Coffee With Claudette

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Claudette and I went for coffee at Paillards on rue St. Jean. During the tourist season it’s impossible to get a seat there as it’s a great place for lunch or just to have some fine Quebec pastries. But it’s also a fun place to sketch people.

I ordered a café au lait and thought about drawing it but remembered that I’d done that last time I was there. Our session there was a short one but we got to meet a fellow sketcher who was visiting from England. It was fun and the coffee and company was good. Here’s a couple of pages that resulted.

Rainy Day Sketchcrawl A Big Success

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Larry Marshall

The morning of this month’s Croquis de Quebec sketchcrawl bordered on the depressing. It was the proverbial dark and stormy night only it wasn’t night, but it was certainly stormy. I headed to our sketchcrawl in full rain gear, thinking that only Yvan and I, the organizers, would show up as people are reluctant to sketch in the rain. Go figure.

The sketchcrawl was to be in a park near my house so the walk was short. Yvan had arranged for us to be able to take shelter in Maison Dorion-Coulombe to eat lunch. This house is the office of the Societé de la riviere St. Charles, the group that manages the very long (I think it’s 32 km long) Parc lineare. I headed there, and found Yvan, huddled at one end of the long porch that fronts this beautiful house. We lamented our bad luck (the next day was supposed to be warm and sunny) and I sat down to draw some pumpkins that were sitting on the porch.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Yvan got up and said he was going inside to chat with them about our “event” and returned very excited. He was almost at a loss for words as he’d discovered that inside was a cornucopia of things to draw. Inside there were plants and a host of stuffed birds and mammals. And in a large aquarium was a large turtle named Donnatello. He and I talked for quite a while.

Things just got better and better. Cassandra, the woman who runs the place had no problem with us moving the taxidermy and situating it on one of the tables so we could draw it. The cushy chairs were quite a step up from my tripod stool, too. I found that they sell tea, coffee and soft drinks and I ordered a coffee. It was some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Now this was sketching at its finest.

Still, a sketchcrawl of two is a bit of a hollow adventure so it was pretty special when our friends Pierre and Celine came in, followed shortly afterward by Guylaine. The sketchcrawl, without the crawling, was on. We spent the next few hours sketching, talking and even spent some time sitting around a table eating lunch. The time passed too quickly. Here’s a sketch I did of a Northern Saw-whet owl.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6x9), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

Sketching At Quebec City Hall

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Quebec’s city hall is a gorgeous building that spans a hillside, the south end being somewhere around 20-25 meters higher than the north end. It was built back before humanity decided that what a building looked like was unimportant as it was made operational at the end of the 19th Century. It’s got pointy roofs with lots of gables, turrets and a very fancy entrance.

It’s also got a relatively new open area along the south wall, with a shallow pool and fountain and a whole bunch of inviting chair and table sets that, I’m sure were put there for sketchers, though it seems that downtown employees and tourists alike use them when they eat lunch. That’s ok. We sketchers are willing to share.

It was a sunny and, for this time of year, warm day as I arrived downtown. I decided to sit and look around, my sketching equivalent of a dog circling before lying down. I noticed the decorations over some of the windows and decided they would be my target. They were beautiful. They were challenging. What more could a sketcher ask for?

I was trying a new ink, Noodler’s Red/Black. I had filled a Lamy Safari with it and while it’s not my favorite pen, it was handy as a test bed. Red/Black is a washable ink, and each ink has it’s own properties when it comes to how ink lines will respond to water so there’s always a step into the unknown when you add water.

For the second time I made the mistake of trying to do this step with a waterbrush and, more than a little bit, lost control over the washed ink. Real brushes are the only way to go for this if you want to maintain any semblance of control – I’m not a fan of so-called “happy accidents.” But it was a fun afternoon and I hope to repeated it soon, but with more control over the water.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Lamy Safari, Noodler’s Red/Black

A Bad Sketching Day

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Does it ever happen to you? You agree to meet people for a sketching session and when you arrive you’re just not inspired to sketch? It doesn’t happen to me very often but when it does, the results aren’t pretty (grin).

Stillman & Birn Beta (9x12), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (9×12), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

And so it was when I agreed to meet five of my sketching buddies at the Latin Park, or whatever they call the place where there are a bunch of statues of famous South American folks. The smiling faces and upbeat attitudes that always come with sketchers were there and the day was gorgeous, as it’s still considerably warmer than it should be this time of year. But, for some reason, I just wasn’t in the mood to sketch.

I sat down to draw this guy, or this hunk of stone that looks like a guy. I worked faster than normal, mostly because of my disinterest, I think. The drawing result wasn’t horrible but I decided to try something different with the watercolor and made a mess of it.

From there I started sketching one of the most boring buildings in Quebec, the bus station, which is also an expansion to the train station, one of the most beautiful buildings in Quebec. I’d only just begun when everyone finished their first sketches, so we headed into the Dept. of Justice, the back of which looks out on the park, and we found toilets, coffee, and then returned to the park to eat lunch. That was fun and we talked about film festivals, the weather and sketching.

Everyone decided to do some more sketching so I went back to my bus station sketch. Why do we build such bland, soulless structures? As I look around Quebec it’s easy to see that there was a time when people cared about the esthetics of the world around them. Now it’s all just glass boxes full of cubicles. So sad.

Stillman & Birn Beta (9×12), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

After I finished that sketch I did a couple quick sketches of statue pieces but it just wasn’t an inspiring day for me. Still, any sketching day beats a non-sketching day.

Relaxing At Mt Herman Cemetery

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

One of my favorite places in Quebec City is the Mt Herman Cemetery. It’s an old English cemetery that dates back at least to 1800 and is situated on a heavily forested, rolling hill landscape. People go to Mt Herman to read, meditate, walk around, have picnics, let their kids see a bit of nature. Of course, some come for a longer stay, which is the raison d’etre of a cemetery.

Me, I go there to sketch and to enjoy the quiet of the place, and that’s what I was doing about a week ago. During my time there I did a couple sketches. Nothing special, and not much to say about them except that both subjects were crafted during the 1860s. We do live our history here in Quebec.

Stillman & BIrn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black