A few days ago I talked about Parc des braves and showed you a sketch I’d done of the toilet building. I was back in that neighborhood and decided to draw the large monument in front of the parc. This monument is in tribute to soldiers who died in one of the final battles (1760) of the French-English war. It’s hard to capture a monument this tall but I hope I’ve done it justice.
Stillman & BIrn Beta (9×12), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black
While the mayor of New York wants to eliminate the horse-drawn carriages from Central Park, Quebec embraces them. They are part of our tourist trade and are responsible for relieving tourists from around the world of their money. They also provide an ambiance that is pretty darn special.
I was excited to learn that one of the members of Le Collectif had arranged for us to get a couple hours to sketch at Caleches Quebec and their stable area. It was more than a bit cool the morning we met and I wished I’d worn a jacket, but it didn’t dampen my spirits. There were ten or more of us, sitting in the paddock area, trying to draw the horses who were wandering around in the pasture. I’d drawn a horse statue before but never horses. I definitely need more practice.
Stillman & Birn Gamma, Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black
Poor horses. Every one of them looked better than I depicted them. Here’s a couple more partial sketches.
Practice, practice, practice. Before leaving I decided that I should capture something of the place so I walked out to the entrance and drew the view as you enter the area. It was a wonderful day but please, don’t tell the horses how poorly I drew them. I hang out with these guys all summer as we both march around the old city, me sketching and them making tourists happy.
Stillman & Birn Gamma, Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black
Several of us went sketching at Parc des Braves in Quebec City. I love this park. Aside from its towering monument at the entrance, this park is nothing more than grass, picnic benches and a lot of trees. Still, I love it because it’s so quiet.
A very busy street runs in front of the park but when you enter, the first thing you have to do is descend below street level. From there the park slopes away from the head end of the park. This micro-geography causes the park to be devoid of any city sounds, leaving one to enjoy the tranquility of the park.
When it comes to sketching subjects, the logical choice is the large monument tower that commemorates fallen soldiers but I just wasn’t in the mood for that. Instead I decided to draw the toilet. Doesn’t everyone draw toilets? Urban sketchers do – don’t they? Anyways, here is the Parc des Brave toilet.
Stillman & Birn Gamma (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black
I’ve noticed that since I’ve started sketching that I look up a lot. In doing so I’ve realized how much we miss as we go through a daily routine. But rooftops have lots to offer, as do features on multi-story buildings. In large part, we pass by, never seeing any of it.
So it goes if you sit in the little garden/park in the St. Roch area of downtown Quebec City. The flowers are great. The artificial waterfall is great. Even the people sitting and walking around are great. The constant stream of buses and cars that pass by the park are great. You can draw all day without looking up. But if you do, you see this:
Stillman & Birn Gamma (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black
When I took Liz Steel’s Foundations course she sat down at one location and showed us how she occasionally draws half a dozen thumbnail sketches of different scenes in the area. I didn’t give it much thought as it always seemed to me that urban sketching was more about making a choice, drawing it immediately, and moving on, making thumbnails somewhat redundant.
Shari Blaukopf talks about thumbnail value sketches in her new watercolor landscape course on Craftsy. I think this is a more typical use, with the end result being a watercolor painting using one of the thumbnails as the basis for the painting. Again I thought it not for me.
But I’m still entrenched in my mustache notebooks and when I was out walking the other day I decided to do a bunch of thumbnails as I walked around Quebec City. The notebook is 4×6 but the thumbnails were typically half the page so they were quite tiny. I used a mechanical pencil to do them. And you know what? It’s FUN!!!
Obviously this isn’t great art; that’s not the goal. But it’s really fun to spend no more than a minute or two scribbling down some lines that kinda-sorta looks like the scene before you. Maybe I’m supposed to be having deep thoughts during the process but, frankly, nothing could have been further from my mind. Or maybe it’s that my mind couldn’t have been further from the process. I was just scribbling.
I’ll be doing more of these but I probably won’t be using a pencil. I’m not an eraser guy so I don’t need to use pencil and I simply prefer ink because it doesn’t smear as my hand moves across the paper. Thanks to Liz and Shari, even if I didn’t get the msg the first time around.
Oh, and I did do a more formal sketch of one of these. This one was done in a Stillman & Birn Gamma (10×7) with my Namiki Falcon.
