Holiday Weekend Sketching

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Last Friday was a crazy day, with trying to fit X hours of work into fewer than X hours of available time. But I was desperate enough to get it done cuz Saturday was the beginning of three days of good weather and SKETCHING!!!!

Saturday I hopped a bus for the other side of town as I’d convinced my buddy Yvan that we ‘needed’ to sketch Maison Gomin. This is a castle-like building that used to be a woman’s prison. It’s now a funeral/crematorium place that drips money inside. Seems there’s a lot of money in dead people. Anyway, this sketch represents one end of the building. The dragon sits on top of the other end, guarding the princess. It was done in my Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7) sketchbook. I used a TWSBI Mini and Platinum Carbon Black.

Sunday morning Yvan and I headed the the north part of the city and we sketched an old mill (17th Century) built and operated by Jesuits. It’s now a historical landmark.

It was done in the same sketchbook with the same pen. It suffers a bit from a change of heart on my part. When I laid out the sketch I thought I’d let the end of the smaller building run off the page to the right. But later I decided I wanted the end of it in the sketch and thought I could do that by simply shortening it. I did that but the proportions of the building made it look odd, but then most of my sketches are odd so I guess it fits.

As we were packing up I decided to do this quick sketch of a sundial which is unlike any I’d seen before. It’s a tiny sketch, done in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6). I used Lexington Gray in a Noodler’s Creaper to draw it. Color was quickly applied by waterbrushes filled with very, very dilute ink.

Monday I was going to stay home and work but I got the itch to sketch some more and so I wandered downtown. I realized that I had never sketched the Musee de la Civilisation, where I spent the winter sketching. So I took the opportunity and did this sketch of the left end of the museum complex. Back to the S&B Alpha (10×7) for this one and the TWSBI Mini, though I switched to Noodler’s Lexington Gray for ink. I prefer the dark gray lines to the stark black of Platinum Carbon Black.

All and all, it was a great weekend, with good weather, good company, and a great time sketching. I’m still thinking about it as this week it’s been raining almost constantly 🙁

A Bit of Urban Sketching

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Just as spring had sprung and it was starting to be warm enough to sketch outdoors, yours truly decided it was time to get sick. I spent more than a week feeling pretty bad, made all the worse by coming home one day to find water dripping from our first-floor ceiling. I still have a hole in the ceiling to fix but the pipes are holding water again.

Before getting sick, though, I did get out with my buddy Yvan and we rode our bikes on an adventure into Beauport, a suburb of Quebec City. We sketched this house, which I liked very much. I used my Pilot Prera for this one. Same Noodler’s Lexington Gray I normally use.

I did stop in the old city one day as I was returning from French school and I made this sketch in a Stillman & Birn Zeta (5.5×8.5) sketchbook, using a TWSBI Mini and Noodler’s Lexington Gray.

And so, as the weekend approached, and my energy had come back, I was chomping at the bit to go sketching. Mother Nature had other ideas and it rained all day Saturday. Yvan and I went sketching anyway. We headed to the Musee de la Civilisation and while it’s between major exhibitions, it was at least warm and dry and we figured we could find something to sketch there.

What we found was a small exhibit of architectural models of classic structures that were part of old Paris. I chose to sketch Cabaret Le Chat, one of the popular hot spots on the north side of Paris. The model was about 15″ high and fairly well-done, though the building to the right of it lacked any detail, which is how I drew it. Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook and TWSBI Mini fountain pen. I had switched up the ink and was using Platinum Carbon Black.

When we finished there it was still raining and we decided that we should board the ferry that goes between Quebec City and Levis, across the St. Lawrence River. The ferry has a nice, cozy passenger area with big windows and we figured we could sketch from there. We hadn’t included the heavy mist/fog in our calculations as you could hardly see the other side of the river, only a few hundred yards away.

So, we just rode across, got off, and decided to sketch out the windows of the ferry building, catching the next boat (30 minutes) for our return. I still have problems sketching while holding a sketchbook in one hand, pen in the other. I generally perch my sketchbook on my knee or on a table if one is available. I also have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time so maybe it’s just too much for my brain to hold one item (sketchbook) still while moving another (pen) around. This sketch suffers from a case of the wobbles and the fact that I was working quicker than my normal glacial pace. I did this it in a small Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6) with the same TWSBI Mini and Platinum Carbon Black. Color comes from some quick swipes with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils.

I went sketching. It was a wet day, but a good day.

Sketching Visualization And How To Miss Your Bus

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Larry Marshall

A very popular form of sports training is mental visualization, where the athlete visualizes himself doing whatever sport it is they are doing. You can see it in real time by watching a golfer set up for a shot. They’ll look towards their target, staring intently. They’re “seeing” (visualizing) the shot. Seeing the ball travel the ideal trajectory. Then they take a practice swing, again seeing that trajectory. Repeated visualization has been shown to produce positive results. Some suggest that this process is the very basis of positive thinking. It’s the ultimate in what you see is what you get.

I find myself doing this constantly relative to my sketching. During any dull moment you’ll find me ‘drawing’ something, anything, but without a pen and without paper. I envision running the pen around the outline of a house, a sign, a fire hydrant. At other times I’ll just mentally dissect the angles and relationships between pieces of some object. I think this constant practice of my ‘seeing’, making those all important eye/mind connections, has helped me quite a bit as a sketcher.

But there’s been one problem. It causes me to miss my bus. The first time this happened I was waiting for a bus across the street from a major shopping center. I was ‘drawing’ a large sign and got involved with noticing the various tones from the various planes that composed the sign. Only the sound of the bus pulling away brought me out of my trance.

Then there was the day I was waiting for the bus early in the morning. I was looking at rooftop angles, trying to see how they changed as I looked at a row of buildings along the street. It was an interesting mental experiment, until the bus went by as I obviously wasn’t interested in the bus. I was holding my finger up to analyze the angles.

We’ve got a great bus system in Quebec City but if you don’t get on them, they don’t take you anywhere. Lucky for me I always have something to do when I wait the 10 minutes for the next one to come along.

Pilot HiTec V5 (05) Cartridge Pen

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Larry Marshall

This pen, the Pilot HiTec V5 cartridge pen, showed up at our local pen store recently. I’m a fountain pen guy and wouldn’t have even noticed it if not for the display right next to it that held Pilot fountain pen cartridges. For those who like nylon/felt-tip pens for sketching, but who also would like access to the range of colors available to fountain pen folk, may want to give this pen a try.

It’s available with either a .5 mm or .7 mm tip. I bought the .5 mm and its line does compare to a Sakura Micron 05. The ink density and color is similar too but with one very large difference. Pilot inks are not waterproof. This can be good or bad depending on what you’re going to do with the pen.

It made no difference to me as I bought it with the thought of seeing if I could use it with other inks, specifically, Noodler’s Lexington Gray which is my main sketching ink. I emptied the cartridge and used an ear syringe to pressure a bunch of water through the feed/point to clean out the ink contained within. This is a slightly bigger job than it would be with a fountain pen as the feed on these pens seems to hold a lot more ink. Nevertheless, it only took a minute of two.

I filled the cartridge with Lexington Gray and once attached to the pen I squeezed the heck out of the cartridge to pump ink into the feed/point. This would be easier if one were to use a Con-50 converter, which has a plunger that would pressure ink into the pen. Nevertheless, in another minute or so I had Lex Gray coming out of the pen. Refilling, of course, is quick as I just pull the cartridge and use a pen syringe to refill it.

My concern was that the pen would dry/plug up so I waited to write this until I’d had the Lex Gray in the pen for a week or so. While walking through a local park, I made this little sketch of one of my favorite subjects, a park trashcan. Done in a Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6),I was impressed by how the pen performed.

I paid $3 for mine so this pen isn’t a bank breaker and it does open up interesting possibilities for those who prefer felt-tip pens

Newsflash: Weather Responds To Blog Post

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Last Thursday I wrote a blog post titled “Waiting for Spring.” I moaned and groaned that in spite of spring being a month old, it was still too cold to sketch outdoors.

Well guess what happened? On Friday our temperatures increased significantly. We had sun…LOTS of sun. Even the wind died down. So I tucked my sketchbook under my arm and headed out for a weekend of sketching. It was wonderful.

Here’s the first sketch I did. I was out with my buddy Yvan and we’d previously talked about sketching on Rue de la Remparts, which skirts the upper portion of our ‘old’ (founded in 1608) city. So, our first stop was there. I did this sketch in a Stillman & Birn 7×10 Alpha spiral sketchbook. Though I really dislike spiral-bound for storage, I love it for this larger format because I can fold the book back on itself , making it manageable while the book rests on my knees. I used a TWSBI Mini filled with Noodler’s Lexington Gray.

While “warm” by comparison to the previous day, it was still cool and we both ran out of body heat about the same time. So, I snapped the photo above and we headed for something warm to drink. I applied some color later and this was the result.

I suppose some might suggest that the weather changing had nothing to do with my blog post – that it was only a coincidence. I’ll continue to believe otherwise… I think.