Ferns In Captivity

I live on a part of the Earth where you can go into forests and find wild ferns hanging out as part of the forest understory.  So much so, in fact, that fern leaves, before they’ve unrolled, are collected and sold as Fiddlehead greens in our grocery stores during late spring.  This is novel to a guy who grew up in Arizona.

Of course you can also find them kept in captivity, kept by those with greener thumbs than mine.  There were a bunch of them in the same place as the Chinese statues I talked about in my last blog post and I drew one of them as they live in really nice clay pots.  I should have posted the sketch with the statue sketch but I forgot all about it.  I post it here to make up for that omission.

Stillman & Birn Delta (8x10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Chinese Statues In Ste-Foy, Quebec

When they were building it, some of the cynics referred to the grandiose building that was to be Ste-Foy City Hall as the “Taj Mahal.”  It really was on an over-the-top building just to house the mayor and his court.  And the irony is that it wasn’t too many years later that all the smaller municipalities were merged with Quebec City and city governance moved, principally into the Quebec City Hall.

I’m not sure what the function of the building is these days but one thing it does is to keep the rain off a couple of beautiful Chinese statues.  It’s just as unclear why these statues exist in Quebec City but our group took advantage of them to do some sketching during yet another rainy day.  It was a fun days and I hope you like my result.

Stillman & Birn Delta (8x10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10), Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Wandering The Alleyways Of Quebec

We’ve finally gotten a couple days where we could sketch outdoors and we’ve taken advantage of it.  A group of us met to wander the alleyways and do some sketching together and we had a lot of fun doing just that.  What alleyways may lack in terms of esthetics, they more than make up for in the form of interesting shape complexes and textures.  If only there were fewer stairs to draw (grin).

Stillman & Birn Delta, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Every gathering of sketchers has periods where we ignore one another because we’re lost in our sketching but eventually we get hungry and we come together.  This day was no exception and we gathered at the local coffee shop for food and to chatter away about pens and paper.  Then it was back on the streets, or alleyways in this case, in search of something else to draw.

I decided to sketch a sketcher.  Yvan was sketching up a storm when I sat down to sketch him and while I don’t do him justice, he was a cooperative model.  All in all, it was a wonderful day.  We were teased by those couple days of good weather and I’m looking forward to more of them.  Yesterday it snowed.

Stillman & Birn Gamma, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Gamma, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Rain In The Alleyways

Last Sunday was our May sketchcrawl through the alleyways of Limoilu but things didn’t go as planned.  My first sketch was interrupted by rain, big drops hitting the sketch before the ink had dried that created ink splats to form on the page.  A quick run to the coffee shop where Yvan and Ginette shaking off their own rain.

This was Ginette’s first sketchcrawl and we had a great time getting to know each other as we sat in the cafe, sketching people.  Clearly she was the highlight of this sketchcrawl as it just went downhill from here.

We are almost desperate to sketch outdoors and the sketchcrawl was supposed to be our first outdoor sketchcrawl of the year, so when the rain stopped we headed out again to do the proverbial try, try again.  Same results, and in my case it was worse – another sketch ruined.  We decided to pack it in and that was probably a good thing because almost immediately the rain started coming down in buckets.

Stillman & Birn Delta (8x10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

The attempts to sketch alleyways put me in the mood to try again as in Quebec City alleyways provide large shape-clusters that are both appealing to me and challenging, particularly all the stairways going up the back of the structures.  So, when the weather turned nice on Wednesday, I headed out to sketch.  Here are two sketches I did that day.  They don’t have any color on them because I forgot to put my watercolor kit in my bag.  Hope you like them.

Stillman & Birn Delta (8x10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

 

First Outdoor Sketch Of The Year

We’ve completed the first week of May and we have yet to see our first 60F temperatures in Quebec City.  In fact, they say, it may freeze tonight.  But, we now have several crocuses peaking out of the ground and that’s a good sign.  I think they’re teasing but Mr. Weatherman says it may hit 70F later this week so I guess spring has finally sprung.

A couple days ago, however, it did get into the 50s and so I headed out to do some sketching.  I wore gloves, jacket and sweater and it wasn’t too bad as I sketched this building, though by the time I got to adding color, I was ready to move around to warm up.   Here it is, though, my first outdoor sketch of 2016.

Stillman & Birn Delta (8x10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Delta (8×10) softcover, Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black