Sketching Doors In Quebec

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Larry Marshall

If you spend any time wandering the streets of the old city of Quebec you will notice the doors. Everywhere you look, it seems, there are magnificent doors. Some are all wood, some include lots of metal. Others have sculpted stone frames. I’ve always told myself that I should sketch them and I finally took a step in that direction. This is a door at 30 Rue St. Ursule.

I used a Hero 9296 X-fine pen for this sketch. It’s sort of a poor man’s Pilot Prera. It has some virtues, not the least of which is that it’s very inexpensive, and some drawbacks. I’ll probably put together a blog post about it ‘real soon.’

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6), Hero 9296, Noodler’s Lexington Gray

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

A Quick Monument Sketch

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Larry Marshall

Our sketching group arranged a tour of the architecture school. Sadly, they don’t teach drawing with pointy devices anymore. Everything is 3D graphical presentations, a shift that James Richards (an architect) says, in his great Freehand Drawing and Discovery, generates a lot of work for him as he’s often hired during planning/pitch sessions because he can do freehand sketches of proposed ideas.

But we live in a “latest must be greatest” world. Like the trains and warehouses we dismantled when gas was cheap when we ‘knew’ that continuous streams of trucks on the road were ‘best’, I suspect architects will start learning to draw by hand again after there is a generation of ill-equipped architects who can’t.

The tour was fantastic as the architecture department is in one of the old “seminaire” buildings, with vaulted ceilings, Hogwarts-like staircases, and small doorways with, in some cases, the old steel doors you only see in medieval movies.

I got downtown about 15 minutes before we were supposed to meet so I sat down and drew this sketch. There’s a large statue in the square and it’s surrounded by a granite fence on three sides and at each corner one of these smaller monuments.

cheap brown sketchbook, TWSBI Mini, Platinum Carbon Black

Once Upon A Time We Had A Zoo

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Larry Marshall

There was a time when Quebec City had a zoo. It was a good zoo. It was a place where you could go to not only commune with animals but also to walk the large, wooded grounds and have a picnic. Then a really dumb, and completely unavoidable political decision, was made and we no longer have a zoo.

What do you do with a huge tract of land that had a bunch of moats, fences, and buildings scattered all around it. What Quebec did was fence off most of it and turn the front section into a small park to serve the population in the northern portion of the city. It’s a beautiful park, with waterfalls scattered along the small river that runs through it. It’s also just a short bus trip from my home.

My daughter and I went there. She took her Kindle. I took my sketchbook. We had a grand day, enjoying one of the first days where we could be outside without coats. I chose this scene. The small building used to be one of the administration buildings of the museum.

cheap toned paper sketchbook, Pilot Prera, Noodler’s Lexington Gray

Rocks In My World

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Larry Marshall

One thing I want to do this summer is draw rocks and trees. I struggled with both subjects last year so they became part of my ‘figure it out’ list. There aren’t a lot of rock piles in the middle of our city but there are some, scattered around in our parks as points of interest.

As I was walking home I sat down in a park and drew these. Note little bits of green on the foliage. We’re just starting to see leaf buds bursting and even our grass is starting to green up. It’s a welcome sight.

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