We Continue The Statue Quest

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Larry Marshall

We gathered at Quebec’s Place d’Armes to sketch the large fountain, or at least the statue that stands atop it. For some reason I just wasn’t in the mood. I’m not sure if it had to do with the subject or my new obsession of sketching in these small, mustache notebooks and their toned paper.

In either case, I decided to continue experimentation with that book, trying different approaches. I turned my attention to one of the buildings. I had luck adding a bit of color previously so I thought I’d see if I could use my waterbrush with dilute ink in it. It worked better than I thought and I’ll use this technique again. No ghosting or bleedthrough on the back side.

At this point the sun left us and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I’ve been amazed at how much being cold has a similar effect on my desire to sketch. What happens is that my attention span goes to near zero so I cope by doing a lot of really quick-sketches, just trying to grab proportions of the people walking around. I won’t bore you with a bunch of scribbles but here’s an example of people walking across a street.

I’ll include this one too as it’s an example of what happens when you decide to draw a guy standing, while talking to a couple people sitting on a bench. I was a minute into this sketch when the people stood up and the three of them walked away (grin). It was time to turn the page and I did.

Once the statue sketchers had finished, it was decided that we’d head to another location to sketch the bust of another guy. At least the sun had returned.

I still wasn’t excited about sculpture sketching and I continued to work in tiny format. It was an opportunity to try red lead in a Pentel Kerry 0.5mm pencil. I did the sculpture sketch quicker than I should have and I generated a head that was too tall, but it gave me time to do a second sketch of a hotel entry on the other side of the street. It was fun and, once again we had a great time.

Spur Of The Moment Road Trip To Ottawa

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Larry Marshall

One of the fundamental skills learned while pursuing a university education is how to dodge and weave through the ever-changing bureaucracy of university administration. My daughter found herself trying to straighten out a registration problem via email. We decided that a trip to Ottawa would go a long way to cutting through the red tape so we piled into the car and headed west.

Cheap notebook, Platinum Carbon Pen, Platinum Carbon Black ink

First stop was administration, where we were handed a number and told to wait. Better organized than when I spent many an hour standing in lines waiting for similar things but still, we got to sit around for an hour waiting for our number to be called. I exercised my mustache notebook and the paper in this $2 sketchbook continues to amaze. I even got brave and put a bit of color on this quick sketch of a couple people, equally bored, who were watching something on their cell phone. No show through, not buckling, no nothing.

Surprisingly, once our number came up, everything was resolved in a matter of minutes and we were off to have fun in Ottawa. We ended up at the natural history museum where this guy posed for me. He seemed as curious about me as I was about him.

Moleskine watercolor notebook (3x5), Namiki Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

Moleskine watercolor notebook (3×5), Namiki Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

I couldn’t pass up the chance to draw some bones and so I chose the head of this monster. As I was drawing I had a nice conversation with a young girl who had more questions than I had answers. She was an absolute delight, though, and interactions like this is one of the reasons I love location sketching.

We were sitting in a park just west of the US Embassy, enjoying manga bubble tea. I decided to quickly capture this view through the trees and I spent a leisurely 15-20 minutes or so doing that. I generally use these small notebooks for really quick sketches but I really found it fun to do a few more precise sketches in them. I think I’ll do more of it.

Moleskine watercolor notebook, Namiki Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black ink

Why Is Confuscius In Quebec City

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Quebec City is a great place for sketchers as we have a lot of stuff to draw. It’s the same stuff that tourists point their cameras at, snapping endless photos, hardly taking the time to actually “look” at anything.

One thing that has always baffled me about Quebec City, however, are the statues. We have statues of EVERYBODY. Gandhi, Churchill, Japanese Emperors, what seems to be every South American general that ever lived – EVERYBODY. Why this is I can’t fathom a guess. More odd is that there are many prominent Canadian and Quebec historical figures who don’t have a statue. Go figure.

Anyways, the members of our group decided we were going to draw Confuscius. Yep, we’ve got a statue of him. When we showed up, it was decided that it would be best to wait an hour or so for the sun to move and maybe, just maybe, we could get some contrasting shadows. As it turned out, we didn’t have enough sun to make a difference but that’s how street sketching goes sometimes.

The group decided to draw De Gaulle (yep…got a statue of him too) but I wasn’t interested. Instead, I wandered around the area and never did get inspired, probably because all my buddies were huddled around the De Gaulle statue.

Ultimately I returned to find them about half done with their sketches so I sat down, got out my doodle book and started drawing his hand, which I did poorly. Then I started drawing a lamp and did so until everyone was ready to move on.

These doodles were done with a Pentel Kerry 0.5mm pencil with Faber-Castell red lead. This lead is less pink than most others I’ve tried and I really like how it looks. The brown paper is in the cheap ‘mustache’ books I talked about recently. I’m really enjoying those but have only found them in one of our dollar stores. Not sure what’s up with that but I now own a dozen of them. I’m a shameful notebook hoarder. Oh…sorry about those black marks. I guess I was testing a pen or something as those marks were there before I started drawing on the page. These are doodles, after all.

On to Confucius. Surprisingly, he was waiting for us, with the same pose as when we left him. Statues are like that. We all set up on the sidewalk across the street from him and started making marks. Sketchers always have the same pose too. This was my effort. Thanks to Confucius for standing still so long.

Stillman & Birn Beta (9x12), Pilot Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (9×12), Pilot Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

Quebec City In 1759 – Well, Almost

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Larry Marshall

The short story that everyone is taught about how Quebec City went from being a French colony to one in which the British were in charge goes something like this:

Battle on the Plains of Abraham
The Brits sailed up the St. Lawrence and spent some months lobbing cannon balls at Quebec City. The French lobbed some back. Then the British climbed the cliffs to the Plains of Abraham, where General Wolfe and General Montcalm pointed their respective troops at one another and after a short battle, the British prevailed and both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed.

There is truth to that story but so is “The Roadrunner ran fast and Wile E. Coyote got an anvil on his head.” There’s just more to it than that. In point of fact, there were battles up and down the St. Lawrence and Wolfe and Montcalm’s troops had more than one encounter.

What does any of this have to do with sketching? Well, Le Collectif arranged a sketching adventure to Maison Vezina, a beautiful house and historic site that sits on the east side of Montmorency Falls, a huge waterfall that is fed by the Montmorency River and which dumps into the St. Lawrence.

This house is fully renovated and was home to the Vezina family for much of its existence. But prior to that this area was one of the encampments of General Wolfe. Back then, the buildings were a bit more spartan but neverthess, they indicate the longer-term nature of the battles for Quebec. Wolfe had built a fort, complete with dry moat as well as several buildings on this high perch above the St. Lawrence. From there he could see the French troops on the other side of Montmorency Falls and had a good view of Quebec City itself. It’s likely that he could also see his ships and encampments on the south side of the St. Lawrence. It was an ideal place if you were a British general.

There are many things to draw in this area but I settled on the more mundane, the main doorway into Maison Vezina. I just liked the rocking chair on the porch.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6x8), Pilot Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8), Pilot Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

Sketching Is A Windy Business

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Larry Marshall

It’s very windy here at this time of year, but the temperatures and sun (heck, it was all the way up to 16C this day) has caused my emergence from hibernation and I’m dancing in the streets.

I headed towards the port area. At this time of year the boat yard operators are like squirrels, looking for nuts. There’s a constant scramble to set up the marina docking system (removed for winter so it’s not destroyed by ice) and to get the boats back in the water.

But this day it was very windy. I tried to find a place to sit out of the wind that also gave me something interesting to sketch and I failed. In the end, I was sitting at a picnic table that sits in front of the farmer’s market. My thought was that if I was going to sit in a 30 km/h wind, it might be nice to have a platform for my sketchbook. The platform was nice – the 30 km/h not so much.

I drew the Telus (cell phones) building, hiding a lot of it behind trees, which are much more interesting than the building. It was done in a Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8) with my Pilot Falcon and Platinum Carbon Black.