OneWeek100People, 2025 Day 02
So, last couple Marathon’s I made a big deal about getting 100 in a day. But honestly; I don’t really do ink drawings any more? Like simple pen line, or anything monochromatic. I fished out the dip pens last year because I wanted speed to be the essence.
But the truth is, my line drawing had degenerated into spaghetti – because it only exists as a framework for color shapes.
I just love how you have infinite colors in the tiny paint box.
You know why I started with watercolor? Back in first year of Illustration school, they told us to go buy a set of 100 markers. I took one look at the price (and that was 40 years ago!) and said; no way. I’m not buying all these colors! Especially markers. You don’t click the cap down and five bucks worth of marker dries out in your bag.
How many of you have taken watercolors to figure drawing class? You know those timed poses? 3,5,10 minutes. If you don’t work fast, you won’t get accidental blending. And if you don’t have a time limit (like trying to get 33.3r drawings in one day) then you always slow down. (Because you think it makes your drawings better :)
I used to say ‘work one shape a time, so it stays wet and blends’ – but I think it’s more like 1.5 shapes at a time. Start the next one just a little bit too soon, so you can choose – wet-on-dry, vs, wet-on-damp. A hard edge, vs. a chance to blend.
Who’s your favorite today? I have to like the Urban Cowboy, The nurse who didn’t like me looking at her. Or the subway cop who definitely saw me acting suspicious. There is a whole generation of subway cops in Montreal who grew up playing Assassins’ Creed. They love the tied back hair and Viking beard :)
#OneWeek100People, 2025 Day 01
Hey everybody! It’s March! 2025! I’m somewhat shocked to note this is the 9th year of #OneWeek100People. This means *next* year is kind of a big deal.
There’s very very very few things in life I’ve stuck with for more than ten years – besides drawing.
Every year my drawings get more interesting to me, but harder and harder for me to explain what I’m doing.
“I just paint them?”
So: what can I say about this one?
Color Blocks: Every major shape in the sketch is one color, but all the colors are dirty’ed up with the neighboring colors.
Draw with the Edges: The background shape cuts around the white faces – wet on dry – so they have a razor edge. The colored shape is drawing the head in negative. The weird orange dots in the background are only there so I can get away with flagging his head in bright orange. It makes it look like the orange is on purpose.
Work Fast for Blending: I work fast so that shapes can bleed into each other ( her pant leg for instance ). But I don’t let important edges touch; like between his and her jackets. If that one edge had smudged you lose the overlapping figures.
Reserved Whites: This year was using a nice big brush. I don’t know, like a #10 round? Male Pinky Finger Sized. It’s fun because it’s so fast, it hold so much paint, and you have to make the reserved whites by instinct. I think of the whites as internal edges. The white on his shoulder is a pretty great mark – it shows you what is an upper surface, but it also indicates where his bulky jacket sleeve insets into the shoulder, and it draws the shape of his hood. All the other small whites in his torso are doing similar work, describing folds in the jacket sleeve. Not sure if you can tell; but they’re NOT drawn into the sketch. I outline shadow shapes in the sketch, but I try not to outline highlights anymore. A highlight with a line around it doesn’t work!
We just had a 125 year record snowstorm in Montreal; so this year it’s going to be all metro (subway) drawings. There’s next-to-nobody on the street; nobody is doing any activities outside. You can barely walk on the sidewalks downtown. So this year get ready for a lot of people-on-their-phones :)
By the way – who’s your favorite subway rider today? And why is it that amazing fellow in the fedora and shades. That guy brought the funk!
Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolor : 100th Year Anniversary show : (Without any of my paintings :)
This year is the 100th year for the venerable old CSPWC, which is kind of a big deal. I was excited to apply for the 2025 member’s exhibition, but, unfortunately, I have been soundly rejected!
Naturally that’s not my favorite outcome, but – I’m not too upset either.
I’ve applied 13 times and been accepted nine, so that’s a solid B+ , which is better than I ever did in school.
And! There was a complication this year.
They announced they would hold just TWO spaces, especially reserved for oversize paintings. Which, in this case could be up to 72″ in the longest dimension. Now this is a remarkable opportunity for a watercolor society show. Unheard of really. Typically the largest accepted work is full-sheet, 22×30″, which I imagine is because of available wall space. However the CSPWC has a permanent national gallery which is significantly larger than the rotating venues for most society shows.
And so – even though it meant I would be competing for one of ONLY two possible spaces, I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, so that’s what I did.
If I was going to be rejected, I’d be rejected gloriously!
I settled on a diptych of full-sheets, so two panels, totaling 44×30″. Which is quite a bit shy of 72″ – but is twice as big as the largest thing I’ve previously painted.
(Also, if you were to be accepted, you have to frame and ship these things. So to be honest, this is more manageable.)
To help with going bigger, I switched from a traditional watercolorist’s folding palette, in favor of using Chinese dipping-sauce dishes :) This lets you have more color (bigger puddles), brought right to the spot where you’re working. Very handy for pouring! Plus, I used some hand-mixed pigments for even larger batches of color. Essentially making my own giant 3.5″ pans of watercolor. (Something I tested out during the 2023 30×30 marathon. It’s quite a savings over tube-color if you’re willing to go to the trouble).
The painting is another of my primitive jungle fantasies; art-historically related to Rousseau and (much more problematically), Gauguin. (I am not a fan of his life, but his paintings remain cultural artifacts).
I’ve been doing works with this motif on and off, (here’s one from 2021), which are not just fan art, but rather, part of a personal narrative to do with an imaginary return to a primitive culture.
I have what I feel is a reasonable amount of anxiety about the end of civilization. Climate change, consumption fueled pollution, global war and genocide, the fall of democracy – lots of reasons to be concerned. And so, from time to time, I make an image with a positive spin on the idea of returning to the stone age.
I feel I’m doing a modern version of Rousseau; his imaginary goddesses in his imaginary jungles.
Because hey, If you can’t create a mythic-fantasy as art-therapy – well, what is the point of being an artist?
So, there you have it. The very best reason to paint; knowing you will probably be rejected, but you do it anyway :)
“Après nous,” she said, setting down her glass, “le déluge.”
2025, 44×30″, diptych, watercolor on cotton rag.
#OneWeek100People : Coming March 3, 2025 – Also Big Changes This Year! Please read if you want to play : )
It’s happening again, Monday March 3, 2025 – time again for our annual street-sketching marathon, #OneWeek100People! < See the past years events here! ]
This is, of course, our fun activity where we try to sketch 100 people in a single week. That’s roughly 20 a day if you like to have your weekends free.
I’m a huge fan of Urban Sketching, in which the ‘rules’ are to draw from life. But I’m also allergic to rules in general; so I’m not going to fuss if you use photos, draw from a movie, your own imagination, or whatever it takes to hit 100 people in a week.
The goal is pure self-directed sketching-for-the-love. (Or the training – if you’re out to master the skill as fast as possible.) If you just want to practice anatomy, let’s go for it together. If you want to go experience your city first-hand, let’s get out and sketch in the streets.
Me personally, I’m absolutely going to try again for 100 in a single day. It’s so much fun for me to indulge in some HYPERFOCUS :) I’ve been able to do it in the past, but I want to push myself further. To do more and more sophisticated work in the same intense timeframe. I’m remembering my college days of 30 second and 1 minute gesture drawing. Time to get back to that kind of eye-hand dexterity.
So let’s do it together! Hashtag #OneWeek100People on your socials – post your work! – comment on other people! – let’s have fun motivating each other.
But here is the big change for 2025; We are CLOSING THE FACEBOOK GROUP where we have done a lot of the posting and sharing over the first eight years.
FB and other Socials have been essential in the spread of Urban Sketching as a past-time. They’ve helped me meet artists from all over the globe. Every day it continues to bring me art and entertainment. But I find as I get older, I am less and less able to keep up with the stream of information and still get anything done at the same time.
I love personal challenges like #OneWeek100People for this very reason. They give my attention-deficit brain the structure that I need :)
So I’ve decided to focus on MAKING the art, and to step back from MODERATING the community.
I hope you will all understand!
And please, do feel free to START YOUR OWN GROUPS. I don’t feel we have any sort of ownership over this concept. Please steal this idea! Liz Steel and I launched this together in 2017, simply as an excuse to draw with each other :) Anyone can reach out to their own socials. Tag a sketcher you love online. Build you own communities.
Take care and see you all here, and at the hashtag #OneWeek100People! – Monday March 3, 2025!
International Self Portrait Day is Not Today!
International Self Portrait Day is November 1st. < Not today.
I can’t seem to find who started the ‘official day’, or if it has a home online. I don’t think so? It seems to be just a meme that spread through social media.
But better late than never right? I’ve had these two sketches lying around for a while so I figured I’d scan’em up.
Actually Laurel scanned them for me, so you get to see them :)
I’ve always felt self portraits were a little silly, but as I get older I’m a little less self-conscious about it. There’s certainly more to notice in your own face as it ages. I’m beginning to understand the reason to have a yearly record you can look back on. You can watch yourself age, at the same time as you watch your artwork change. In some senses it’s keeping track of your mortality – but for artists, we usually improve with age :) so I don’t mind that.
This one is a bit of a joke. I honestly don’t know how to take a mirror selfie. I mean; the fact the camera is always in the shot is kind of weird isn’t it? It seems odd that in the millions (billions?) of selfies online we don’t see the constant presence of our phones as invasive.
It turns out the innovation of the smart phone wasn’t the the camera, but rather the idea of the *connected camera*. The ability to instantly share images is certainly a cultural revolution. My life wouldn’t have been the same without it.
So selfies! If you did one this year; why not post it in the comments. Next year we can look back, and see if our artwork is maturing faster than our faces :)
A Sketch for the King
Bantry House, County Cork, Ireland, 15 x 22″ Watercolor on Cotton Rag, Fabriano Artistico.
This painting is a redux, sized up to half-sheet (15×22″) working from my own quarter-sheet sketch (11×15″), made on location in 2016.
It’s to be my submission to the Royal Collection of King Charles III, hopefully to reside in Windsor Castle under the care of the Royal Librarian.
Now, of course, I don’t know if I’ll be accepted by the jury! So wish me luck :)
I know King Charles is a watercolorist himself. I remember a book on his paintings in my college library. I hope he has a special interest in work coming from the (ex)colonies. I sincerely hope Ireland is no longer a sensitive topic. What do I know, I’m just a Canadian kid, and I’m largely (completely) ignorant of the history at hand.
This donation of work marks the 100th year of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. We’ll be adding 25 works to the royal collection, bringing the Canadian component to 100 pieces. We’ve tithed work to the crown twice before, in 2000 and 1985. (Not me personally, the Society). I have no idea if it will happen again in my career, so I really had to make the effort.
It’s not recorded if the King has ever been to Bantry House, though it is of course known to the crown. The original owner, Richard White, was made the Earl of Bantry for his role in repelling an attempted French invasion in 1796. A fact that may or may not be of interest to the judges!
To be honest, I expect they’ll be most interested in presenting an encyclopedic view of Canadian watercolor as it stands in 2024, and to that end I made something that is as much as possible, a personal work. It looks back to when I was at the height of my adventures as a world-travelling painter, but I hope it’s handled with some freedom of expression :)
Well – I hope I haven’t given myself too much freedom :)
Finger’s crossed, and expect an update here!
~marc
Big Update on our Etsy Shop
It’s always fun to be able to say, “I just sold an original watercolor!”
We’ve recently updated our Etsy Shop, to include one hundred original watercolor sketches, and this was the first to sell :)
One of my favorites from our 2016 trip to Portugal, even though it’s not a historic landmark – just a rutted dirt track and some pine trees. Sometimes the simplest of views line up with the perfect time of day, and suddenly you have a favorite memory.
I feel like I remember every one of the good pieces. The ones that magically work out. Because it doesn’t happen every time! That’s for sure :) Watercolor is so difficult; one success out of ten is a good result.
When everything flows for you, when the color and values just click, and the brush drawing sings; you remember these magic moments, even years later.
{ A Marathon of Miniatures, 2016 }
That’s why travel and sketching works for me. I can’t always just sit down and be inspired; like flipping a switch. We’re going to make a work of art now! I find I have to go out, do stuff, see new places, eat the local food, and all the while be continually sketching.
Eventually one of them takes you by surprise. You never know which is going to be the one that jumps off the page.
{ Day Three of #OneWeek100People 2018 }
I should say; it’s actually my wife Laurel who made this happen.
We have a room filled with boxes and boxes of sketches from all over the world. I’ve tried to keep them organized by date and country-of-origin as they accumulated, but to be honest it’s quite a raven’s nest of books and papers. She’s been diligently selecting, and individually matting and photographing over a hundred pieces from our archives. It’s taken her almost a year of work in her spare time.
{ Sketching Ireland: Five Strategies for Sketching in the Rain }
So yes; For some of you, it might be uniquely inspiring to own one the pieces from my old posts!
My time as an urban sketchers correspondent was a very special opportunity to see the world and develop myself as a painter. All while working alongside so many wonderful artists.
{ #30x30DirectWatercolor2022: Hokiin Temple, Japan }
Some of the sketches in the shop are workshop demonstrations, some from life drawing, but most of them are original works made on the street. Often leaning in a doorway or against a lamppost, trying to be out of people’s way. Sometimes standing under the hot sun, because it’s the only spot for the good view; sometimes trying to get it done before the rain erases your page; sometimes while entertaining a crowd of locals or excited kids.
{ Steam and Stone with Simonetta }
Each one is a piece of the Urban Sketching life that we were so lucky to enjoy for over twenty years.
I’m almost convincing myself we shouldn’t sell these! These are my real life experiences put down on paper!
But there you go; maybe that’s a truth about being an artist. You do the work for yourself, for the enjoyment of the creative flow; but you also want other people to love it. It can’t just stay in a box in your attic! The real fun is in the sharing.
{ Inside Front Cover; ebook edition of Direct Watercolor, 2018 }
So as always, my thanks to everyone who’s followed the blog for all these years, and I hope you’ll find something to love on the Etsy store :)
Thanks, and take care!
~ Marc
Viger Station:
The Montreal Urban Sketchers met up the other day at Viger Square, a newly renovated park between the historic Viger Station (built in 1898 and named after Jacques Viger, the first Mayor of Montreal) and the CHUM, our new downtown mega-hospital.
I’ve been very spotty with USK meetups the last few years, but I had to show up for this classic Canadian Pacific Railway building. Our local station is probably less famous than another CPR Hotel built by architect Bruce Price; the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, which I’ve sketched many times.
Today, the Frontenac is still a bustling hotel, but the Viger has been remade as a tech-business hub. Instead of trains, they do e-commerce in there :) I guess that’s somewhat ironic, but also somewhat fitting.
I grew up in Alberta, and the historic CPR hotels, the Fairmont in Edmonton, the Banff Springs, and the Chateau Lake Louise are iconic memories. Frankly, they’re some of the only long-standing Canadian history in these towns :)
On a personal note, my grandfather was a CPR Section Man. His job meant spending days on his own, travelling remote sections of Southern Alberta by handcar. A little sled that rode the rails via muscle power. One of my grandad’s trophies was an old steel thermos, bent in half by a train he dodged at the last second. The family always sent him artwork of trains for his birthday, which hung in their little place on South Railway Street, Medicine Hat, where I spent most of my summers as a child. They were close enough to the station their apartment would rattle and hum when trains passed in the night.
My memory is, one of the perks of his pension was that family could travel for free? Or at least that’s how I remember it. I was still a kid when passenger rail in Alberta essentially ended as a useful mode of transportation.
So, here’s an old-favorite sketch of the Gare Viger from 2016.
Now; my painting today is half-sheet (15×22″) and this little one is only 5.5 x 6.5″ (part of a ‘Marathon of Miniatures‘) so this is not a fair comparison at all! But, I’ll leave it up to you to say; Am I improving as a painter, or losing it in my old age???
Hah! (Fishing for compliments much?)
I’ll be the first to admit that my sketches are perhaps losing some sharpness. Not quite as crisply illustrated. I no longer look for the most detailed possible subject, so I can sink hours into drawing the ornamentation. Every year I have less and less patience for drawing details. Even less respect for perspective :) I’ve never been about that :)
This one took a couple hours, but I’ve never worked slower to be honest! My new thing is taking my time, snacking as I go, having a drink, (I really miss caffeinated drinks, but I can’t anymore!) I like to fiddle with the drawing. I draw and erase now! I actually allow myself an eraser! Full circle. I used to do complex under drawings back in the day, even ink over them and erase; then I banned that, and there was a multi-year phase of no drawings allowed; and now I’m back to drawings. These days I like to plan what I’m going to shape-weld into a single mass; where I’m going to make edges with dark-against-light; plan how I’m going to make the thing *look* spontaneous; then do the whole thing in a few minutes work.
Go slow; to go fast.
I think if you continue to paint 10,15, 20 years on, it’s inevitable to become less labor-focused, less performative, and be more interested in abstraction. You develop your own language. Your own color-sense. The paintings become a personal shorthand. It has to remain interesting inside your own head, even if the work outside becomes less and less accessible to people.
It’s a bit of a curse; but I’ve seen it happen with many many artists before me.
So, thanks for reading and following, and I’m happy to still be out there painting and enjoying the sun while it lasts. This might be both the first, and the final Plein Air of 2024!
Olmec: People of Stone
My buddy might be moving to Japan! So we decided to get in one more sketching outing before he heads off. (Actually he’ll be back, it’s only a scouting trip for now, but soon!) I’m impressed with his sense of adventure. But yes! We decided to take in the Olmec exhibition at the Pointe-à-Callière.
This giant head is as tall as a tweenager and five times as wide. It looks like a big baby head, but the meanest big baby you ever met. He’s probably a warrior, but it might be an athlete, playing the mesoamerican ball game ōllamaliztli.
The Olmec are my favorite of the Mesoamerican peoples, artistically speaking. I love the strange distortions in their art style. These slouching fellows with the elongated skulls are about the size of a GI-Joe, carved from jade, and were found placed in a conversational grouping of about a dozen figures, buried in a grave mound.
Who knows the meaning of these carvings? But they look like little wizards having a deep conversation.
I didn’t check if there was any information on this stone head – The label just says; ‘Zoomorphic Head’.
It sure looks like a dragon hey? It’s hollow, with an opening in the skull (as with both of the figures coming up next) and it’s my completely unsubstantiated opinion that they would have placed smoking fires inside, sending up spooky tendrils; completing the dragon-like illusion.
The next two figures are from later periods; the imagery in these areas gets more and more ornamental over time; more fun to draw :)
The oddly flattened crown on this figure was probably backed with a flowered or feathered headdress making it twice as large and very colorful. And, the ornaments next to the ear of the larger face are dangling human hands! The reverse side of the stone figure below is a human skeleton facing the opposite direction.
Very ominous!
I have to imagine him as a high-priest wearing a stretched human skin on his head. There’s also a spherical hole in the center of the chest – just the right size for a human heart.
Just saying.
We know these cultures practiced human sacrifice, but there was no discussion at the exhibition what that opening in the chest was for.
Another detail you probably won’t spot; the portly gentleman below is wearing a belt made of entwined serpents. I love this sort of fantastical, mythological stuff! Magic was real to people in those days. I should spend more time reading about these old priests and their gods, but really, I just enjoy sketching and imagining what things were like.
All sketches 6×9″ sketchbook pages, drawn at the museum and painted in a nearby café.
Pigments; mostly Goethite and Pyrrole Orange. The darks are Indigo, Bloodstone and Tyrian Purple.
Le Dépanneur
Do you know the Quebecois word “Dépanneur”?
It’s from the verb dépanner meaning ‘to fix’ or ‘to repair’, so a dépanneur is a handyman, and a dépanneuse is a tow truck. < Ahh, gender in French. Tradition hey!
Around here it also means ‘corner store’. I’m not sure if they used to carry a few hardware items, but my guess is the meaning is more like “We’re here to lend a hand.”
This shop is out of business, and the apartments upstairs are empty; the windows are hung with plastic, but the hand-sawn wooden sign is still up, with its vintage Coca-Cola medallions. Used to be, these places were all over the island, offering the basic groceries: a can of ravioli or a box of cereal, or more likely your sixer of beer, pack of cigs and assorted dirty magazines.
These days these shops are giving way to cafes and the occasional vape shop. We always used to joke they were backed by the mafia so they’d never go out of business. I don’t know if the mafia is trading up? or if they’ve just gone all in on road maintenance for their money laundering.
So that’s the kind of little sketch I’m doing these days. About 5 inches high if that? Just sitting in a back alley, chatting with a buddy from USK and enjoying the last days of summer :)
Citizen Sketcher 