Drawing really makes you look at things…
Sometimes you can look right at something and not really see it. Until you sit down to draw it that is.
I’ve sketched in this square about five times now – and just the other day I finally *really* looked at the statue of Jeanne Mance (Female figure on the lower right).
I was shocked to see how the sculptor chose to pose her figure. She’s got a young (naked) native boy in a motherly headlock. Holding him back as he strains to grab something just out of reach. Amazing. It doesn’t get any more real than that hey? That’s really how they thought about things back then? A little heart warming fable about Jeanne giving that tough love to the natives. I know we’re colonizers – but still – this is how she goes down in history? Nice. I suppose even the way the story gets told is part of our history.
This is the kind of stuff I find myself thinking about while drawing.
Citizen Sketcher 
lovely drawing Marc!
Terrific Sketch, Marc, and facinating insight into Jeanne Mance!
Well put, and well drawn. As a daily sketcher here in Washington, DC, there are so many finite details about the people and the architecture that I get to notice that people with cameras and passive eyes never get to.
It’s why I keep at it – drawing out there in the world. Never a dull moment. Feels like a more engaged life than my other identity as a digital artist :)
Just the other day I told my sister she has to unlearn seeing things the way she does now when she wants to draw. We were talking about faces then. But that is true for all things you draw. Drawing makes you look and draw what is really there, not what you think or know is there. I once started a drawing course in which I took part with the statement that I want to learn to see in a new way.
You are so right, you see differently when you draw, and you remember more afterwards too. Great sketch!
Thanks for the drawing and the story, Marc.