking for something to draw and then we proceeded to ignore one another for the next hour or so.  I went to the other side of the large building and decided to draw the scene shown below, mostly because there was a good patch of shade where I could plunk my butt on my stool and draw.  Here, courtesy of Denise, is a photo of my fat self doing just that, or rather faking that I was painting because by then I had finished.  I don’t normally have a big, silly grin on my face when I draw but heck, she was taking my picture.  Ya gotta smile for the camera.

I’ve got to do something about that tiny tripod stool though.  It’s really hard for me to sit down and even harder to get up.  I’m convinced that some day I won’t be able to (grin)

 

I did get to meet another person who came to the event, Nicole.  I suspect that most stayed away because this was in the middle of our heatwave and by then we were all hearing about the people dying because of it.  Still, it was a great day and the beginning, I hope, of a new sketching/painting relationship.