Sketching Characters at Montreal’s 18th Century Market

Every year the Pointe-a-Calliere museum takes over their corner of Montreal’s old port to put on the 18th century New France marketplace.

It’s always a great opportunity for USK:MTL to get together and sketch.

I imagine most people have some sort of costumed re-enactors group in their area? These guys above are the Compagnie du 2e Battalion du Régiment de la Sarre.

You might want to scout around your own area online. Many cities have some sort of military re-enactors, a local crew of pirates, or a medieval history group. I highly recommend this sort of thing for a fun afternoon sketching characters in fancy dress – and an opportunity to draw as much as you like without your subjects running off. (Not that they won’t move, but at least they’ll stay in the area :).

If anyone else has sketches from costumed events (or might be a re-enactor themselves?) – why not post a link to your drawings in the comments – and tell us when and where the event takes place. Maybe there are some people in your area that will turn up for the next event – sketchbooks at the ready!

For the artists out there, these are sketched in pencil while walking around following my subjects, and tinted with watercolor during lunch and teatime. I skipped drawing in pen and ink over the pencil as I sometimes do. These days I’m tending to do either pencil + color or straight-to-ink + color – but rarely all three, pencil and ink and color.

Even though I do recommend all three when teaching beginners, after a few years of thinking about this, I feel it drains some ‘freshness’ (and slows you down) if you do too much drawing before the paint.

So – as you get more comfortable, you can skip one step – and just get more drawings done in the session :)

~m