Bonus Day! #OneWeek100People 2025 : Day 04

It’s always great when you finish your 100 and you can goof around for the rest of the marathon :)

I was looking around for fun things to draw, and found this exhibition Dressing up History at the McCord Stewart museum. It’s a collection of historic costumes, made in the late 1800’s, and worn at lavish costume balls held in Montreal.

I couldn’t help but think of Ophelia, looking at the dress laid out on the table.

I suppose this isn’t really ‘people drawing’ – as they’re just garments hanging on frames. A true urban Sketcher wouldn’t be allowed to take liberties with all these headless dressmakers dummies! They believe you must report what you see faithfully. (And I respect them for their dedication! But today I’m just having fun :)

I always find museum lighting so dramatic. Even the museum thinks it’s a little spooky. Every few minutes the lights would go out in the main hall, and they’d play music and project dancing ghosts on the walls.

Both these dresses reminded me of famous headless ladies. Maybe Anne Boleyn, and a girlish Marie Antoinette :)

Just as a side note for the artists out there; these were done on a cheap art-store house-brand sketchbook paper (unlike my real 100, which I did on small offcuts of cotton rag, in an effort to reduce the pile of paper scraps I have in the back room :)

As a result, I had to punch up the faded, washy colors, and tweak the contrast in photoshop – and even go back and do accents in India ink.

Back in the old days, I used to be plagued by watercolors being too pale. This can happen for a lot of reasons. Being too cheap to put out fresh paint each day. Using too much water. But also, it’s just the nature of sketchbook paper.

When cellulose paper has a lot of sizing, the color floats on top, rather than absorbing into the paper. This stops your sketchbook from getting soggy, and cuts down wrinkling (somewhat), but it can cause aggressive bleeding and/or hard edged puddles. Both of which you can see in these sketches today.

Back when I did a lot of sketchbooking, I was tuned up for this kind of sized-cellulose paper. I actually preferred it for many years. Today, I was really struggling! I’ve lost the instinct for it! Though, it’s already coming back. Ophelia was the last sketch of the day, and it mostly came out the way I wanted it.

But I did have three total failures which I had to tear up! I always rip up a truly bad painting :) It’s very gratifying :)

So for what it’s worth – that’s why some people choose a paper, and a brand of paints, and never never change what they use! For sure you should never go back to student grade :)