Sketching At Parc Chauveau

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Denis Couture, our fearless leader

I don’t know what it is about French but the names of French organizations are impossible. This includes the Collectif des ateliers libres en arts visuels de Québec, the name of an artist group in Quebec City. They were established to facilitate winter life drawing sessions and that is still their principle activity but they are starting to organize outdoor summer activities as well. This past weekend was the second year that we assembled at Parc Chauveau, a park on the north side of Quebec City. It’s a beautiful place. The St. Charles River runs through it, providing considerable sketching fodder.

Organized by Denis Couture, a really nice guy who teaches drawing and photography at a local college, it was truly a shame that on this day, there were only three of us in attendance. The up side is that the day was a bit more laid back as we could do pretty much what we chose to do.

Our first stop was the river, in a place where a large tower of rock, remnants from long-term erosion, juts up from the river. It seemed fitting that we should draw it. I decided it might be fun to put it in the background and to make Fernande, one of my sketching buddies, the central focus for the scene. This was also the first time I got to use my new Namiki (Pilot?) Falcon. I think I’m in love. More on that later.

Stillman & Birn Delta (6x8), Namiki Falcon, Platinum Carbon Black

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

Denis knows the area quite well and he suggested that we climb back up to the road and cross the bridge to the other side of the river where there are rest rooms, picnic tables, and a trailhead for the Parc lineaire trail that runs for 32 km along the St. Charles River. In fact, if I would have followed it for about 16 of those kilometers I would have arrived home.

As we ate lunch Denis suggested that we walk the trail some and that the views from high above the river were wonderful. He was right about that but for my next sketch I plunked my tripod stool down in the middle of the forest, off the trail, and started drawing some unknown plant. For a building guy, I was surprised how much fun this was and how much I wanted to do it. I used a different approach from my usual pen first, watercolor as an afterthought approach. I think I’ll talk about this separately as this post is becoming a bit long.

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

In spite of the poor turnout for the event, we had a really great time. The rest of the folks just missed out.

Sketching Behind The Scenes

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Moleskine watercolor sketchbook (3x5), TWSBI Mini

Moleskine watercolor sketchbook (3×5), TWSBI Mini

The older parts of Quebec City are very tightly clustered. There are no front yards and no space between the buildings. The result is many access portals into the rear parts of the buildings. Sometimes these are simple corridors. Often, though they are wide enough for a car, sometimes with parking available behind the buildings and/or courtyard gardens. I like the ones that lead to lots of clutter.

Here’s one such portal. It was done in a 3×5 Moleskine watercolor sketchbook using Platinum Carbon Black in my TWSBI Mini. Hope you like it.

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

Quick Sketching My River

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Yesterday was the day before the official beginning of summer and so, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I headed out on a long walk and sketching session. The sun was shining and I was whistling a happy tune. Ok…ok… so I wandered into writing the opening for a musical. Suffice it to say, it was a nice day.

But as I walked I noticed the clouds moving in. I noticed the winds pick up. I noticed my happy tune whistling had stopped. I decided to sit on a fake log chair along my river and sketch a bit. I also noticed that I was bordering on being cold and that I would need clips to keep the sketchbook paper from rattling in the wind. So much for a summer day.

I’ve received a couple emails asking me what, exactly, I do with a pencil as a precursor to my ink drawing so I decided to try to illustrate the couple ways I use one. Here is one of them.

This sketch was to be a large-scale, for me, urban nature sketch so I started with a very lightly drawn bunch of scribbles just to locate the various bushes, river, and building. I shot a photo of the pencil layout with my cell phone and later manipulated the heck out of it to get the lines dark enough so you can see them….kinda. This pencil work took 20-30 seconds.

You’ll notice that there’s no detail, not much more than vague lines that locate the various components. All I’m thinking about is location and size of the various shapes and their relationship to one another. By identifying these things I’m then free to concentrate on any part of the sketch without having to think about whether that part will connect to other parts. For instance, because I know where both sides of the river will be in my sketch, I can draw the foreground plants, knowing where they should hide the river.

So out came the pens. I started drawing the foreground using my TWSBI Mini filled with Platinum Carbon Black. The rest of the sketch was done with a Pilot Prera and Noodler’s Lexington Gray. No eraser was abused in the creation of this sketch. Those light pencil lines just disappear behind ink and color.

I worked quickly and admit this is not my best work as, quite frankly, I was getting cold. Yes, that’s right – cold – in middle of June. Who’da thunk it. Total time for this sketch was 23 minutes. I kept track so I could report that as well. I’m sure glad that tomorrow will be summer. I’m getting tired of the cold.

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

St. Charles River Walk

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Last weekend I went for a leisurely walk along my river. There are those, of course, who would point out that I don’t own the river, but I always call it ‘my river.’ Actually it’s the Riviere St. Charles, which is the backbone of a very long, unevenly developed park that runs through Quebec City. I’m just lucky enough to live within a five minute walk of ‘my river’ and I spend a lot of time walking along it.

When I got to my river on Sunday I found a lot of other people using it. Seems I was in the midst of the St. Charles River Walk as there were lots and lots of people, each sporting a number pinned to their stomachs, who were participating in the event.

As I walked I realized that the end point for the walk was in a park that’s just south of the bridge near my house so I headed there, figuing there might be something fun to sketch. I grabbed a bench and did the sketch you see here.

I tried something new, for me. I made a few organizational marks with pencil and then started adding blotches of color. Ink lines came later. I felt like a fish out of water as my watercolor abilities are very limited, but it was still fun.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9x6), TWSBI Mini, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), TWSBI Mini, Platinum Carbon Black