It’s My Birthday!!!

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Have you noticed that as you get older the time between your birthdays gets shorter? Have you also noticed that you’re not as thrilled by them as you once were? Maybe it’s just me. I still act like a kid but I’m old and getting older doesn’t impress me much.

But I just had a birthday that I liked a lot. I’m now a two-year-old sketcher. That’s right, near the end of August 2011, I discovered Danny Gregory’s books and his notion that doing art wasn’t about talent and that it wasn’t about creating great art.

He had the audacity to suggest that anyone could enjoy doing art because the process of doing art, not the end product, is what’s important. As one who has always tried to be creative, but also one who was told he had no ‘talent’ for art, this came as a revelation to me. It was a life-changing event.

And so I started drawing cubes. I’m an analytical type, an ex-scientist, so I felt that if I was going to draw, I needed to start with boxes. In hindsight, I’m glad I did. I drew a gazillion of them. I’d draw one and then try to draw another rotated a bit in one direction of the other from the original. It seemed I was buying a new watercolor book every other day, determined that I’d learn to paint.

But I learned something very quickly. Most watercolor books go like this:

1) Start with a sketch…

2) add a wash…..

3) do something else…

4) finish up with details.

And, to me, this is akin to saying “Want to decorate your own house? Ok, first do all the carpentry and plumbing” but it is the standard way that watercolor books are presented. If you can’t draw, they’re all pretty useless in my opinion.

So I decided that I would spend the first year “learning to draw”, whatever that meant to me at the time. I’m still trying to learn to draw and now figure I’m not going to master it anytime soon. But I do believe that by emphasizing drawing over painting I did myself a great service. For the past couple years I’ve used watercolors but mostly like crayons, filling in areas in my pen and ink sketches as a 5-year old does in their coloring books.

I wish I could share with you some of my early attempts at drawing, but I cannot. All my early sketching was done on photocopy paper and ended up in the trash can. I saw no need to keep any of it, at least until I mentioned this to more seasoned sketchers in an Internet forum. There seemed to be a collective gasp, followed by “Don’t do that. You’ll want to look back some day and evaluate your progress.” They were right and that day was today. I guess that advice came in October 2011 as from then on, everything is in sketchbooks, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Here was my first attempt at a ‘real’ sketch. I did it from a photo as in October of 2011 I ‘knew’ I’d be eaten alive by passers-by if I dared sketch on location. At the time I was pretty happy with it. I guess I still am given that only a month prior I was struggling to draw cubes (grin).

But, since then I’ve filled a sketchbook or three. I’ve become quite passionate about urban sketching. I carry sketchbooks with me wherever I go and I sketch constantly, or so it seems. I can’t seem to get enough. While I’ve got a lot to learn about art in general, and watercolors in particular, I’m sure having a lot of fun and that’s what art is supposed to be all about. Just ask Danny Gregory.

Thick Lines and Quick Hands

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Larry Marshall

One of the days that I was waiting for my hard drive to arrive it rained. I’m not one for sketching from photos but desperation will drive me to such extremes. My pointy device of choice is a very fine pen and I thought it might be an opportunity to play with pens that produce a heavier line and to use them in a more loose fashion than is my norm.

And so I did some quick sketches in a 3×5 sketchbook. Here are four of them.

Done with a Hero 578 ‘bent nib’ pen

Done with Sharpie ‘fine’ pen (not marker)

TWSBI Mini w/Platinum Carbon Black

Done with Hero 578 “bent nib” pen in about five minutes.

The next day I went out sketching and continued the experiment. I stopped to pick up a coffee and drew the car across the street.

Done with Hero 578 “bent nib” pen

I was walking along the St. Charles River and decided to stop and sketch these rudbeckia. I’m not much of a flower sketcher but this was fun.

There is a large water regulation reservoir along the banks of the river and I decided to draw it as quickly as I could. I spent less than 15 minutes on it, which is something of a world record for me when it comes to doing buildings. I found the format too small for a building with all those fiddly bits.

Done with TWSBI Mini w/Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Zeta: A Pen Sketcher’s Dream

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Back in November of 2011 I bought my first Stillman & Birn sketchbook. It was a 5×8, hardcover Alpha-series book. I wrote about the Alpha Series here. In that blog post I said that I liked it very much and I gave several reasons why I felt it outperformed the other sketchbooks I’d tried. I also ran out and bought several more. But as I’d only had it for a short time I added the caveat that “It’s probably premature to draw conclusions that will stick.”

Well, nearly two years and ten S&B sketchbooks in use or filled, I think I can be a bit more definitive…but with another caveat. Stillman & Birn just keeps getting better and better so who knows what ‘best’ will look like in the future.

I find the colors are brighter on Zeta paper, probably because they aren’t absorbed into the paper as much. Makes lifting easier as well.

As I filled sketchbooks, I tried the other Stillman & Birn papers. For the pen & ink work I do, the Epsilon sketchbooks are wonderful to draw on. It took me a while to get used to how the smoother paper accepts watercolor as they stay wet longer and sit on the surface more, which is neither good or bad but different from the more absorbent Alpha. The best equivalency I know is to the differences between cold-press and hot-press watercolor papers. Both of these papers are 100lb papers that, while they outperform any papers of this weight I’ve ever used, they still have a tendency to curl somewhat when lots of water are applied. You can see a bit of shadowing if you use both sides of the paper.

And then I tried Beta, S&B’s 180lb paper. This is surfaced very much like a cold-press paper and provides a fantastic surface for watercolors but not as nice as Epsilon for pen use. By the end of the summer of 2012 I wrote a summary post on these different sketchbooks. I was completely hooked on Stillman & Birn papers and their amazing double-stitched bindings which are second to none. But at the time I thought “They need thick “Epsilon” paper.

Notice how flat S&B sketchbooks lay once they've been broken in.

Notice how flat S&B Zeta sketchbooks lay once they’ve been broken in.

And this is the thing about Stillman & Birn. If you dream it, they magically know you were dreaming and they make it. The Zeta sketchbooks were release a few months ago in response to my dream. I’m betting others were dreaming the same thing.

I use several S&B sketchbooks (different sizes and papers) simultaneously and when the Zeta series was released, I immediately started using one. It quickly became a favorite for my kind of sketching (pen/ink and wash). It’s a merging of best of Beta and Epsilon into one paper as it’s 180lb Epsilon paper. I’m working in my second Zeta sketchbook and it’s hard for me to see any reason to use any other, if the size I want is available with this paper.

There lies the rub as I still use Alpha in 4×6 and 10×7 formats. I will likely buy a 7×10 spiral bound Zeta as a substitute for my 10×7 Alphas but, so far, S&B haven’t produced a truly small sketchbook (thin, 3×5) – my current dream. I hope that when they do it will contain Zeta paper (grin).

Sketching at Chute Montmorency

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Chute Montmorency is a large waterfall just east of Quebec City. It’s a major tourist attraction, a mini-Niagara Falls I suppose. It has all the tourist amenities. Large facility at the base of the falls greets tourists and there’s a large parking lot to accommodate a constant parade of vehicles.

There’s also a tram and a smiling attendant with their hand out. You can pay the price or you can climb a veritable labyrinth of stairs up to the top of the falls. We did neither.

Locals, wanting to get to the top take a metro bus that drops them near the top and next to a hotel that sits at the tram terminus. There’s a wonderful boardwalk that tourists walk along to the falls and it provides spectacular views of the falls as well as the St. Lawrence River. We took the bus.

I met my sketching buddy, Claudette, on the bus and we walked the short trail down to the west end of a large pedestrian bridge that runs right across the top of the falls. The views are pretty spectacular from there. So, what do a couple of urban sketchers do? We set up at the end of the bridge and drew the bridge. We’ll draw the trees, beautiful canyon, and the falls themselves some other day. I guess it truly is a mindset as both of us did this without much thought.

I decided to work in a small format as I’ve been doing a series of smaller sketches. I got out my little Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and started drawing. Claudette did likewise with her 5×8 Strathmore 467-series sketchbook. These are beautiful, brown-covered watercolor sketchbooks, though they are in landscape mode which is not idea in my view.

It seemed that we both finished our linework about the same time as I noticed that she was getting out her watercolors as I reached for mine. She had hers. I did not. I’d left my watercolor kit sitting on my desk.

While disappointing, it allowed me to stand up and move around, giving my old knees a stretch. Then I sat down and did a quick, small sketch of Claudette working on her sketch. Obviously, I added color to my sketches when I got home.

Claudette composed an interesting view of the bridge, sort of zooming in on just the entrance area. I decided to capture more of the entirety of the scene. I like hers better. I always do.

We wandered up Avenue Royale which is a very old street lined with older, though often completely renovated houses. These are majestic houses with lots of what my dad used to call ‘gingerbread’ trim, large front doors and porch areas.

We only found a few dozen things we wanted to sketch but it was time for lunch. Feeling recharged by good food and conversation, we returned to the falls area and I sketched this little snack kiosk, again in my 3×5 watercolor book. Then, we hopped on the bus and came home. Paraphrasing the Terminator…”we’ll be back.”

Small Sketch Series Continued

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Larry Marshall

I’m continuing to fill my small Moleskine watercolor book with sketches. Doing a bit of experimenting, having a lot of fun. I do enjoy this format, though I wish the Moleskine was in portrait format. As you’ll see, most of the sketches I’ve done are in portrait format. Personally, I’m still waiting for Stillman & Birn to do a 3×5, small sketchbook with their great papers, preferably their Beta or Zeta papers.

Until then, here’s a few more small sketches.

This young woman was stoking the fire of an outdoor oven associated with a historic Jesuit mill in the Quebec area. Most of the time she was chopping wood but I did this quick sketch of her tending the fire.

Part of the Charlesbourg library roof is grass covered and you can walk up there. From there you can see another wing of the building which sports this tower. I sat, on a very windy day trying to keep my sketchbook from blowing away as I made this sketch.

A somewhat different lamp that I found in Charlesbourg. Just a quick ink sketch that took only a few minutes.

Part of the Quebec skyline. This was an experiment in quick-sketching using J.Herbin 1670 ink, followed up with a waterbrush to spread the ink a bit. In spite of my typical penchant for straight lines and detail, I liked this one a lot.

For some reason, ferry passengers seem in constant motion during the 10 minute trip from one side of the St. Lawrence to the other. These two actually stood still for a couple minutes as I sketched them.

The people who get to sit on this terrace are lucky indeed as the house is high on a cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence.

I’m a big fan of the complex chimneys on many of the downtown buildings. I couldn’t resist trying to capture the detail of this one.

This is one of three navigational bouys that sit in the Canadian Coast Guard park associated with their Quebec City installation.

This is one of a brace of entry markers at the entrance to one of the local parks.