I’ve long thought that I should do a series of sketches of Quebec City doors. We have many stately, carved or otherwise detailed doors and a set of detailed sketches of them would be nice. This is one of those doors, though this was done rather quickly as I leaned against a wall on a windy day. It is the entrance to the Tetu estate home, an 1800s home in the old city.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550
The Cap Tourmente National Wildlife Area is a great place to get out into nature. It’s a place with lots of short hiking trails through several habitats and, if you go during the week and outside ‘goose season’ it’s largely devoid of humans so it’s QUIET. We city-dwellers don’t get quiet anymore and I think it affects us more deeply than we think..if we think about it at all.
I mentioned goose season. Cap Tourmente is a major stop-over area for migrating geese. In October/November and thousands of geese aggregate there during their journey south. It’s pretty cool to see them turn a marsh white with their presence and fill the sky in squadron-like fashion. But geese bring with them hundreds of humans, filling over-flow parking lots with their pollution devices and that pretty much ruins the experience for me.
But on this day, we were there on a Monday, out of season. The day was delightful. We watched a lot of young hummingbirds at feeders, enjoyed the presence of a young porcupine, saw egrets, blue herons, marsh and red-tail hawks, and we even saw the Perigrine Falcons that nest in the cliffs that overlook the refuge. They told us to beware of bears but the only ones we saw were on the beware of bear signs on the garbage cans.
It wasn’t a sketching day but I couldn’t resist the urge so I did this little landscape while wife and daughter were off investigating the building featured in this sketch.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550
We stopped for lunch and sat near the information center because there is a gaggle of picnic tables there and we were the only ones using them besides a few tussock moth caterpillars.
Once we were sufficiently nourished we decided to head out in the opposite direction, but I spent 2-3 minutes doing this really quick sketch of a copse of trees. Not much but it was still good fun. The washable ink made it even more fun/quick.
Mostly, this day allowed us to fill up on quiet and that’s worth doing. Give it a try, it’s refreshing, particularly during an election year.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (3.5×5.5), Pilot Metropolitan, J.Herbin Cacao de Brezil washable ink.
Quebec City is in the midst of a major infrastructure improvement program that includes replacing our sidewalks, curbs, some of the water and sewer lines, and ultimately, repaving our street. Right now, though, it’s a mess.
We live, from 6:30AM until 5:30 with a near constant beep..beep…beep as big machines and trucks back up, and lots of general construction noise, but the activity does provide sketching opportunities. Sadly, I haven’t take advantage of it because staying indoors or leaving is the only way to buffer against the noise driving me nuts.
When the workers go home, however, they do leave their toys behind and so I sat on my front porch and drew this large water truck whose job is to spray down the street to keep the dust down. Not the most esthetically pleasing sketch but I had fun doing it.
Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover (5.5×8.5)
My friend, Hubert Langevin, is on vacation but he took the time to send me this photo. He knows I don’t sketch from photos but he thought I might make an exception in the case of this big, beautiful stump. I suspect that he might also have been smiling with the thought of me trying to draw it (grin).
It did seem to be a worthy challenge so I dove in with pointy device flying and more confidence than was reasonable. It’s a subject where you could easily get lost so I started very slowly, placing marks at major intersections. Speed picked up as the overall shape was established and I started drawing the internal shapes. More than once I thought of the Cathy Johnson mantra – “they’re only shapes” as I tried to ‘see’ how everything fit together. Once it was drawn I switched to a brush pen (Kuretake #13) to lay in some of the darks.
It was a really fun drawing to do and it was nice to sit at a desk, with no wind, no tripod stool, and the ability to have good light on both photo (actually my computer monitor) and sketchbook.
Thanks, Hubert. This was lots of fun.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (5.5×8.5), Esterbrook J9550, diluted DeAtramentis Document Black
I suspect that Quebec City has more church towers per capita than most place on Earth so a sketcher has many to draw, but none of them comes close to the this amazing structure. It reminds me of structures that the Legos folks come up with when trying to show off the complexity they can produce with colored blocks This church is for sale, by the way, if you need a spacious art studio with some flare.
Anyways, on a sunny, but very windy day, I drew it, having a ball in spite of the wind and having to chase my hat on a couple occasions. Hope you like it too.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (6×9) softcover, Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Brown