Larry D. Marshall's Blog, page 12

Halloween In Sketches – Day Three

This is day three of my Halloween celebration.  I have to confess that I’ve been a bit sheepish about presenting the sketches that I did many years ago.  I’m not very good artist but I used to be much worse (grin).

I did this one in 2019 and I guess it’s really more of a Thanksgiving display.  It was just outside the large farmers market near my house.  I sat at the edge of the parking lot as I drew it and there was a steady stream of people stopping to take a look.  I really enjoy those interactions, though I struggle with my French.  People in Quebec are nice, though.  Nobody laughed.  This was a “take my time” sketch and I took a lot of time.  I was also quite frozen when I finished.

This is another 2019 sketch. Given the synchrony of Canada Thanksgiving and Halloween, lots of pumpkins are sold at this time of year.  I’ll post a couple more tomorrow.

 

Halloween In Sketches – Day Two

Yesterday I started celebrating Halloween by posting sketches I’ve done during past Halloween seasons, you remember….before COVID.  Here are a couple more.  This one I remember well because I “knew” that someone was going to get upset with me standing, almost in the street, sketching their front door.  This was done in 2013.

This one was done in 2015.  It’s of a display they put up in front of city hall.  And yes, the manikin looks that stiff (grin).  More tomorrow.

 

Halloween In Sketches

Every year, during this last week in October, the sketching community posts a flood of great sketches of pumpkins, witches and ghouls of all sorts.  It’s not happening this year because we’re all sitting inside, looking out on a world that has cancelled Halloween.

But you know, we all say that our sketching provides memories, that we’re documenting our world, and we HAVE done exactly that for many Halloweens in the past.  Soo…what I’m going to do is post a couple of my old Halloween/Thanksgiving sketches each day until Halloween.  Thanksgiving in Canada is in the same month as Halloween so pumpkin displays sort of merge together.  That’s why I’m going to include some of those sketches.

To start things off I’ve gone way back.  These are the first pumpkin sketches I ever did.  The first one was done on a very rainy, cold day and I remember sitting under the eave of our farmer’s market as I sketched it.  Mostly I remember the cold.

We always claim that each sketch we do conjours up personal memories of the day we did it.  I’m afraid this one does not.  I have no idea and I suspect that’s because I set up the still life in our kitchen or some such.  Note the dates here…October 2012

More tomorrow.  I encourage others to do the same.  Let’s not let these holidays pass uncelebrated just because of a pesky little virus.

Pointy Devices Do Weird Things Sometimes

As a street sketcher I feel more than a little lost in our modern COVID world.  Our plein air group had to cancel its season of outings and the portrait group has moved to Zoom (my French isn’t good enough for that), and cancelled their outdoor sessions as well.  I try, very hard, to get excited about drawing at home but I guess I’m just not built for it.  Mostly I’m dabbling with watercolor, gouache and even oils, trying to learn something about paint while largely not producing anything of significance.

The portrait group decided to do monthly prompts just to get us doing something and this week the prompt was “chair.”  Most of the time, when one of my pointy devices gets near paper, I draw something that is in front of me.  Somehow, this time, this dripped from my pen.  Maybe it was because I was using my Kaweco Lilliput that has a high cute factor.  This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be so maybe I should do more of it.

Hahnemuehle Cappuccino sketchbook, Platinum 3776, DeAtramentis Document Black

Drawing Leaves In The Park

I had fun at the park this week.  I sat down to enjoy the fresh air and all the greenery and noted that in spite of the end of September date, our leaves have ignored the day length changes and had not started to change colors yet.  It has, indeed, been an odd weather year.  It was 25C as I sat in the sunshine.

But I noticed a couple red leaves on the ground.  There must have been blown there because I couldn’t see where it came from.  It gave me a leaf to draw so I put it on the bench next to me and quickly sketched and painted it.  This motivated me to look for more and while I did find a couple more red leaves on the ground, what caught my eye was a tiny little maple tree, sticking out of a garden area.  I decided to sketch a few of its leaves and add a splash of red to them as well.  If I were a real nature journalist I’d write stuff on this spread.  I guess I am not a nature journalist (grin).

I’m becoming quite fond of the Hahnemuhle Cappuccino sketchbook.  It’s definitely not a watercolor sketchbook but it’s a dream to draw on with pen and as long as I don’t get carried away with the water, adding watercolor works pretty well.  I suspect I’ll buy another when this one is full.

lHahnemuehle Cappuccino sketchbook, Platinum 3776, DeAtramentis Document Black

I’m A COVID Victim… Sort Of.

Today is Sep 22nd.  I’m supposed to be in an operating room, getting my bum knee overhauled.  It’s not happening.  The reason it’s not happening is that some Quebecers felt that having Karaoke night at a bar while others were having large group parties was more important than keeping the COVID case numbers low in Quebec.  We even had a bunch of anti-masker idiots protesting in Montreal just to add some spice.

The result?  We’ve got a couple hundred cases a day of COVID in a province that had successfully suppressed COVID transmission (lockdowns, slow_openings, and mask mandates were doing the job) to almost nothing.  We were having day after day of zero deaths…and then the parties began.

How does this affect me?  Well, I was supposed to have surgery in the spring, but COVID came along and the province shut down all elective surgeries.  That was understandable – they needed the bed space.  But we “flattened the curve” as the media are fond of saying and, just a while ago the surgery troops started working again.  My operation was scheduled, until it wasn’t.  The province has shut down surgeries again and thus I will continue to hobble my way through life.  I take some solace in the fact that those who believe that masks are too much of a bother and cancelling a party is hard on their libido have now given me nowhere to go either.  What is wrong with humans?

But it was apple-picking time here in Quebec and Chantal and Jodie like to pick apples every year so we went last week to pick some.  I confess that I find it a bit odd that you pay a premium to pick your own apples, but they tell me it’s fun and so I go along.  I don’t pick apples, however, I draw them.

A Visit To Baie St. Paul

Shari Blaukopf recently spent several days in the Baie St. Paul area painting up a storm.  As I read her blog posts I thought of times when Chantal and I had visited the area and how much fun it was.  While we couldn’t go for several days, we decided to do a day trip there and back.  That meant a two hour drive in each direction so we wouldn’t have much time there but heck, it would satisfy our wanderlust.

The drive was enjoyable.  Just getting out and driving through forest and field was a treat.  When we got there we hunted down the place Shari mentioned that made 100% cotton paper.  It was nice, but I found the papers too thin (seemed mostly for writing) and too expensive.  So, we walked across the street to the Maritime Museum of Charlevoix, another of Shari’s stops.  It’s an interesting place, a place where cargo ships were stored during winters.  Since the display ships are all out of the water and sitting at an odd angle, I didn’t draw any of them (excepting a small, quick sketch of the tugboat that showed up in a previous blog post).

Instead I was thrilled to find tractors and stationary steam engines on display.  These provided power to move the ships around.  And so I drew one of the steam engines.  The sketch isn’t my best.  I found the subject more complex than I thought it would be and didn’t devote enough time to blocking in its proportions and relationships.  Oh well.  We had a great time anyway.

I’m both fascinated and frustrated by the effects the COVID scourge has had on my feelings and decision-making.  One of the really fun things to do in Baie St. Paul is walk down Main St. (don’t think it’s called that), visiting the high-end boutiques and art galleries.  Of course we had to do that – or did we really.  As we were wandering I felt that I shouldn’t be there.  The very notion of being in a store “just to look” has left me and all I wanted to do was get out of there.  Chantal felt the same way.

Ultimately we had our first meal in a restaurant since February and I had to chuckle over the fact that our choice of restaurant had little or nothing to do with what they were serving and everything to do with how few people were in the restaurant.  Such is life these days.  Hope COVID is treating you well.

The Girl On The Beach

I know there are many parts of the US that are in dire straits from COVID and the lack of governmental concern over it.  But that’s not true of many places. In Quebec City, where a mask-wearing mandate, social distancing, and good government response allow us to go and do pretty much as we please (unless you’re a party animal I guess).  And yet Chantal and I are still reluctant to range far and wide.

We’re living a hermit existence, but like everyone else we’re going nuts looking at the same walls day after day.  We decided to succumb to the urge to go somewhere, anywhere, and headed to Ile d’Orleans, a large island just east of Quebec City in the Ste Lawrence River.  There’s 42 miles of road that runs around the perimeter of the island and we figured we couldn’t get in too much trouble as long as we stayed in the car.

And for the most part we did stay in the car.  We wandered around a park that’s sort of a mini-botanical garden on the north side of the island and we stopped at a couple of the small marinas where we walked out to look at the St. Lawrence.  Most of the fruit and vegetable stands were closed and the couple places that were open we too crowded to tempt us.  Because of this, I took a couple photos but sketching wasn’t practical.

At one of the marinas there was a beach with only a couple people on it so we walked around a bit, taking in the fresh air.  A girl was sitting at the edge of the water, creating a wonderful scene.  Here’s my sketch of her enjoying her own form of solitude.

Why I Don’t Do Sketchbook Tours

A couple people have asked why I don’t do sketchbook tours like so many people do.  My first thought is that I’m not set up to shoot video, but I could be if I wanted to do so. No, the real reason is that my sketchbooks are not done to be presented.  Lots of people approach each page as part of the whole, a place where a significant sketch must be completed to fit with the rest.  Others do everything with carefully organized graphic and text presentations.

I’ve tried doing both and, frankly, both approaches seem far too limiting to me.  I want to be able to scribble down whatever I want and however I want.  My sketchbooks are more about trying stuff, having fun, and generally putting in the work to improve my ability to draw.  I don’t feel I can do any of that while trying to produce something for presentation.  If some presentable sketches come from this, so be it but that’s not my goal.

And since I’ve been talking about the Hahnemuhle Cappuccino notebook recently I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and talk about it some more while I show you a couple pages I did this weekend.  They reflect how this paper responds to different media and how miserably disorganized my sketchbook pages are (grin). I’ll discuss these pages in the order in which it occurred.

We were at the Maritime Museum of Charlevoix this past weekend and we were sketching.  At one point I decided that I needed to sit down (my knee still limits my energy/mobility) and so I did.  Chantal took the opportunity to investigate views to a church she wanted to draw.

In front of me were some rocks so I got out the Cap. notebook and drew a small cluster of them.  I used thin watercolor washes to give them some life.  Then I started drawing a woman who was standing far away. This was a signal to her that she should walk behind a ship.  She did and I was left with a scribble.

I sat for a while, enjoying the sunshine and the fact that one of the virtues of the pandemic is that these museums are nearly devoid of people.  But eventually I started doing a quick, scribble of an old tugboat.  The point of view was weird but I was comfortable and didn’t feel like moving.  Besides, I was just going to draw the cabin roof and a few windows.

I didn’t worry about proportions and ended up with a tugboat with a shortened bow.  I also had a tugboat that had bumped into my little rock drawing, so I drew a square around the rocks.  It wasn’t a great sketch, but like all sketches it was fun to do.

Then Chantal came back.  We got into a discussion of faking perspective because she’d been trying to sketch a church.  The little scribble in the top left was my pen brain trying to assist my mouth brain in describing things.  After that lively discussion I put the sketchbook away and we continued our visit.

When we got home I decided to see how the Cappuccino would handle gouache.  So I painted the tugboat.  I didn’t worry much about staying inside the lines or doing careful shading.  I was only looking at how the gouache and paper interacted.  It does quite well, by the way.  For me, one of the advantages of gouache is that you use much less water and the paint sits on the surface so paper quality/type isn’t nearly as important.

Someone on YouTube mentioned using a Tuscan Red Col-Erase pencil and presented a few portraits done with it.  Looked good to me so I hunted down my box of Col-Erase and drew the guy you see here.  The drawing isn’t finished but I’m finished with it.  As a proof of concept this was a winner and I’ll investigate further my Tuscan Red pencil.

So, you see, none of these partial sketches are tour-worthy.  None of them are even finished drawings. They reflect me learning, trying, doing.  I place most of the emphasis on that last word.  Do you have sketchbooks like this?

Small Figures Make Great Sketching Subjects

Lots of us are dealing with COVID isolation by sketching our backyards and stuff in our kitchens.  We’re no longer locked down and it’s pretty safe to move around because people are reasonable and we’re all wearing masks.  Still, I’m reluctant to spend much time sketching on the streets.

I took advantage of the fact that I have a collection of Schleich animal figures.  If you’re unfamiliar with them, they are very detailed and well-painted figures and each if beautifully proportioned, unlike so many of the animal figures made for kids.  I’ve bought many of mine from art stores but the satisfying ones I got for pennies at local flea markets.  Here’s a batch that Chantal gave me for Christmas.

I was about to watch a baseball game and so I grabbed my panda bear and drew him while the Blue Jays played baseball.  A great combination.  This is in my Hahnemuehle Capuccino notebook and rather than using watercolor I grabbed a black and white colored pencil to add some “color.”  Pandas are very accommodating when it comes to color.