Sketchcrawl With Le Collectif

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Quebec’s Collectif mostly organizes life drawing and portraiture workshops, but it does, occasionally organize sketchcrawls. One such event took place last weekend when we all showed up at the Place Royale Information Center to sketch in its small museum.

This museum is mostly full of artifacts dug up during archeological exploration of Quebec’s old port area but the basement contains a couple rooms containing kitchen and bedroom furniture, as well as a large collection of traditional clothing. I’m a sucker for old wood and so I ended up there, where I sketched an old kitchen cabinet and a butter churn.

Stillman & BIrn Alpha (10x7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Stillman & BIrn Alpha (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

I took a short break and then turned my attention to a pre-digital age way of having fun, when imagination was the currency. I’d suggest I’m old enough to remember these but this one has wheels, which were invented about the time I was finishing up high school so that would be a lie.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

We finished up the day comparing sketches over a nice lunch. It was a great day.

Hibernation’s Hidden Costs

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Larry Marshall

It’s currently -13F outside. This, they say, is a ‘warming trend’ and in reality it is warmer than it was just a few days ago. But from the perspective of a street sketcher, it matters little whether it’s -13 or -30 outside, I stay inside.

Mid-winter depression is a real phenomenon in places like Quebec, where I live, but for me, it’s more like cabin fever. I spend too much time looking out the windows, wishing for a place to sketch. In previous years our Museum of Civilisation has been that place and the displays there have kept me busy throughout our long winters.

But this year, half of the museum is closed due to a fire that occurred just as winter was starting and what’s left are displays of early animation where you can watch endless series of cartoons and the Olympus exhibit which is filled with lots and lots and lots of plaster statues of Zeus, Aphrodite and their kin.
Sketching them was fun at the outset but I truly am a street sketcher that likes drawing buildings. Yet another plaster head is just not cutting it anymore and so my sketching is floundering somewhat these days. I doodle a lot but it’s just not the same. So, I decided to draw a window. It was just one lowly window, drawn in a 3×5 sketchbook, but it sure felt good (grin).

Moleskine watercolor notebook, Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black ink

Colder Than Mars, They Said

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Larry Marshall

Have you noticed that the news exaggerates everything? They no longer report. Rather, they compete with Downton Abbey and football games for viewers and will do everything and anything to make their program entertaining. I expect that soon, Captain America or Thor will replace Wolf Blitzer as anchor of CNN.

It’s really sad. The week we were told about how Canada was “colder than Mars” a couple days ago. While it’s true that, for a period of a few hours, a part of Canada was colder than where NASA’s robot was on Mars, but Canada didn’t get to -200C when the sun went down like it does on Mars.

Heck, we only got down to -40C and it had warmed all the way up to -36C by the time I got the bright idea to walk to the museum to meet my buddies for a sketching session. For those who are Fahrenheit-challenged, -40C is -40F. Warmer than Mars on a summer’s eve for sure, but still sort of cold by freeze your skin standards.

So off I went, the intrepid sketcher, walking as fast as I could on a 40-minute walk to the museum. A smarter sketcher would have just hopped on a bus but no, I “needed the exercise.”

By the time I got there I realized that I’d been crazy. I could no longer feel my fingers in spite of the heavy gloves I was wearing. My face was on fire and the I was starting to think in terms of how much further I could walk before I’d fall over.

But I finally arrived…warmth. Next problem was how to sketch when I couldn’t feel the pen. I walked around for about 15 minutes before deciding to do a looser sketch than my typical approach, maybe as a result of Liz Steel’s course. I sat down in front of the largest head in the Olympus display. It’s at least two-feet tall and very impressive – more impressive than this sketch suggests. My fountain pens were really cold so I used a Uniball Vision Fine hybrid gel pen, adding a hint of color with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils. Of course, it was drawn in a Stillman & Birn Alpha series sketchbook (10×7).

We took a break, had some tea, and then did a bit more sketching before calling it a day. I took the bus home, a nice, warm bus.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Larry Marshall

I love trains and I was lucky to be a kid when trains were a very important part of our landscape. I’m also lucky enough to have lived long enough that we’re now wishing we had those trains we discarded because our ‘modern’ mechanisms for moving people and goods are becoming economically and environmentally untenable.

I also love my daughter, but she rudely grew taller and taller until, one day, she ran away to college. But it’s the holidays and she was coming home – on a train. Trains, daughter and me, all in the same place. What more could an old man want?

I arrived at the train station about 15 minutes before the train was to arrive and found that her train was going to be about 10 minutes late. Figuring I’d have about 20 minutes before I had to move to the arrival gate, I sat down in the main hall to draw.

I love our train station. It’s something of a shell of its original footprint, with only a few trains and far fewer passengers moving through it’s cavernous insides. Fewer passengers means more room available and in recent years they’ve built a couple smallish restaurants along one wall of the main hall.

I drew one of them (resto can be seen in the interior photo above) in a Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8) with De Atramentis Docu Black. Not having a lot of time, the sketch is a bit on the wonky side but it was fun and I finished up in time to watch the train arrive. Did I mention that I like trains? Oh…and my daughter too.

Happy holidays everyone! — Larry

Stillman & Birn Beta (6x8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Docu Black

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×8), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Docu Black

Artemis: Greek Goddess Of The Hunt

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Long before Katniss Everdeen shot squirrels in the forest surrounding District 12, Artemis was the protectress of nature and the hunt for the Greeks. With her spiffy garb and bow & arrow, she most certainly could have wowed them in any Greek version of the Hunger Games.

As a sketching subject she caught my attention, though the statue I drew from only had the stub of her bow gripped in her hand. I used my artistic license to add her bow. It just wasn’t right that she’d lost it.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (10×7), Pilot Prera, De Atramentis Document Brown