Looking Out My Window

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Larry Marshall

After I finished with the snowblower this morning I looked out on a sunny, but cold day. I allowed sloth to overtake me and I decided not to walk to the museum as I normally would. Sketching statues is ok but I confess they don’t call to me as many other subjects might.

I looked out the window and saw this scene and decided to do a quick rendition of it. A few light pencil lines in my Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) sketchbook to define rooflines, building edge and a couple lines to indicate where the main tree trunks were done before I turned to my Namiki Falcon with De Atramentis Document ink. According to my wife it looks better than the real thing. I hope she’s right. One thing is certain. This is a good example of how trying to do something quickly and drawing all the bricks is a bad combination (grin).

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10x7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Artemis: Greek Goddess Of The Hunt

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Long before Katniss Everdeen shot squirrels in the forest surrounding District 12, Artemis was the protectress of nature and the hunt for the Greeks. With her spiffy garb and bow & arrow, she most certainly could have wowed them in any Greek version of the Hunger Games.

As a sketching subject she caught my attention, though the statue I drew from only had the stub of her bow gripped in her hand. I used my artistic license to add her bow. It just wasn’t right that she’d lost it.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Pilot Prera, De Atramentis Document Brown

Odd Little Guy From Greek Theatre

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Larry Marshall

When I think of “Greek theatre” what comes to mind are large, outdoor stages with row after row of seats carved from rock, creating an amphitheatre of sorts. I don’t know if this is because of something I was told in high school or something I’ve seen at some point in my life. Truth is, I know nothing of Greek theatre.

Votive, head about 6″ tall

The big exhibit at our civilisation museum is all about Greek gods and statues, but there’s one section dedicated to Greek theatre. What I find odd about it is that most of the “masks” are referred to as ‘votives’ and they’re all far too small for anyone to wear. They have eye holes and the mouths are a gaping hole in the face, just as a mask might be. I assume they may have actually held a candle and that’s why they’re labelled as votives.

Interspersed amount the theatre objects are a bunch of small statues that I can’t even imagine a use for in live theatre and no explanation is provided. They’re all just a few inches tall and their mouths are, like the votives, hollowed out. Maybe they were popcorn butter dispensers.

Each is mounted on a brass rod for display, but whether this is the way they were originally displayed is unclear.

In any case, I drew this one. I used Strathmore “toned gray” paper and drew it with a Pilot Falcon filled with De Atramentis Document Black ink. As the statue was made from a tan clay, I used watercolor pencil to generate some brown tones. That was probably a mistake as this paper didn’t take kindly to my use of a waterbrush to spread the watercolor.

Little theatre guy (Strathmore toned gray paper, De Atramentis Document Black ink)

Sketching At The Canadian Aviation And Space Museum

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Larry Marshall

When I was in science I used to visit the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum regularly. It wasn’t because I was in science but rather because I’m an airplane fanatic airplanes and I worked at a research lab that was only a 90-minute drive to the museum.

I mention this because I’ve been sketching for three years and until Dec 01, 2014, I had never drawn a single airplane, in spite of my passion for them. Why? Cuz I can’t get excited about drawing from photos and there isn’t much airplane activity in Quebec City.

But now that my daughter is living in Ottawa, I have an excuse to go there so I finally got to sketch at this museum. It’s a museum of significant size… airplanes are big and they have dozens of them under their roofs. The main building (photo) is quite large and there’s an equal-sized building just to the right of the photo. Both are packed to the gills with airplanes. It’s a wonderful place, at least I think so. Besides, if you’re old like me you can get in for $10 and they let you sketch to your hearts content.

I showed up shortly after opening time – at 10:30 and I quickly found a spot and started sketching. I was in ‘detail’ mode that day, which meant I was concentrating hard on proper shape and proportion as, well, you know – airplanes are just supposed to be drawn “right”, don’tcha think? You would if you were an airplane fanatic like I am. Anyways, I used a pencil to draw the large shapes and then moved to my Pilot Falcon filled with DeAtramentis Black. I was working in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) sketchbook – my favorite working surface.

Curtiss Seagull (in Stillman & Birn Alpha 10×7 sketchbook, Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Black ink)

I spent about one and a half hours getting the ink done and then took a break to have some coffee and relax. While I was in the restaurant I added the color (Daniel Smith) to the sketch. I was pretty pleased with the results but also a bit fatigued so I kicked back, enjoyed the coffee, which was no longer hot, and then spent a few minutes wandering around the museum.

It was almost 12:30 by the time I decided to draw this T-33. It’s always been a favorite and I could sit in an out of the way place and draw. I needed to get on the road back to Quebec City by 1:30 so I quickly laid out some shapes and guidelines and went to work with my pen. By 1:30 I had created this sketch and decided I’d better add color when I got home so I snapped a couple photos for reference.

T33 sketch with inspiration

I’m really bad about adding color to sketches and have a lot of them that ‘I’ll color it later’ never happened. This was, almost, one of those sketches as I forgot all about it until I started to do this blog post. Here’s the sketch with some color added. I can’t wait to return to that museum. Did I mention that I like airplanes (grin)?

T-33 (Stillman & Birn Alpha 10x7, Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Black ink)

T-33 (Stillman & Birn Alpha 10×7, Pilot Falcon, DeAtramentis Black ink)

Sketching The Heads Of Olympus

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Larry Marshall

I found myself chuckling at myself as I struggled to use pencil to draw this plaster head of what may or may not be one of the Greek gods of old. Besides an uncertainty about the subject, the placard said that it was created in 50AD and was once part of a full statue. I thought it nice and besides, there was a seat available.

I was chuckling because I couldn’t help but think of how people talk about moving from pencil to pen. It’s said to be “scary” or “really hard.” I’ve done almost all my sketching with fountain pens and I find sketching with pencil to be “really hard.” I’m unsure of the marks I make with pencil and certainly skills like graded tones elude me. But it sure is fun, as is every kind of sketching I’ve done. Maybe I’m kidding myself but I think the more lines I put on paper the better I will get so that’s my goal. As I make those marks, I just hope that some of them resemble what I’m trying to draw. Occasionally they do.

Anyways, this drawing was done on Strathmore Series 300 vellum bristol paper. I like it for this sort of drawing because it’s stiff enough to stand on its own and seems to like pencil. I used Mars Lumograph pencils this time.

Asclepius???
50AD