Fire At The Museum

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Street sketchers are used to people walking away while they’re being sketched, Cars leaving or trucks arriving to block the subject being sketched. I once had a train come along and require that I stop sketching. But this was a new one.

There was another fire at the Musee de la Civilisation last week. The construction workers should contract themselves out as arsonists as this is the second on in the past few weeks. I was there and was just sitting down to sketch a beautiful mask from 200AD when the alarm went off and the guards started moving people out. As I exited the exhibition hall there was obvious smoke in the large open area that serves as stairwells and lobby for the museum and water was spraying down from the roof. Fun stuff.

The police and firemen were very well-organized, though, and they had shut down the street by the time I hit the front door and they were funneling everyone into the parking lot across the street. While bunched up with a lot of other patrons, I quickly sketched this sketch with a Fisher Space pen I carry in my coat.

We stood around for a while like cows in a corral and quickly two things became obvious. The first was that the construction workers had gotten the fire put out and the other was that we weren’t going to get back into the museum anytime soon.

Yvan and I decided to walk across town to the Musee des Beaux Arts where there was to be a couple recitals by conservatory students. There, we did a bunch of quick sketches of the performers and I did a quicky of a part of the building I could see through the curtained window. Here are some of those sketches.

It’s Museum Season In Quebec City

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Only the brave would venture outdoors to sketch in Quebec City these days, and I’m not one of them. So, it’s museum time for me. And because our Civilisation Museum is featuring a large exhibition of some remarkable white, plaster statues and busts from the Greeks and Romans, I’ve decided to set aside my fountain pens and try to learn how to push a pencil. Strange gizmos these are as they produce a substance that is magnetically attracted to the little finger of my drawing hand, allowing automagic smudging of everything I draw.

I did this guy’s head in a Stillman & Birn Alpha series sketchbook and I think pencil would work better on their Epsilon paper. I’m using Tombow Mono 100 pencils (2H and HB this time). The pencils are beautiful and seem to work well, though my inexperience doesn’t permit actual evaluation. Maybe a winter of museum sketching will change that.

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

Michaud Service – A Limoilu Landmark

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Larry Marshall

One of the fun things about sketching in Quebec City is being able to sketch buildings that have been repurposed and, sometimes, being able to see photos of what the building used to look like. There are a couple photos of Michaud Service from the 50s but they’re copyrighted and so I’m not going to post them here.

Michaud Service used to be an auto service location, with two large bays and an office area, all accessible from the street side of the building. There were also several bays whose doors faced north, on the other side of the building. These days it seems that the north access bays are used for storage while the front of the building houses a couple social service organizations. My sketch was done as I sat in a small park area on the south side of the building, an area that used to be a parking lot associated with Michaud Service.

In a way, this is a fairly plain building but the huge sign that still resides atop the building, and the somewhat organized graffiti along the south wall just spoke to me. There was also the matter that I could sit in the sun which kept me from completely freezing as I sketched. I did high-tail it for home and tea to do the color once I warmed up.

Michaud Service: Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Pilot/Namiki Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

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.