A Visit to Bugel – The Bagel Maker

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Larry Marshall

In my continuing quest to eat my way through Quebec City, sketching as I go, Claudette and I visited Bugel – Fabrique de Bagels, a small place that makes some of the best best bagels I’ve ever tasted. Situated at 164 rue Cremazie, it is hidden from the main traffic corridors but the locals know it well. Besides, there are a great used bookstore across the street that has a lot of art books I can’t afford, but looking is free.

It was a nice way to spend the morning, though we had to cut it a bit shorter than our normal sessions as had things to do before Christmas eve. Claudette managed to sketch a bunch of the patrons, many of whom were running in to pick up orders and each time someone came through the door, we’d get a blast of Quebec air, which kept us quite alert. This is the time of year where I conclude that I will be permanently ‘cold’ until sometime in June.

Here’s my sketch. The funny thing on the side is the stained glass address that rests above the door. You might be able to make out the 164 (backwards) but it was really a failed attempt on my part. Too much of an afterthrought. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (4x6), Pilot Prera, Kuretake brush pen

Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6), Pilot Prera, Kuretake brush pen

Sketching At Paillard In Quebec City

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Larry Marshall

The first restaurant I sketched was the new Paillard in one of the Quebec City Malls. You can read about it in a post about the brown-paper sketchbook, if you like. This one has few walls and I sketched it while standing outside the restaurant.

But there’s another Paillard that is more famous, if restaurant fame is measured by being part of tourist’s agenda items when they visit Quebec City. This one, the original Paillard, is in downtown Quebec City, the “old” city, on rue St. Jean. This is not a really old cafe where poetry was read and music played in the 60s like Chez Temporel. In fact, when I came to Quebec City long ago to do a post-doctoral fellowship, the location of Paillard was a grocery store ‘down the street’ from my apartment and I shopped there regularly.

But in the intervening years I moved away and Paillard took the place of the grocery store. It has become a ‘hot spot’ for tourists. It’s a large, brightly-lit and roomy melange of a bakery and a café. Their pastries are wonderful but the real star is their frothy coffee drinks, including one of my favorites, the bol de café au lait. I’m mostly ignorant of differences between latte, cappuccino, and the other frothy drinks are but in the case of café au lait I think it’s heaven. While I normally drink my coffee black, I’ll break with tradition for a bol de café au lait. It’s strong coffee with lots of frothy milk added to it and I add a bit of brown sugar to the mix. But it’s the bol part of the equation that’s important…it comes in a soup bowl so you get a lot of it.

I’m rambling. Sorry. Claudette and I went to sketch Paillard the other day and we had a great time. I got my bol de café au lait and a muffin. She was less of a cochon (pig) and got a regular café au lait. We were there early and pretty much had the place to ourselves. There were a couple people sitting behind me and Claudette started sketching them. With no people in my sight line I drew food and chairs and tables. Ultimately I did quickly sketch a woman who was ordering something, maybe her own bol de café au lait . Here is my tribute to Paillard.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (4x6), TWSBI MIni, Platinum Carbon Black

Stillman & Birn Alpha (4×6), TWSBI MIni, Platinum Carbon Black

Tis The Season To Be Jolly?

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Larry Marshall

Bah! Humbug! – Ebeneezer Scrooge

When I was a kid the best part about Christmas was that my train got set up under the Christmas tree. Well, that was the second best thing. The best thing was that, back then, the icicles we put on the tree were made from aluminum, not plastic like they are now and, if you laid one across the rails of my train tracks, you could make sparks. Yeah…THAT was the best part about Christmas.

But these days? Am I really suppose to be ‘jolly’? Are you kidding me? Modern Christmas seems to be one painful experience after another – like shopping.

I was Christmas shopping the other day. I hate crowds so you can imagine the thrill this was for me. Aside from not being able to find what I was looking for, a woman ran into me and almost knocked me down. She said she didn’t see me (I am only 6-feet tall after all). I spent half an hour wandering around without finding anything on my ‘to buy’ list. No, that’s not correct. I found scotch tape.

Being frustrated I sat down in the mall. Sitting felt good and very soon I had my notebook in hand and I sketched a lamp post and associated thingies (technical term meaning “I don’t know what they are”).

I was trying my new Pilot Penmanship which is the finest-writing fountain pen I’ve ever experienced. It was not pleased by the el cheapo paper in my dollar store notebook (3×5) and kept picking up paper fibers. Nevertheless, it was good therapy and I even smiled when the guy who was watching me told me it was a good sketch.

So…I went back into the fray. I decided try the new French store, Target. We’re just starting to get them here. Wander…wander…wander. Ah…score…I found the battery we need for the door chime and one of the items on the gift list. Only a little… some… a lot more to do. Sigh… guys are not designed for this shopping stuff. We have insufficient stamina. Frustration is back. Time for tea.

At the food court, sipping tea I got from Tim Horton’s. They’re better at coffee. Notebook is out again and I quick-sketched people who, like me, are sitting around, wishing they were somewhere else. You can see the frustration on their faces… nobody is jolly. Or maybe I was jnust projecting. Oh how I long for the days of aluminum icicles on railroad tracks.

Drink And Sketch, Drink And Sketch

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Larry Marshall

On my way back from a discussion with a bank manager I stopped into a place for a cup of tea and the possibility of sketching an interior scene. It wasn’t the Taj Mahal but what the heck, it was great practice. Here’s the result, done in a Stillman & Birn (4×6) Alpha sketchbook. I used a TWSBI Mini as my pointy device.

While the counters, coffee and tea didn’t move, the people did as one after the other, a person came to the counter, paid for something, and left. I’ve been asked several times about how I set up a sketch like this and I thought it might be time to oblige.

It’s fashionable in internet-land to proudly state that one doesn’t use pencil. Ink is the only way to go. Well, I’m an ink guy and most of my sketching is done in ink. But I’ve also learned that laying down a few bones beforehand allows me to concentrate on the drawing of each section of a sketch and prevents my ideas from running off the page.

So, I start with a pencil, a 3H pencil to be exact. I draw lines to represent the major vertical and horizontal components. I’ve indicated the pencil work for this sketch in red. Once done, I can look at the paper space and compare it to the scene, ensuring that things are going in the right direction. Note how few lines are actually required. This is not drawing; it’s organization.

In this case I also wanted to place a person and I could use counter height and the verticals to locate her. I’ve indicated three small pencil lines in yellow that define the top of her head, her shoulders as well as the bottom of ‘her’ coat. The reality is that the coat was drawn mostly from the first customer but also the second, who contributed the legs/shoes. A third provided the head, but as I had these little lines in place, it was easy to cobble together a person for my scene. Given how light the pencil lines are, I rarely see a need to erase them when I finish so no eraser was harmed in the creation of this sketch.

Could I do this with dots from a pen? Sure. When I did Brenda Swenson’s 75-Day Challenge (limits you to ink only) that’s exactly what I did. But it’s far easier to see the scene structure with some lines than with a few dots and a .5mm pencil isn’t that heavy so I carry one for this purpose. Besides, if layout underpinnings was good enough for the master artists of the 18th and 19th Century, why shouldn’t it be good enough for me (grin)?

The next day I was meeting a friend for tea at one of my favorite haunts and this guy, all scrunched down in his chair caught my eye. I sketched him and then just kept going, ending up with this scene.

How Long Does It Take To Do A Sketch?

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Larry Marshall

One thing that many of us who sketch on location talk about is how much easier it is to fit sketching into a busy schedule. We contrast it to creating fine art and the need for large blocks of time. We emphasize the point by quoting the many laments from fine artists about not having time to do their art.
There is truth to our claim but, on some level we exaggerate, as when many of us sketch a complex scene, or simply a sketch with lots of detail, we can burn away a couple hours without problem, and many a fine art piece is created in the same amount of time.

But, nevertheless, what we say is true. I sketch almost every day, often more than once a day. Unless you’re making your living as a fine artist, few could make that claim. As I look at what I do and how I do it, I see that there is a ‘trick’ to fitting sketching into a busy schedule, whether it be by wandering the city as a street sketcher or sitting at home doing sketching at the kitchen table. For lack of a term for this trick, I’ll call it time-result flexibility.

I learned this concept from Yvan Breton, the guy who has taught me more than anyone else about drawing. What amazes me about Yvan is his ability to do 30-second sketches, 2-minute sketches, 20-minute sketches, 2-hour sketches, and pieces of fine art requiring multiple sessions and many hours. I guess, to be more precise, it isn’t being able to draw something over differing periods of time as any drawing book will talk about doing gesture sketches, contour sketches, and various forms of more detailed art.

What is impressive about Yvan is that he does this seamlessly, magically fitting a true, realistic sketch into each of these time frames. He has developed the ability to assess his available time and approach and develop his sketch such that, as the wizard Gandalf said in Lord of the Rings, “arrives exactly when he means to” and his sketches are complete. Short time periods, of course, have less detail. Maybe one could argue that they are less precise, but it’s really hard to tell and, to me, that is downright magical.

And while some sketchers fit sketching into their busy schedules by always sketching quickly, I encourage those interested in fine art to consider this alternative approach – adjusting the result of your sketch to the time available for it. This does require adjusting your expectations to time frame but it goes deeper than that. It means being able to identify and prioritize the various aspects of what you’re drawing and organizing your approach to capture the high priority things, in a quick sketch, adding a few more if you have a longer time and only capturing everything when you have an unlimited amount of time.

I know..I know…this is simply restating “just simplify” but that’s not what I’m talking about. We can talk about ‘keep it loose’ til the cows come home but loose is a different debate entirely. Yvan can do this time-result trick with portraits and each of them will look LIKE the person he’s drawing.

I wish I could better describe his thoughts and actions as if I could understand and do it well myself, I might better use words to explain it. I cannot, but it is something that we can all think about and with practice implement in your own work. The first step is to think about the time-result equation as you sketch.

The next step, I’m convinced, is to start drawing in radically different time frames. I was resistant to this idea, mostly because I couldn’t do it. The thought of drawing anything in 30 seconds was beyond my abilities. Heck, the thought of drawing anything in 20 minutes was beyond my abilities until I’d drawn a few hundred things that took 1-2 hours. But you’re all more experienced than I am, right? So give it a try.

Pilot Prera and Lex Gray in a waterbrush

Here are my attempts at this sort of thing, all done within the last week or so. The first is a very quick sketch of a friend. I spent about 30-seconds capturing his shape, and little more, as he was talking to someone.

Is it great art? Nope, but I can look at it and remember that day. I also got some practice capturing a shape quickly. I got to do art while I waited for him. I had fun. I’m just guessing but if I do another 120 of these I bet my ability to do it will improve. What do you think? And how long will that take to do 120 sketches like this? In real sketching time, ONE HOUR, and it will be one hour spent drawing instead of just standing around. Everyone has ‘dead time’ in their life.

Platinum Carbon pen, 3×5 notebook

I was out to lunch with a friend and afterwards he had to stop at a store, run in, and pick something up. I sat in the car for 3-4 minutes. As I sat I realized there was a building before me so I got out my small sketchbook and started drawing. I spent 2-3 minutes on this sketch before my buddy returned and I quickly slapped on some color before scanning it. I could have just sat and watched cars drive by but what fun would that be? Doing 100 of these sketches would require seven hours of waiting for people, sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for lunch to be served. Sadly, we all spend lots of time doing nothing. And again, the result is fun and I get more experience “seeing” things and recording them. If you did one of them a day, you’d have 365 sketches like this at the end of the year.

Pilot Prera, 3×5 notebook

I was in a mall, again… waiting. I looked up and noticed the large light fixtures that light the mall corridors. I’d been in the mall a gazillion times but never noticed them before. Again, I got out my sketchbook and spent 10-12 minutes drawing one of those lights. I found it something of a challenge as I always have trouble with angles when I have to look up a lot. In the end, though, the waiting became fun and productive.

When I have more time, but not enough for a complex scene, I’ll do something like this:

Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Ink, Stillman & Birn Zeta (6x9)

Pilot Prera, Platinum Carbon Ink, Stillman & Birn Zeta (6×9)

Which one do you like best? Yeah…me too, but those quicker, more spartan sketches allow me to build the ability to do the sketch above in about half an hour.

And when I have a lot of time, I’ll do something like this:

I can’t tell you how long this sketch took me except to say that I need a significant block of time to do a sketch like this. If I only did sketches like this I would have a lot less fun, a lot less often, and I’d have a lot less experience in laying line to paper than I currently have. The time-result ‘trick’ is working for me. My results are not up to what Yvan can produce in a few minutes but if I’m convinced that working in different time frames, fitting in as much drawing as I possibly can into my life, I will improve. Maybe it can help you as well.