We’re getting bonus summer here.  Maybe it’s payback for the lousy June and July we had 🙂  In any case, I’ve been taking advantage of it and doing a lot of walking and sketching.

I found myself on Rue St. Jean, one of the iconic streets that lead from the old city through, coincidentally, the St. Jean Gate.  A few blocks from the old city is an old church and an accompanying cemetery with headstones that date back into the 1700s.  This was the ‘edge of town’ cemetery back then, I suppose.

It has become a park, as the graves were all moved at some point, though many of the original gravestones remain, it’s where downtown people go to eat lunch and enjoy the trees and park benches.  I was going to draw some of the old head stones, but as I rounded the end of the church I saw this store across the street from the church.  I’m sure I’ve walked under those awnings a bunch of times but I’ve never noticed them.  From the cemetery the store was hard to miss and I found the place really cute.  So I drew it.

ps – I was asked the other day what watercolors I use.  I use Daniel Smith and love them.  I wish they’d pay me to say that but they don’t.  You can get their color chart here.

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

Standing on the corner…
    …watching all the girls go by. — Four Lads

I’m old enough to remember a time before rock-n-roll.  It was an era between big band music and Elvis Presley, where pop music came either from crooners or quartets of men or women.  Lyrics were silly, but happy.  Melodies simple and memorable.  When I was a kid there was a song, Standing on the Corner, whose melody caught the attention of this kid.  I must have been six or seven.

As an old sketcher I was standing on a corner and I suppose there were girls walking by, but what I noticed was the light pole and the block wall next to it.  In the background and up the street a bit is where Rene Levesque lived, undoubtedly the best known and most beloved of Quebec’s Premiers.  I did this quick drawing of the scene.