Nightsketching! City Hall
I haven’t gone night sketching in quite a while – but I’m using every moment of good weather before my sketching trip to Portland next week. (The workshop, by the way, has maybe one or two spaces left. [info here])
This is our city hall, Hôtel de ville de Montréal as seen from The Place Jacques Cartier. The square is a bustling tourist destination in the summer. Packed with artists sketching your portrait for a few dollars, kids getting neon light sabers from the vendors, rocker dudes with mini amps playing for change – all that family oriented activity.
But the real attraction is the city itself. The buildings are all dramatically lit making a romantic backdrop for strolling along the river. Even with the crowds of visitors, a summer night on the quay can seem like a holiday in Paris.
This sketch was about a half hour or so, done by faint streetlight. It’s a challenge, not being able to see your colors. You never know what you have until you get home. Have to go by memory of what’s on the palette and trust your washes will be fine. As long as you get value right, color doesn’t matter that much in this kind of scene.
For all that though, the night lighting is a great pleasure. Everything is dramatically lit. Shapes are reduced to the strongest forms, detail is erased. You find yourself making powerful drawings!
What I did on my summer vacation
After the workshop, we headed to the Juan Dolio area for a few days at the beach. White sands, sparkling water and palm trees.
This little hut was my best friend. It’s hot out there on the white sands!
It was good to re-group and apply some of the things I learned from the symposium. Using Eduardo’s advice on negative space to draw those complex walls of palms, and taking the trick of lavender shadows from James Richards. You learn a little bit from each person!
And that’s a wrap, back to Montreal!
Report from Santo Domingo
Over the course of the symposium we went to three sketch crawl sessions, took classes from Eduardo Bajzek and Veronica Lawlor, ran my own watercolor sketching workshop three times, dropped in on the evening portrait party, and talked endlessly about urban sketching. A perfect way to spend a long weekend in the Caribbean with a hundred of your friends.
Here’s one of my multipage PanoSketches from the pre-workshop warmup sketchcrawl.
This is what Kalina was working on beside me:
The stuff of mine I’m most happy with was from Eduardo’s class “Straight to Color”. He had us working directly with shapes, skipping the line drawing phase, and trying to focus on large forms, followed by observing the negative space between objects.
Eduardo opening our minds to big shapes!
My first one was a bit conventional. But…
This is the one where use of negative space really clicked for me. You can see below, in reality, it’s just a mass of foliage. But you can make good color decisions that clarify each major shape and then cut in the edges with the shadows. This really helped me with drawing palm trees on our post-workshop vacation :)
In my own sessions, I was presenting the Tea, Milk, Honey exercise I wrote about the other day. We had everyone follow along a simple step-by-step example, (in this case a window on the Ruinas Monasterio de San Francisco) then let them loose to take on whatever they wanted to do in a larger piece.
My demo window, and then some people doing the window exercise:
Unfortunately, I sold my favorite of my own demos! And forgot to get a photo of it before giving it away! But I do like the way this other one turned out:
This ended up being a nice example of Tea, Milk, Honey. The three steps of successively stronger opacity are clearly visible in the sky, shadow and darks in the vines. As well, it’s a nice example of the amount of area covered by the Tea, as compared to the relatively tiny accents of the final Honey darks.
These ruins really were impressive – unfortunately, we couldn’t go inside (it wasn’t structurally safe) and – on top of that, it was so hot, we had to limit ourselves to views from shade. Nobody was willing to bake their brains out standing in the full sunlight. But still, a great location to do our workshop.
Ultimately, my favorite workshop piece, my strongest visual impression of Santo Domingo, was during the final sketch crawl.
Veronica (in her workshop Decisive Moments) had asked us to do thumbnails of various storytelling moments all around the Parque Colón. Out of all the sketches, the image that stuck with me was the huge cloud of pigeons orbiting around the statue of Columbus.
People come out to the square and chase these pigeons back and forth. They drizzle corn over their kids and turn them into squealing human scarecrows. There’s always a horde of birds swirling around. It gave me a chance to study the pigeons in motion. Like any creature, they have a set of postures that repeat over and over. One I just couldn’t quite get is the ‘chest out, wings back, coming for a landing’ pose. Something to work on!
There was so much more to see in Santo Domingo – you can never get it all while you’re at a workshop. Strangely, I only drew one church while I was here. This is not like me at all. But! We did go to the beach and spend a few days sketching palm trees. More on that later.
I’ll close my Report from SD with some sketches from the nightly Portrait Party:
Workshop Pics from Santo Domingo
So we’re back! Had an awesome time in Santo Domingo. Big shout-out to Orling and the rest of the symposium organizers. The symposium was excellent of course – I learned a lot from both the workshops I took and the ones I gave.
But mainly, it was an incredible time meeting people. It’s not very often you get to hang around with so many dedicated artists. People who’ll sketch breakfast, lunch, and dinner. People who pull out their sketchbook if the elevator takes too long.
It’s always super-charging to be with a gang of obsessive-sketchers. I can’t describe enough, the sense of camaraderie. Knowing no matter how long you want to be out drawing, how far you want to walk searching out the perfect sketch, these people want to go do it too. Really incredible.
First thing upon return, we’ve been crunching through hundreds of Laurel’s photos. I know you don’t want to read my descriptions when you can just head straight to the pics!
The entire collection of over 200 photos is on my Flickr [HERE].
If anyone wants a print of anything up there, just drop us a line and we’ll get you the monster resolution image.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s symposium!
Next up – workshop sketches….
Tea, Milk, Honey – Getting Ready for Santo Domingo
A few weeks ago we had rain during a sketchcrawl. Our backup plan was drawing in the Centre d’histoire de Montréal. I liked the looks of the old firehouse/museum, so when we needed a second location after Le375, well, perfect chance to go back for this.
The museum is helpfully placed right across from a cafe – so one can sit under shady trees and sketch in comfort. Which we did, for about three hours.
I thought this might be my last trial run before leaving for the workshop – but I had some time yesterday, so I whipped up some cheat sheets for my workshop. Just some notes for people, in case I’m not able to articulate it well when we’re painting in 40 degree heat :)
I figure I’ll post them now, and anyone who’s sketching from home can try out the exercise. Perhaps at the 36th World Wide Sketchcrawl, going on July 14th, at the same time as the group sketching event in Santo Domingo.
Sketching in Old Montreal
Anticipation is building for the USK workshop in Santo Domingo!
In a few days we’ll be drawing in the heat of the Caribbean summer. Looks like an excellent group of sketchers. Many familiar names from sketchblogs everywhere. I see people in my workshop from Brazil, France, Germany, Portugal, and Venezuela. Though mostly from Canada and the US. Makes sense I guess, as the DR is easier for us N.Americans to reach.
Shari and I were doing a little pre-Santo Do warmup. She took on the foreboding Silo No. 5 while I exercised the better part of valor, drawing a nice classical building across the street.
We were sitting on this abandoned rail bridge leading into the Silo so we could both see our subjects but still be drawing side by side. In the last few minutes of the painting a security guy drives up and tells us that’s not an abandoned rail bridge at all, and we should move our gear or get ready to join the Darwin Awards. Fortunately I only needed to re-enforce the darks in the hedges and pop in the statue out front.
I noticed (from the battened down umbrellas on the roofline) that there’s a posh rooftop restaurant in this place. They would have a great view of the quays from up there. Turns out this is the club Le375C. I’m not in the social circles to be a member, so I may never see the insides. It certainly looks like a palace for business moguls.
I’d like to have sketched it back in the day. Check out this archive photo! (Before restoration after a fire in 1860).
We did a second sketch after lunch, which I’ll post in the next few days – I’m putting together a small ‘making of’ at the moment. I was trying to do these two in a strict, by-the-book manner while taking notes for my workshop session. This year I’d like to have a little more structure to my presentation. More on that soon!
Moorside: Mackenzie King Estate, Ruined Abbey
Last week we were in the Ottawa area, working on a side project that I’ll talk about in a few days. Fortunately, there was time for a day drawing with John Wright, fellow Urban Sketcher, and all around great guy.
John took us up to the Mackenzie King Estate in Gatineau park. I was not aware of the personal details of Mr William Lyon Mackenzie King and his sweeping influence on Canada. Besides accomplishing a lot of nation building, he had some other strange ideas. Such as consulting the spirits about policy, being overly dedicated to his mom, and supporting Hitler (but not Nazi’s. Some kind of fine line going on there). Whatever! I gather the guy was no friend to my Japanese immigrant ancestors, so I’m not looking into this in any great detail.
But, he did leave us a national heritage embodied in the federal buildings in Ottawa, and on the grounds of his country estate, Moorside. Apparently his friends would send our quirky PM chunks of ruined architecture to install as architectural follies. It gives the whole place a romantic Edwardian feeling. There are three major installations, one of which would look especially amazing in the Ontario fall colors.
As we painted the reconstructed walls they call The Abbey, a family came by to conduct a memorial scattering of ashes. They asked us not to stop drawing, just to carry on as if they weren’t there. There were some solemn moments with a few nice words about the deceased and a friend of his playing the bagpipes. It certainly added a strange melancholy mood to an otherwise high-key spring painting. It was an intensely Canadian feeling. Bagpipes, stoicism and Mackenzie’s crazy ruins. These are the kinds of things that happen painting out in the real world.
Painting in a crowd, Place Des Armes
Yesterday I spent the afternoon painting with Shari in Place des Armes. The square is finally in use again after a massive re-construction project. At lunchtime, it was absolutely packed with downtown office types enjoying the sun. A bit later we had tour groups showing up from all over the world. I’m starting to see cultural trends. Asians seem to love art, and often come up to talk. South Asians seemed mainly worried their kids were bothering me (I don’t mind), and Europeans often do drive by, “hey good job’ comments without stopping. Or hang back in my peripheral vision, so I’m never quite sure but I think they’re taking pictures :)
I had an incident with a rogue gust that tipped over my easel, dumping out my paint water. If you’re painting often enough, I guess it’s going to happen. I supposed it’s my own fault for taping half sheets to this tripod that’s meant for quarter. This might have meant a trip to buy an overpriced water bottle, but fortunately, the base of the Maisonneuve statue is a fountain! I think I was a bit discombobulated after that. The painting turned out a little more chaotic than I’d like.
I’ve been feeling lately that I need to get the people and cars into the paintings. Usually I avoid cars as much as possible. Somehow they seem anachronistic next to the subjects I choose. But, it is part of life as it exist in the city, and I should be learning to paint any situation. So, this is the first pass at handling the presence of people. Clearly I’ve simplified the crowd into silhouettes – the lighting situation at mid-day helped with that. This is going on my list of things to work on. I want to be able to tackle the complexity of a street scene a little more gracefully in the future :)
Old Trick, New to me: Drawing with Clear Water
We were in the Toronto area on a business trip the other week, had a half day free, and thus: The Soldier’s Tower at the University of Toronto Queens Park campus.
There is a tremendous amount of drawing a person could do here in Queen’s Park. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make it back summer. If there’s anyone planning a sketching event in Toronto, let me know!
The watercolor continues to reveal new properties to me. I had a small breakthrough on this one, finally seeing some of the advantages of masking edges with clear water. My first step this time was to cut around the silhouette of the tower and attached buildings with plain water. The damp areas of paper allow the first wash to bloom and spread organically, but it stops like magic at the dry edge. Glad I finally experimented with that. It’s a useful addition to the arsenal.
Want to see some progress steps? Here you go:
Select/Deselect
Another of my little self-memos is a note just saying “Select/Deselect”. That’s just a compact way of saying “You have to do a bit more than focus on what’s interesting – you should also intentionally de-emphasize what is not”.
In this case there is a big complex tower behind this arch. It’s three stories of bay windows, decorative carvings, and a peaked roof. It’s not like it wouldn’t have been fun to draw. But, if what catches your eye is the arched gate dappled with leaf shadows, then you have to consider every other element as a potential distraction.
I’ve selected my subject and ruthlessly deselected everything else. I didn’t even include the tree making the shadows. If you feel like you’re losing energy before finishing a sketch, (I certainly did with the last one at the Islamic library) or if you just feel your pieces are cluttered or overworked, this is something that might help.
This last one – I got nothing clever to say. I was on they way home, there was a bit more light, and I thought hey, that just looks fun to paint. Sometimes that’s all there is to it!
Citizen Sketcher 