Photos from the Workshop!
We had 30 students shared between myself and my co-instructor Shari Blaukopf. Some locals, some from Ontario, and some from as far as British Columbia, California, Florida, and Texas.
If I can say it myself, about our own workshop, it was a smashing success :)
We heard a lot of positive comments; the techniques we chose seemed on target, people seemed to enjoy the critiques and “classroom” exercises – even if some found them challenging. To me, that’s the right balance. A lot of learning, a bit of pushing people to do things they haven’t tried, but not making it so frustrating that people shut down.
I was flattered that a few of our students were people I’d taught in past USK symposia (Lisbon and Santo Domingo). It’s great to know they would come all the way to Montreal to paint together again.
My friend Matthew Brehm once described teaching as ‘aggressive learning’. I like that phrase. In order to explain a method to someone else, you really have to wrestle with it. Be confident you’ve conquered it.
It’s a useful mental model for me. Having a hit-list of techniques to nail down before the next season of classes. I’m doing some research on new things to teach next time. Stuff I’ll un-veil when I think I’ve ‘crushed it’ as the kids say.
I had a great time meeting everyone at the workshop. I have to say this was the most social class I’ve been at. Thanks to Shari’s organizing, all the students, plus spouses and friends, were out for dinner every night, showing off their day’s work, sharing sketchbooks and talking art into the evening. It was a pretty cool feeling, bringing the spirit of the USK symposium to Montreal.
The rest of the event photos are posted up on our new Urban Sketchers Montreal Workshops Alumni Facebook group. All you who’ve taken a course with us (or even those who really want to!) – feel free to share your sketches and future sketching plans here. I’d like this to be a place where everyone from our past workshops can keep in touch into the future.
Thanks again to everyone who attended! I look forward to sketching with each of you again soon.
10 Week Watercolor Class at Syn Studio
A few people have asked about classes, so I’m pleased to announce:
Expressive Painting in Watercolor
Starting in October, for 10 weeks, I’ll be teaching a watercolor class at Syn Studio on Wednesday nights. As the weather gets poor in fall, maybe you’d like to come inside and paint :) We’ll be covering a wide range of subjects, starting with still life, doing some work with a model (both full figure and portraits) and then a ‘graduation piece’ to apply everything on a larger more complex work.
I’ll be emphasizing watercolor over top of drawing, as that’s more suitable for beginners, and of course is my own preference. Plus trying to help students with color and composition, handling hard and soft edges, improving your ability to execute small detail, and to draw expressively with the brush.
Looking forward to meeting some of you there!
Next Sunday Sketching: Aug 25th: (Free Event!)
Sunday August 25th, 10 AM we will meet in front of Pointe-à-Callière museum to sketch at their historical recreation 18th Century Public Market.
If there’s any new sketchers thinking about coming, you can read up on Drawing People in Motion. (PDF). There should be a lot of great characters in costume to draw.
I’m sure there’s lots to sketch here, but of course the Old Port has plenty to see within a short walk. We will not relocate in the event of rain, because the museum is a good option for backup.
Hope to meet some new sketchers!
Info about the market here
Info about our Sunday Sketching events here:
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.
We’ve actually been back just over a week, but of course coming home from a sketching holiday means returning to a huge inbox and a set of onrushing deadlines.
Here’s one of the reasons I’ve been quiet for awhile. Archiving all the sketches from the trip:
On past sketching trips I’ve tried to paint on location as much as possible. That’s the dream – painting en plein air from sunrise to sunset. But often, the sad reality is I come home from a week in the field with 8-10 watercolors – and out of that I’ll only really love three. (No matter how good the work is, I never really like more than the top three). This time I knew there was too much I wanted to see in BCN. That just wasn’t going to cut it.
As well, there was the deal with the pickpockets. We’d heard many stories about petty theft – which I was ready to disregard as tourists’ exaggerations – until one of our friends on the ground was robbed just a day before we left.
Suddenly I’m all paranoid, and I start reading on the web about the famous bird-poo pickpockets. “Here let me clean your jacket and that pocket lint-y wallet!”. My favorite pieces of tourist advice: “Don’t allow anyone to come within arms length. Shout ‘Stand Back! in a loud voice.” And this good one: “Especially don’t trust anyone in a police uniform. They are probably fake”.
So I was persuaded to travel with the the lightest possible kit. Just a pencil, blob of kneaded eraser, and loose paper carried around in my trusty leatherette ‘presentation portfolio’. I’ve been using it for the last 10 years as a sketchbook slash drawing board. I was asked more than once if I was carrying around a menu.
I was running out of paper during our “Drawing People in Motion” workshop, (burning through examples, plus giving away all demos to students). Somewhere in there we passed an office supply store and grabbed a new block of cover stock. I had about 10 sheets of euro sized A4 left when we got back – so that means this is a shot of about 90 pages of BCN sketching goodness (minus false starts left in trash bins all over the city). Plus a little tease of the latest paintings. I’m using the location sketches printed onto 140lb watercolor paper as the basis for color works. More on that later.
Meanwhile, I’ve been cramming for our upcoming Montreal Workshop THIS WEEKEND! Neck deep right now in the final arrangements. Had to reserve a classroom in case of rain. Still making maps and handouts for the students. Have been going down every morning and scouting locations – finding the best drawing spots. Really looking forward to meeting artists Thursday night. This is going to be our best workshop so far, just because of the home field advantage.
John Singer Sargent Watercolors: Exhibition Report
We recently visited the Brooklyn Museum to see the show of John Singer Sargent watercolors. It’s close enough to Montreal that I couldn’t really pass it up. Not and still call myself a serious watercolorist. The exhibit ends July 28, so by the time I post this it’s basically over – however, it comes to the MFA in Boston (Oct 13/13 – Jan 20/14), so that’s another chance for Nor’easterners.
Like most artists, I’ve always admired Sargent’s mastery of calligraphic brushwork in oil. I wasn’t as aware of his watercolors before this show. Which I suppose was the point. The curators have brought together a never-before-seen exhibit.
So, for those that don’t have a chance to get there in person – here’s my report:
Workshop Scouting: Place D’Armes
I was down at Place d’Armes today, scouting for a good angle for my demo in August, and dry-running my ultra-small sketching kit for BCN. This is a little 5×8 S&B sketchbook. It’ll be great to get down here with a full watercolor kit!
There’s things to see in every direction – and plenty of small scale details if you wanted to sketch an ornate entrance, a fancy window frame, or one of the ornaments on the fountain – but the square does kind of orbit around the statue of Paul de Chomedey. I avoided Notre Dame Basilica (directly behind me) as there really wasn’t any directional light today so it just looks like a grey wall. I’ll see if I can pull off a good one of that someday. You really need to be there in some raking light. I’ll have to figure out the best time of day.
Mount Royal Park – too slow for Tam Tams
Just back from the USK:MTL outing to Mount Royal Park. I started with our Angel-on-a-stick (properly called the George-Étienne Cartier Monument) while waiting for the Tam Tams to get going. (Every weekend in Montreal they do a drum circle onomatopoeiclly named ‘the Tam Tams”). I’m thinking, this is cool – sketching with a sound track – I’ll enjoy this for a while. But by the time I get my act together to go sketch the musicians there’s a HUGE crowd gathered. No doubt it has something to with the pretty girls belly dancing. So – no way I can get a good view. After being rained out of at least two tries at sketching Tam Tams – I’m still going to have to back!
After lunch at the shiny new food trucks (Montreal has just allowed street food to be a thing) the group actually did a something very cool. Everyone agreed to do a test run of next week’s workshop exercises. I had a chance to see what people had trouble with, where I have some blind spots, things I might not have explained thoroughly. So that’s pretty awesome of everyone. Makes the upcoming workshop that much better. I’m impressed they were willing to give up half our sketching day to help out. Three cheers for USK:MTL! I’m just processing my own sketches from that. So I’ll post them later, along with a quick outline of the exercises in case anyone wants to try some drills at home.
Drawing People in Motion – in Barcelona
Next week we’ll be heading to Barcelona for the USK symposium. I’ve been busy planning my workshop on the subject of spontaneous drawings of people ‘in the wild’. That is, un-posed, un-official subjects, as opposed to posed models.
In many ways it’s more fun than going to life drawing class. It’s certainly more challenging to capture people in motion – plus we’ll be trying to tell a story at the same time.
The ‘handouts’ are based on these sketches from the FIMA festival (Festival International Montréal en Arts) in Montreal. I was downtown working on a collaborative mural with a bunch of artists from EnMasse and Trio Magnus, among others.
So – just like last year, I’m posting my course notes – in case anyone who can’t make it to BCN is interested. This year I did it up as a PDF that illustrates the sketchbooking process. It views well on an iPad in iBooks – or of course on any PC in Adobe Acrobat (or most web browsers for that matter). Head on over to my new ‘Downloads’ page to get your copy HERE:
There is also a companion video – done at home using sketches from a USK:MTL sketchcrawl in our underground Metro. This was way back in early spring – that’s why everyone is wearing toques and scarves. It’s five minutes of me sketching under the video camera. Seems like the best way to show exactly what we’ll be doing in the workshop.
~m
Worlds shortest trip to the Met
Just back from the Sargent watercolor show in Brooklyn. I’m processing some notes about that extravaganza. In the meantime, here’s page from some other museum we stumbled into.
Citizen Sketcher 