Tag Archives: Location Sketching

Halloween In Sketches – Day Four

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This is day four of my warmed-over Halloween/Thanksgiving sketches.  It’s also Halloween and I hope you all have a Happy Halloween even if you aren’t out trick-or-treating and/or scaring other people or yourself.  Here’s another couple sketches I did last year at this time.  Hopefully by October 2021 things will be a bit better for all of us.

I got lucky with this sketch.  Anyone who has tried knows that sketching moving people is hard.  In this case there was a very long row of kiosks and this mother was enjoying (??) some time with her son.  He wanted to touch everything, of course, and so it was fun to watch the interaction as they looked at pumpkins.  I was lucky because I started grabbing the people shapes as they stood in front of one kiosk and they took up a position that was almost identical, in front of another kiosk and stood there for a while.  I drew them and then the the first kiosk full of pumpkins.  One thing about pumpkins, they don’t move.

This is my best Halloween sketch ever, though the credit must go to the people who mounted a huge spider on their house.  I was riding the bus home from a doctor’s appointment when I first saw it.  The next day I went back, sat across from the house on a very busy street and drew it.  Isn’t it amazing?

Halloween In Sketches – Day Three

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This is day three of my Halloween celebration.  I have to confess that I’ve been a bit sheepish about presenting the sketches that I did many years ago.  I’m not very good artist but I used to be much worse (grin).

I did this one in 2019 and I guess it’s really more of a Thanksgiving display.  It was just outside the large farmers market near my house.  I sat at the edge of the parking lot as I drew it and there was a steady stream of people stopping to take a look.  I really enjoy those interactions, though I struggle with my French.  People in Quebec are nice, though.  Nobody laughed.  This was a “take my time” sketch and I took a lot of time.  I was also quite frozen when I finished.

This is another 2019 sketch. Given the synchrony of Canada Thanksgiving and Halloween, lots of pumpkins are sold at this time of year.  I’ll post a couple more tomorrow.

 

Halloween In Sketches – Day Two

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Yesterday I started celebrating Halloween by posting sketches I’ve done during past Halloween seasons, you remember….before COVID.  Here are a couple more.  This one I remember well because I “knew” that someone was going to get upset with me standing, almost in the street, sketching their front door.  This was done in 2013.

This one was done in 2015.  It’s of a display they put up in front of city hall.  And yes, the manikin looks that stiff (grin).  More tomorrow.

 

I’m A COVID Victim… Sort Of.

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Today is Sep 22nd.  I’m supposed to be in an operating room, getting my bum knee overhauled.  It’s not happening.  The reason it’s not happening is that some Quebecers felt that having Karaoke night at a bar while others were having large group parties was more important than keeping the COVID case numbers low in Quebec.  We even had a bunch of anti-masker idiots protesting in Montreal just to add some spice.

The result?  We’ve got a couple hundred cases a day of COVID in a province that had successfully suppressed COVID transmission (lockdowns, slow_openings, and mask mandates were doing the job) to almost nothing.  We were having day after day of zero deaths…and then the parties began.

How does this affect me?  Well, I was supposed to have surgery in the spring, but COVID came along and the province shut down all elective surgeries.  That was understandable – they needed the bed space.  But we “flattened the curve” as the media are fond of saying and, just a while ago the surgery troops started working again.  My operation was scheduled, until it wasn’t.  The province has shut down surgeries again and thus I will continue to hobble my way through life.  I take some solace in the fact that those who believe that masks are too much of a bother and cancelling a party is hard on their libido have now given me nowhere to go either.  What is wrong with humans?

But it was apple-picking time here in Quebec and Chantal and Jodie like to pick apples every year so we went last week to pick some.  I confess that I find it a bit odd that you pay a premium to pick your own apples, but they tell me it’s fun and so I go along.  I don’t pick apples, however, I draw them.

A Visit To Baie St. Paul

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Shari Blaukopf recently spent several days in the Baie St. Paul area painting up a storm.  As I read her blog posts I thought of times when Chantal and I had visited the area and how much fun it was.  While we couldn’t go for several days, we decided to do a day trip there and back.  That meant a two hour drive in each direction so we wouldn’t have much time there but heck, it would satisfy our wanderlust.

The drive was enjoyable.  Just getting out and driving through forest and field was a treat.  When we got there we hunted down the place Shari mentioned that made 100% cotton paper.  It was nice, but I found the papers too thin (seemed mostly for writing) and too expensive.  So, we walked across the street to the Maritime Museum of Charlevoix, another of Shari’s stops.  It’s an interesting place, a place where cargo ships were stored during winters.  Since the display ships are all out of the water and sitting at an odd angle, I didn’t draw any of them (excepting a small, quick sketch of the tugboat that showed up in a previous blog post).

Instead I was thrilled to find tractors and stationary steam engines on display.  These provided power to move the ships around.  And so I drew one of the steam engines.  The sketch isn’t my best.  I found the subject more complex than I thought it would be and didn’t devote enough time to blocking in its proportions and relationships.  Oh well.  We had a great time anyway.

I’m both fascinated and frustrated by the effects the COVID scourge has had on my feelings and decision-making.  One of the really fun things to do in Baie St. Paul is walk down Main St. (don’t think it’s called that), visiting the high-end boutiques and art galleries.  Of course we had to do that – or did we really.  As we were wandering I felt that I shouldn’t be there.  The very notion of being in a store “just to look” has left me and all I wanted to do was get out of there.  Chantal felt the same way.

Ultimately we had our first meal in a restaurant since February and I had to chuckle over the fact that our choice of restaurant had little or nothing to do with what they were serving and everything to do with how few people were in the restaurant.  Such is life these days.  Hope COVID is treating you well.