Larry D. Marshall's Blog, page 63

Reporting From Outside Quebec City Hall

I was on the beat and walking in front of Quebec City’s City Hall when I came across this.  It looked like the mayor had moved one of the offices (or lab) outside, just to the left of the main entrance to the building. There was only one administrative assistant as far as I could tell.

What is underway here is unclear.  I know that Mayor Lebaume is pulling out all the stops to get an NHL hockey franchise for Quebec City.  Maybe this is his latest attempt.  The mainstream press have said nothing at all about this, so I hope I don’t become the next Ed Snowden for exposing these activities.

Stillman & Birn Beta (9×12), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Return To Museum Sketching

I wonder what my dad would think if he knew that the thing I remember most about him was him saying to me (often), “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached.”  The sad thing is that, decades later, he’s still right.

I headed off to meet sketching buddies at the Musee de la civilisation the other day, which amounts to full acknowledgement that outdoor sketching is finished, or nearly so, for the year.  It’s starting to get cold and this Arizona boy doesn’t do cold.  None of us is very excited by the current expositions at the museum but there’s always something to draw, if only to provide practice and opportunity to try different techniques.

Once at the museum and I started thinking of sketching, I realized that I’d forgotten my light and my stool.  Most of the rooms are so dark that without a light clipped to my sketchbook, I can’t see what I’m drawing.  And, oddly when you think of it, most of the displays are low, requiring a stool to get your eyes on level with what you’re drawing.

Lucky for me, my head was attached and I used it to decide to draw something from the main entrance, where the museum seems willing to pay the electric bill and thus there is sufficient light.  I thought about the stairwells, they’d be an interesting drawing challenge.  I thought about the old bones of a boat that’s part of the entrance display.  To do it justice, though, would require a lot of hours.  I thought about drawing the ticket counter, but I’d already done that once.

Instead, I looked out the window to the courtyard associated with the museum and did this sketch.  I forgot a lot that day but because of this sketch I’ll always remember to be grateful that my head is attached.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Sketching For InkTober 2015

Every year the internet is treated to a stream of sketches in the name of Inktober and this is is no exception.  I don’t formally take part as I already draw constantly in ink and so I just continue to post my normal drawings.  But I was out the other day, having filled a Pilot Prera with DeAtramentis Document Brown ink and I thought about Inktober and did several sketches while on my walk.  Here are a couple of them.

Right now the St. Charles RIver is at very low levels. I thought these rocks warranted a sketch.

Bassin Louise did a major service upgrade this year with the addition of these power stations that allow boats to plug in. Now that the boats are being removed from the water for winter, the stations are available for me to draw. So I did.

Maybe I’ll do a few more of these before October is over.  I enjoyed the ink/pen combination and the tiny nature of these sketches.

Megacerops In Ottawa

My daughter was coming home for Canadian Thanksgiving (it’s in October) and rather than have her take a train, I wisely reasoned that it wouldn’t cost any more for me to drive to Ottawa to pick her up and bring her back to Quebec City.  Yes, it would mean ten hours of driving but heck, I could spend a couple hours sketching in the nature museum (I have a membership).  And yeah, maybe that is a bit crazy but I am, as Steve Martin used to say, a “wild and crazy guy” when it comes to sketching.

So, at 3:30AM I drove out of town so that I could arrive at the museum when it opened at 9AM.  This insanity was rewarded with a wonderful early morning sketching session where I got to hang out with a family of Megacerops.  Well, actually they were life-size models of them.  They roamed Manitoba and some of the plains states, but they went extinct a while ago, maybe even before I was born.  They sure were big, though, and he wouldn’t fit on my paper and I decided that this end was better than the other end.

Stillman & Birn Beta (9×12), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

When I finished I had to leave to meet my daughter for lunch.  We had a great lunch and then continued to chat until her afternoon class.  At that point I repeated my 20-minute walk back to the museum, intent on doing more sketching.

It was not to be.  When I arrived I learned about something called a PA day.  I don’t really know what PA means but it happens in schools.  What it meant to the museum was that every young kid in the Ottawa area was at the nature museum, or so it seemed.  The nature museum is designed for kids to get excited, have fun and with so many of them there the decibel level in the museum, accompanied by the frenetic movement of little bodies around the rooms suppressed any notion I had of drawing.  I made the best of it by actually visiting the museum like a normal person, reading the plaques and learning a few things about the exhibits.

So, please do me a favor.  Look at my Megacerops a few extra seconds; I drove ten hours to draw it (grin).

Coffee With Claudette

Claudette and I went for coffee at Paillards on rue St. Jean.  During the tourist season it’s impossible to get a seat there as it’s a great place for lunch or just to have some fine Quebec pastries.  But it’s also a fun place to sketch people.

I ordered a café au lait  and thought about drawing it but remembered that I’d done that last time I was there.  Our session there was a short one but we got to meet a fellow sketcher who was visiting from England.  It was fun and the coffee and company was good.  Here’s a couple of pages that resulted.

Book Review: Creative Sketching Workshop by Pete Scully

Before I talk about Pete Scully’s new book, Creative Sketching Workshop: Inspiration, Tips, and Exercises for Sketching on the Move, I’ve got to confess that I am biased.  If Pete released an illustrated phone book, I’d buy it.  When I got started sketching, his sketches were some of the first that caught my eye.  I love his precision.  I love his choice of subjects (he got me sketching fire hydrants).  I love that he’s a generalist sketcher who is at home sketching Lego characters as he is when sketching urban scenes.

Though a clear violation of Pete’s copyright, I’m opening this review with his sketch of his new book; I hope he doesn’t mind.  The one on the left is the US version; the one on the right is the UK version.  I bought the UK version because it was available when I ordered; the US version hadn’t been released yet.

My love of Pete’s work aside, do we really need another sketching book?  I find that a funny question to pose because when I got into sketching, only four years ago, there was almost nothing available on location sketching, urban sketching, or even a general acknowledgement that people sketched for any purpose other than as note-taking for paintings.  But, we’re experiencing a veritable explosion of interest in sketching, particularly location sketching and it’s absolutely wonderful.

Recent releases seem to fit into three loose categories.

Rah-rah motivation books: so you want to sketch but don’t think you can, and/or if you can’t figure out what to draw, let us give you a list.  The extreme of this are the books that have a bunch of blank pages except for a ‘draw x’ written in one corner.
Books on sketching techniques.  These can be about pen and ink, pencil, paint, and these days may place most emphasis on “urban sketching” as that’s the buzz phrase of our time.
Then there are books that are mostly picture books, and more than anything are just a compilation of sketches from a particular artist.

All of these have value to someone.  Most are directed at the flood of new sketchers among us.  As a book nut, I’ve bought most of them and I gotta say that there’s a lot of redundancy within the ranks but I’ve gotten something from each and every one of them.  To be honest, I didn’t expect much from Pete’s book in spite of it coming from Pete.  I was wrong.

Pete’s book has some of all of the above types of content, but it’s the approach that makes it unique and much more instructional content than I expected. The book reflects his generalist inclination when it comes to sketching.  He brought together a dozen artists besides himself and together they have produced a series of “workshops” on topics that run the gamut from doing portraits on location to drawing abandoned locations.  Pete’s fond of documenting his son’s growth and he uses this to demonstrate the virtues of drawing series of sketches, showing us sketches of his son’s shoes, from when he was a baby to his current running shoes.  I still favor his fire hydrant series myself but wish I had a similar series of my daughter’s shoes.

Each sketching subject workshop is initiated with half a dozen “Ideas to get you started” that serve as an outline for the rest of the workshop but also as a platform for the artist to provide practical advice for sketching their particular subject.  Some of this advice is priceless.  All of it is good.

The rest of each chapter consists of several pages of graphic examples and associated text that directs the reader towards the specifics of the sketch, why the artist has done what’s been done, and sometimes with extra advice on the vagaries of doing such sketches on location.

In short, this is a book you’ve got to read and study.  But yeah, you’ll want to flip through it, just looking at the pictures like I did when I got it.  The eye-candy is sweet.  But this review comes several days after receiving the book because I wanted to read all of it before writing.

Because of the artists assembled here, this book provides considerable variation in sketching styles and approaches.  Thus, even without the words, there’s a lot to study here and this book will sit by my bed for a while as I love staring at sketches, trying to understand what the artist was thinking and how they solved this or that problem.  I very much recommend Creative Sketching Workshop to anyone who sketches on location or wants to learn the approaches of people who do.

Rainy Day Sketchcrawl A Big Success

The morning of this month’s Croquis de Quebec sketchcrawl bordered on the depressing.  It was the proverbial dark and stormy night only it wasn’t night, but it was certainly stormy.  I headed to our sketchcrawl in full rain gear, thinking that only Yvan and I, the organizers, would show up as people are reluctant to sketch in the rain.  Go figure.

The sketchcrawl was to be in a park near my house so the walk was short.  Yvan had arranged for us to be able to take shelter in Maison Dorion-Coulombe to eat lunch.  This house is the office of the Societé de la riviere St. Charles, the group that manages the very long (I think it’s 32 km long) Parc lineare.  I headed there, and found Yvan, huddled at one end of the long porch that fronts this beautiful house.  We lamented our bad luck (the next day was supposed to be warm and sunny) and I sat down to draw some pumpkins that were sitting on the porch.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, De Atramentis Document Black

Yvan got up and said he was going inside to chat with them about our “event” and returned very excited.  He was almost at a loss for words as he’d discovered that inside was a cornucopia of things to draw.  Inside there were plants and a host of stuffed birds and mammals.  And in a large aquarium was a large turtle named Donnatello.  He and I talked for quite a while.

Things just got better and better.  Cassandra, the woman who runs the place had no problem with us moving the taxidermy and situating it on one of the tables so we could draw it.  The cushy chairs were quite a step up from my tripod stool, too.   I found that they sell tea, coffee and soft drinks and I ordered a coffee.  It was some of the best coffee I’ve ever had.  Now this was sketching at its finest.

Still, a sketchcrawl of two is a bit of a hollow adventure so it was pretty special when our friends Pierre and Celine came in, followed shortly afterward by Guylaine.  The sketchcrawl, without the crawling, was on.  We spent the next few hours sketching, talking and even spent some time sitting around a table eating lunch.  The time passed too quickly.  Here’s a sketch I did of a Northern Saw-whet owl.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Namiki Falcon, DeAtramentis Document Black

Sketching At Quebec City Hall

Quebec’s city hall is a gorgeous building that spans a hillside, the south end being somewhere around 20-25 meters higher than the north end.  It was built back before humanity decided that what a building looked like was unimportant as it was made operational at the end of the 19th Century.  It’s got pointy roofs with lots of gables, turrets and a very fancy entrance.

It’s also got a relatively new open area along the south wall, with a shallow pool and fountain and a whole bunch of inviting chair and table sets that, I’m sure were put there for sketchers, though it seems that downtown employees and tourists alike use them when they eat lunch.  That’s ok.  We sketchers are willing to share.

It was a sunny and, for this time of year, warm day as I arrived downtown.  I decided to sit and look around, my sketching equivalent of a dog circling before lying down.  I noticed the decorations over some of the windows and decided they would be my target.  They were beautiful.  They were challenging.  What more could a sketcher ask for?

I was trying a new ink, Noodler’s Red/Black.  I had filled a Lamy Safari with it and while it’s not my favorite pen, it was handy as a test bed.  Red/Black is a washable ink, and each ink has it’s own properties when it comes to how ink lines will respond to water so there’s always a step into the unknown when you add water.

For the second time I made the mistake of trying to do this step with a waterbrush and, more than a little bit, lost control over the washed ink.  Real brushes are the only way to go for this if you want to maintain any semblance of control – I’m not a fan of so-called “happy accidents.”  But it was a fun afternoon and I hope to repeated it soon, but with more control over the water.

Stillman & Birn Beta (6×9), Lamy Safari, Noodler’s Red/Black

Chasing The Queen Mary 2

Last Saturday was a good day.  The Queen Mary 2 arrived in Quebec and Nicolas and I had decided to meet it.  He’s a photographer and wanted to get some photos of it as it steamed up the St. Lawrence towards Quebec, so we decided that a good way to make that happen was a very long walk down the south shore of the St. Lawrence, across from Ile d’Orleans.  You see, photographers are as crazy as sketchers when it comes to getting to the right place to capture a scene.

To get there I walked nearly an hour to get to the ferry landing in the old port.  We met up and took the ferry to get across the river.  Then it was a very long walk, along a beautiful walk and bikeway that runs along the coast to the Davie Shipyards.  From there we continued walking through the St. Lauzon part of Levis and on to a gorgeous view of the island and when we arrived we could see, far into the distance the QM2 heading in our direction.  It only took 2 1/2 hours of walking to get there.

My plan was to sketch as we waited but I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a sissy when it comes to cold.  It’s my Arizona upbringing I think.  While the sun was shining and it must have been at least 10C, we were getting some very significant northeastern winds that were….brrrr….cold.

 

 

Nicolas set up to take photos.  I stood with my neck scrunched down into my jacket and my hands in my pockets.  And I stood.  And stood.  Then I stood some more.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it any more.  I got out my sketchbook, gritted my teeth and did this sketch.  It took me no more than 2-3 minutes and I didn’t add any color until I got home.  Still, I managed to one sketch.

 

 

Once the QM2 had passed, and Nicolas had gotten his photos, we headed back to town.  It occurred to both of us that we were hungry so we headed to the main street of old-Levis and had a great lunch.  With belly full, and some 22,000 steps behind me, I was beat and ready to head home.

We got a good view of the QM2 moored to the Quebec City side of the river from the top of the gazillion stairs that are required to get a person down to river level and we headed directly to the ferry.  As the ferry docked in Quebec City we got a close up view of the ship.  It was a very good day.

Are You Sure You Don’t Have Time?

If you hang out in sketching circles, it’s very common to hear “I just haven’t had the time to draw.”  I can never understand that, and dedicated sketchers will know what I mean when I say, “do you really think I buy that excuse?  I don’t.”  Now if you really don’t want to sketch, then don’t do it.  But don’t kid yourself into thinking you don’t have time.  There is nothing easier to fit into a hectic schedule than sketching.

How can I be so sure?  Well, everyone has 24 hours in a day.  We all need to eat, sleep and to varying degrees, work.  I know that some work a lot.  Ok, that means you have less time than I do but ‘no time’?  There’s not one ‘couple minutes’ in your day when you could sketch?

Let me give you a couple examples of finding sketching time even when no time is set aside for sketching.  I’ll start with my baseball passion.  From April until October I burn up a couple hours a night watching the Blue Jays beat opposing teams.  It’s a sickness, but I’ve got to do it.  Others might watch hockey, football, cooking shows, or the latest dramatic series.  People watch movies too.  Here are the last couple pages from the sketchbook that I use when I do watch TV.

Some faces on TV

Some play with a ballpoint pen

quick details from memory

just some scribbles while watching baseball

 

 

 

 

 

Our lives are always  what military guys refer to as ‘hurry up and wait.’  We rush to appointments and then sit around waiting for them to begin.  I was in that situation just yesterday.  I had to sign papers at my bank but I arrived at the bank 15 minutes before they opened.  So, I walked down the street and popped into a small place and ordered a cup of coffee.  While drinking coffee I drew these and got back to the bank by opening time.  Are you sure you don’t have time to draw?

Quick sketches while waiting for bank to open