Sketchcrawling Through The Garden

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Yesterday I reported on our 44th Worldwide Sketchcrawl participation. What I didn’t do was show you my sketches and talk a bit about them as that post became quite large because of all the photos. Here be the follow up post on my sketchcrawl sketches.

The sketchcrawl was supposed to start at 10AM but I ended up getting there around 9:30. As you enter the botanical gardens there is a large water feature amounting to several lily-pad-filled ponds with small water features between them. I located shade, my first prerequisite for sketching on a sunny day, and started sketching next to the second of these ponds. It was a great place to be as I could meet people as they arrived while sketching. It breaks my meditative sketching state to have to get up ever few minutes to say hi but gosh… isn’t that what sketchcrawls are all about? I think so.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), Pilot Prera, Lexington Gray ink

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Pilot Prera, Lexington Gray ink

By the time I’d finished this sketch, I was sitting in the sun as at this time of year the sun swings across its southerly track across our sky fairly quickly. So, I was once again hunting for a shady spot.

I found it on the other side of the entrance, with several sketching options. I decided to draw the main kiosk that faces the entrance. Lots of brightly-colored flowers, a nice shape and the girl who manned (womaned?) the kiosk obliged by wearing a red shirt. I switched weapons for this sketch as I wanted to get some more experience with my Hero pens. I’ve got several of them and I don’t use them enough.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), Hero 578, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Hero 578, Platinum Carbon Black

It was lunch time so we all met together to swap sketchbooks and wish we were as good as everyone else. For me, this is the best part of sketchcrawls. I do a lot of solo sketching and it’s really fun to get together with other sketchers, though my French is sufficiently bad that I’m more than a little bit limited in my ability to talk like an adult. Quebecers are quite patient, however.

After lunch I decided I should draw flowers. I don’t know flowers beyond red flowers, purple flowers, orange flowers, etc. I can tell you the names of all their parts, discuss at length the mating ‘habits’ of plants, and all the rest, as in another life I was a research scientist but when it comes to naming flowers… I got nada, or as we say around here, rien.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Pilot Penmanship XF, Lexington Gray

But flowers are cool. Depending upon how accurate you want to be while drawing them, they can be quite challenging as the more you drill down into their details the more difficult they become to properly depict. I’ve drawn very few, and it shows (grin). Here’s a couple. At least they look like flowers.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), TWSBI Mini, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), TWSBI Mini, Platinum Carbon Black

Quebec City: 44th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Twas that time again and to participate in the 44th Worldwide Sketchcrawl we all gathered at the Jardin Botanique Roger-Van Den Ende de l’Université Laval. French names are often more than a mouthful. This is a large garden run by and adjacent to Laval University. The university gave us the run of the place, a very large place with tons of flowers and other things to sketch. We couldn’t have asked for better weather than we got. Sunny, warm but not stifling hot and the garden provided considerable amounts of shade, though not always in the required spot.

It was difficult to count the participants as we spread out across the landscape. Maybe we should have had a “sketcher hunt” the way kids hunt for Easter eggs as you could walk the trails and find sketchers scrunched down over plants, drawing away, or hiding in the shade while trying to draw an arbor. By my count, however, we set a new sketchcrawl record with 27 participants. Everyone seemed to have a good time.

The name of the game was to find some shade, identify something to draw, and then “just do it” as the saying goes. Much sketching was done on this day but we broke for lunch a little after noon and met in a large tent that exists for this purpose. It was fun to see most of the sketchers all in one place and to kibbitz and share sketches. Unfortunately, I took photos of this before everyone arrived but by the time they did I was embroiled in conversation and sketchbook swapping.

Here is evidence of sketching being committed and the perpetrators (click on a photo to see a larger view):

And here is a small sampling of the sketches that were done this Saturday:

This post is getting long enough that I think I’ll wait until tomorrow to post the sketches I did when I wasn’t taking photos of sketchers (grin). By the end of the day I think we’d all learned and/or remembered a few important things. These are:

1) Sketching is fun.

2) Sketching with other people is funner.

3) The shade moves quickly in Quebec City this time of year.

4) Anticipation – we’re all looking forward to the next sketchcrawl.

Catching Up On My Walking

Posted on July 12, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Having lost a couple days to rain, I was running a walking deficit for the week. I walk a lot and do so as my old man way of keeping my body from taking on the shape of an eggplant. That translates to walking a couple hours every day. With two days lost and the worldwide sketchcrawl coming up on Saturday, I’ve been living on the streets, hoofing everywhere and anywhere, trying to put in the miles.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9x6), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray

This has gotten in the way of my sketching time. I just didn’t feel I could stop to sketch if I was going to get caught up. But I did stop to do this quick sketch. It’s one of the many gables on our train station.

I can skip a day or two without sketching, but when I do I start to feel like something is missing. My solution this time was to sit in the backyard and draw some flowers.

I rarely draw flowers but every time I do I think that I should do it more often. The shapes are endless.

I started this sketch with a rudimentary pencil sketch but most of the shapes were formed directly with watercolors, something I’ve only done once before and, back then, things didn’t go so well. Once done, I added some ink using a refillable Sharpie pen. I did this in a Stillman & Birn Delta series sketchbook. This is my first “ivory” sketchbook. It was fun and provided me with some much needed sketching/meditation time.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8)

Sketchbook Skool And Rainy Days

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Larry Marshall

The last couple days have been rainy and windy and I haven’t been able to walk and sketch like I normally do this time of year. So I thought I’d talk a bit about something new in my sketching life.

It’s called Sketchbook Skool and if you’re part of the social media crowd, you’ve probably heard of it. Operated by Danny Gregory and Koosje Koene, it’s a school that’s as much about motivation and ideas as it is about teaching techniques. This is the second session they’ve held and it’s called “Seeing”, with emphasis on how artists see and communicate what they see in their art. It brings together Liz Steel, Cathy Johnson, Danny Gregory, Brenda Swenson, Andrea Joseph, and Koosje Koene as instructors.

It seemed ideal for me, and comes at an ideal time. I’ve been very myopic in my approach to sketching thus far. When I started sketching, 2 1/2 years ago, I couldn’t draw anything. So I set out with a single goal – to learn to draw something… anything. I didn’t worry about watercolors, compositions, or any of the myriad of details that one can be involved with in art. I just wanted to draw stuff.

While I still have a lot to learn about drawing, I’ve gotten to the point where I can make scratches on paper that people at least recognize as the thing I was looking at so it seems to me that now is the time to start thinking of some of those other things that make an artist actually be an artist. And I think Sketchbook Skool is going to help me in that.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9x6), Pilot Prera

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), Pilot Prera

So far we’ve had two assignments from our first teacher, Danny Gregory. We were to draw a piece of toast, with emphasis on drawing all the details of the surface. It was an interesting sketch as I nearly went cross-eyed trying to ensure that I got all the little holes and crevices in the right places. I want to do it again with a small section of grass or some other heavily textured surface.

Our second assignment was an investigation of how we see when drawing quickly vs slowly. We were supposed to draw something in a minute and then draw right on top of that drawing, but more slowly, trying to do a detailed drawing. Danny’s example used color for the first, fast rendition and pen for the second, slower version.

I drew our vacuum cleaner using yellow and gray Tombow brush pens. We were to spend one minute on this. I then spent 10 minutes drawing the machine using a Pilot Prera. I really like this idea and hope to do a bunch of them.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray ink

So far, I’m having a ball in Sketchbook Skool. The video instruction is first class and interactions with other students is providing a bunch of great ideas. Maybe I will be an artist some day.

Sketching On The Montmorency River

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Larry Marshall

One of the tourist spectacles around Quebec City is Montmorency Falls. The falls themselves are nice but the tourist areas around it are equally nice so it’s fun to go sketching there. To make it even better, I can hop a bus that will take me there, which is what I did this morning.

Yvan and I met very early and headed for the Montmorency Falls area. The falls weren’t our target though. Our quary was rocks. I’m tempted to make a quary/quarry joke here but I won’t.

Suffice it to say that when we got to the falls we crossed the bridge above them and headed north, up the river. It was much cooler than I’d expected and my shorts and t-shirt left me shaking in my boots, almost literally. Yvan was smarter, wore long pants and even brought a windbreaker. Even so, he said he was cold. I was colder. I win…errr…lose.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray

But we’re tough sketchers and had fun anyways. I got to break in a new Stillman & Birn sketchbook. This one is a 6×8 spiral-bound Delta series book. It’s the first time I’ve used their ivory paper but I thought I should try it. I think I like the ivory color. It’s probably better for some things than for others but this morning’s subjects seemed to like it just fine. The paper itself goes without saying as it’s one of the best watercolor sketchbook papers in existence. For those who may wonder, the Delta is the equivalent of S&B’s Beta series which is very popular with the watercolor crowd.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6×8), Pilot Prera, Lex Gray