Polar Bear Sketching As Winter Approaches

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Larry Marshall

It’s becoming difficult to sketch outdoors in Quebec City. It’s comfortable to walk as long as one wears proper attire but to sit and sketch for any period of time is beyond my capacity to endure.

So now the scramble to find indoor subject matter begins. Claudette and I met at the Université Laval library and their small natural history exhibit. It’s a small display and we’re running out of sketching possibilities but I decided to draw the head of a polar bear who, I suspect, had ducked into the library just to get out of the cold. Sketchers aren’t the only ones that find Quebec winters harsh.

I had fun doing this in my Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook, though it’s only a 6×8 and I would have like a larger format for this sketch. Have I mentioned how much I like Faber-Castell Albrecht-Durer watercolor pencils? They’re the only ones I’ve found where a waterbrush can completely eliminate the pencil lines. Anyways, I hope you like Mr Polar Bear, though he might be a she.

Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook, Pilot Falcon w/Platinum Carbon Black ink

Sketching Mobile Homes

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Larry Marshall

In the display at our local library is a cabinet full of mobile homes. As I like drawing architecture it seemed fitting that I draw some houses used by animals that aren’t human so I chose these two.

I drew them in a Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook using my Pilot/Namiki Falcon and Platinum Carbon Black ink. Color comes from Faber-Castell Albrecht-Durer watercolor pencils.

Sketching The Past

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Larry Marshall

This is the time of year that a street sketcher, living in a part of the world that turns dark and cold for five months, starts thinking about what he’s going to draw for the next few months. One thing that’s occurred to me is that there are many things I simply can’t draw ‘on location’ because they simply don’t exist any longer. Why not draw those things, from photos or museum examples?

So, when I was sketching at a small display in the Laval University library, I decided to draw the passenger pigeon that was on display. It’s 100 years ago, this year, that we finally ‘got the last one’ of some five BILLION of these birds that once inhabited North America. Enterprising European immigrants, showing their mettle, blew every last one of them from the sky. What a proud accomplishment. It might be ok if we would have said “oops…we shouldn’t do that again” but we continue to do it, over and over and over. I heard on the news the other day that there are currently 50% fewer animals on our planet than there were just 30 years ago. How much longer can we continue to be so stupid? Not much longer unless we wake up and stop our denial about what’s going on.

But enough of an old biologist grousing about what unbridled disregard for everything but money is doing to our world. Back to sketching. I had never seen a passenger pigeon before. It looks very much like a very large, somewhat elongated mourning dove and certainly more lean than it’s domestic pigeon cousin. I drew this one in a Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook with a Pilot/Namiki Falcon pen. The color comes from Faber-Castell Albrecht-Durer watercolor pencils. I love these pencils and every time I get them out I wonder why I don’t use them more. The wing primaries should be darker.

Book Review: The Drawing Club

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

There’s a heavy emphasis on drawing naked people in the art world. It’s said that this is how one learns to draw and schools everywhere practice it, if they teach drawing at all anymore. My feeling is that this practice harkens from a time when artists made their living drawing naked people, or partially naked people and that it doesn’t do much for me. So I’ve completely ignored “life drawing” classes and workshops.

But back in 2001, Bob Kato started the Drawing Club, attended by Disney and Universal creative department artists. It wasn’t traditional life drawing. It was drawing where one of the artists would dress as a gangster, pirate, steampunk character, showgirl, or whatever and the artists would draw them with their own personal flair. Thus was born the Drawing Club. It is now a regular part of the L.A. artist scene.

The book by Bob Kato, The Drawing Club, documents those activities and more. The book includes chapters like “What is a good drawing?”, “Concept and Drawing”, “Improvisation”, “What is funny?” and generally discusses drawing characters and how different moods, goals, and even materials affect both approach and outcome and a bunch of other interesting stuff that is applicable well beyond drawing posed models. For me, though, the highlights come in the form of seeing the model and then what creative artists do with that model as they move their image to paper. It’s extraordinary.

This isn’t the typical urban sketching book that I generally talk about but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and wish I could attend sessions like this. Much more interesting than naked people.

It’s Time For The Pumpkins To Roll

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

I’m not sure whether to love or hate pumpkins. You gotta love their rich, warm color and they do signal things like Thanksgiving and Halloween. But they also announce the coming of winter and, if I haven’t mentioned it before, I hate winter. No street sketching for at least five months.

But I always draw at least one pumpkin every year. This one was done in my kitchen, a squash thrown in to compliment it. Hope you like it.

Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook, Pilot Falcon, Platinum Carbon ink, watercolors