My wife is a gardener and she loves to visit garden centers. She was doing just that a couple weeks ago and they were having a big sale. She came home with a car full of plants and a plaster garden cow that, to me, looks like a sheep with horns. I think it’s the stone fur that does it. In any case, it’s cute as can be so I drew it.
Stillman & Birn Beta (8×10 softcover), Platinum Carbon Black, Platinum Plaisir
I was sitting in the park in front of our train station, just enjoying the light water spray from the fountain there. It was a beautiful day and I’d been out doing my walking exercise.
I love the train station and have drawn it several times but never from this angle through the trees. As it turns out I drew it a bit wider than it actually is but she’s still a stately building even if I gave her a bit more weight.
The Artistes dans les parcs provided a unique opportunity to sketch at La Foyer de Charite Notre Dame (I think I have that right). Anyways, it’s a huge estate, built on a hill overlooking the St. Lawrence River. It was built by the guy who started the Bank of Montreal.
It’s a gorgeous place with lots to draw but the hilly terrain didn’t make my bad knee very happy. I was so happy to be out sketching, though, that it didn’t really matter.
Here’s a sketch of my buddy Yvan sketching a fountain. I’ve started using the Moleskine watercolor book I mentioned recently and I really don’t like the paper. The colors just all look dull to me when compared to the same paint on my S&B sketchbooks.
After lunch we were up high on the hill. My knee didn’t want to move, so I decided to draw the coastline I could see when I looked over the cliff. The tide was out and I was faced with this scene.
I did a few other, tiny sketches but otherwise I just sat on the porch and enjoyed the view. What a wonderful day. Now, what do you do with an expensive sketchbook you REALLY don’t like?
I go to our new Grande Marché almost every day. Part of the reason is that I’m trying hard to walk as much as possible to rebuild strength in my bad leg. But the other reason is that there’s just something soothing about seeing all the local farmer produce on display. I can’t really explain why that is so and the hectic nature of lots of people running around buying stuff would argue against it, but it makes me happy for some reason.
The other day I drew the corner of a really large, classic building that used to be the Science & Technology building on the fairgrounds on which the Grande Marché sits (it used to be the Agriculture building). Anyways, I just love the corners of this building. This was a quick and small sketch. Some day I’ll have to do a larger one.
Since my mobility is been limited by my bad knee, it seems I’ve traded in drawing architecture for drawing plants. I can’t say that’s a bad thing exactly but it sure is different, putting me in unfamiliar territory.
I was at another Artistes dans les parcs event, this time at the Domain Maizeret Arboretum. Lots of trees, lots of grass, and a wonderful pond and creek, though this time of year the later is mostly hidden by tall foliage that surrounds it.
Having no imagination at all, I found it difficult to find something to draw. But where there’s a coneflower, there’s something to draw. Better yet, two coneflowers. A botanical artist I am not, but I really had a good time drawing these. For some reason it was very relaxing.
It had become quite hot and I wasn’t in the mood for a complex subject. I got the idea to try to do a very quick sketch attempt of a ‘landscape’ to see if I could manage a minimal ink, mostly color sketch. I drew some steps and then picked up a big brush and started placing blobs of color around them. Near the end I went back to the pen to add some structure.
Mostly I think I failed at this because all my foliage lacks texture and depth. It was an interesting experiment, though, throwing detail to the wind and just capturing the structure of the scene. I post it here because I’m not easily embarrassed (grin).
