Doorways in the Golden Mile
Here’s a couple of doorways I often pass on my morning stroll through the Golden Mile. This posh Montreal neighborhood is situated on the foot of the mountain, overlooking the city center.
It’s full of interesting structures, which Wikipedia describes thusly: “The architecture of the area was an eclectic mix of the Neo-classical, Neo-Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Queen Anne and Art Nouveau – often within the same home.”
Corner of Sherbrooke and Guy
Returning to Portugal – very soon now!
Here’s a look back in time to 2004 – some of my very earliest location drawings.
These are from one of our first trips expressly for drawing. We spent a week or so in and around Tomar, just a bit north of Lisbon. We rented a car (expensive!) and drove all over the twisty mountain roads – found some beautiful locations. The first drawing is the mountain town Marvão. I think the arches are from Alcobaça. The last is in Tomar itself, from a nice cafe on in the shopping district, looking up a the local convento.
I’m getting excited to go back to Portugal next month for the USK symposium. This time we’ll be drawing in the city of Lisbon for three days, after which I expect I’ll spend a little time in Sintra and Belém. It will be interesting to see how different the drawings are now!
These, by the way, are why I don’t draw in sketchbooks anymore! What do you do with images that go across the spine? And I do like to cut out bad sketches. So that left me with the hard choice of losing a good one on the back of a bad page, or sometimes keeping a drawing that didn’t turn out, in order to save a spread. Thus – now I draw on loose sheets.
Calgary comes up James Short
Who is James Short and why does he deserve a park?
The internet tells me there used to be a James Short School on this spot. I can only assume the school sunk into the ground leaving the clock-tower projecting out of a tiny bit of lawn. The ‘park’ is a postage stamp green zone in the heart of Cowtown’s glass canyons.
Anyone who debates the cow-towniness of Calgary, I’ll just point out your new city cops with the big black hats and matching stab proof vests. Not that I’m calling you out Calgary – but the only thing I found to draw was a tin roofed shed!
Wandering Eye
Just an old fashioned sketchcrawal. Walking around downtown Montreal with my buddy Jens Claessens, just drawing whatever we happen to run across.
(The Redpath Museum, Place Phillips Square (behind the Hudsons Bay), and the old Ecole Des Beaux Arts on Sherbrooke and St. Urbain).
And then somehow, we ended up on the back side of City Hall, without ever seeing the front entrance. They have been doing some work on city hall – and right now, the roof is a dark reddish brown, instead of the normal green patina. I wonder if they’re going to restore it to the weathered finish? or let nature take it’s course. It doesn’t match the photos on the side of the tour buses anymore!
By the way – I’ll be out of town for about a week – so I’ll try and post while I’m away – but we’ll see what we can get for wireless on the road hey?
~m
Rue Sherbrooke, Museum District
At last! Yes – I’ve been on a long hiatus, (working hard on a book project, that sadly I cannot discuss quite yet). I apologize the drawings haven’t been flowing as fast as you or I would like. But! In the next few weeks we will be back to steady posting. It is getting close to the Urban Sketchers symposium in Lisbon, so I have to be all tuned up and ready to draw!
[Le Chateau – Ballpoint sketch with Watercolor, 14×17″]
This is the rooftop of a towering stone apartment block across Sherbrooke from the Musée de Beaux-arts. Seen from down a side street, peering out from an awning. (It started raining immediately after I had the line art roughed in).
I had always thought it was the Ritz Hotel, (which is nearby; under renovation at the moment). But on investigation I find it’s actually simply apartments. Apartments for people so extravagantly affluent they need to live in a historic castle high above our city! I poked my head in the front door – and there are shockingly few addresses on the directory. It looks like there should be hundreds of apartments – but I have to think it’s quality over quantity up there. I imagine these are the third and fourth homes of the sons of bottled water millionaires and the parchment-skinned ex-wives of mineral rights barons. Only used in ski season, before retiring to the Canary Islands in darker months. Talk like that is not going to get me an invitation to enjoy the view however.
[Church of St.Andrew and St.Paul, Ballpoint sketch with Watercolor, 14×17″]
Since the rain wasn’t letting up, this next is from the third floor of the Musée, looking out at the church tower across the street.
There’s a very convenient window with a waist height marble shelf where one can stand and draw. And as a bonus, it’s free admission to this wing, (the permanent collection). So you can get this sketch yourself any time. The rough stone church has been under scaffolding the last few times I visited Montreal – but finally, it seems restored to it’s original antiquity. I really ran out of time on this one, so I’ll be back some day to get a nicer drawing. Don’t even try to make sense of the perspective down below the tower :) HA!
Scarlett James at Dr. Sketchy’s Montreal
This afternoon Dr Sketchy’s Montreal brought us some real star power! Burlesque performer Scarlett James wowed the crowed with sultry stage presence and classic glamour poses.
This was a top-form Sketchy’s style event. Great model, snazzy costumes, and a littel strip-ter-mission between posing sets. You know you’re drawing burlesque when the model’s rocking a 12 foot ostrich feather boa!
[Linkage: ScarlettJamesBurlesque.com, Dr.Sketchy’s Anti-Art School]
Medicine and History and Made-up Stuff
This weekend was the 31st Worldwide Sketchcrawl. I miss the old sketchcrawl gang in San Francisco. It was always a great time meeting up with a group of artists and swarming a neighborhood. The locals were always giving you those fish eye looks. What’s going on? Who are these people scribbling on every street corner? Well, gang or not, I hit the bricks and sketched two more of my favorite Montreal landmarks. Today’s theme is Old Hospitals.
The Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal
This sprawling walled hospital complex dominates the walk down Rue Parc towards the city. While not as architecturally fanciful as the nearby Royal Victoria hospital, the multi-winged stone structure with it’s dome and bell towers certainly make a dignified impression. You can’t help feeling the history of the city as you walk by. Plans for the initial structure are dated to 1688, but I have heard mention of it being destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly between 1695 and 1734.
As an English speaker, the name Hotel-Dieu seems like such a charming euphemism for a hospital. How nice; “Check into our hotel, and let us take care of you!”, “We’ll have your suit pressed, and transplant your kidney while you’re with us!”
In fact, being the oldest hospital in Canada, they do have some world firsts – including the first kidney removal, and spectacularly, the first patient surviving burns across 90% of the body. So that’s some excellent room service.
Irving Ludmer Psychiatric Research Facility
Now, I don’t actually know anything about this place. But if you walk up Ave Des Pins from the Hôtel-Dieu you might notice this imposing stone pile high on top of a hill.
At first you can just see it through a copse of trees, surrounded by a jagged stone wall, which is collapsing in a marvelously scenic way. Trees growing through the wall have knocked out big chunks, making it into something of a ruined fortress.
You’ll come to a decorative iron gate, with huge square pillars – one of which is shattered into pieces – carrying on with the besieged feeling. Due to the steep terrain here on the side of Mont-Royal, you’re put in the position of an out of breath supplicant, staring up at the building looming above you. The large overhanging eaves, and deeply set window casings make this structure seem ominously shadowed, no matter what the weather.
Then, to find out that it is in fact a Psychiatric Research Facility! It couldn’t be better. This is a place that needs to be permanently under a storm cloud. Lightning striking the weather-vanes, screeches of madmen from deep within. I have visions of patients being plunged into ice water baths or electro-shocked into mind-numbing seizures. Whatever passes for “research” in a gothic horror novel.
I’m sure it’s not as exciting as all that :) The people going up to work looked perfectly normal.
But then, they would wouldn’t they….
The Hobbit House on Cote-des-Neiges
There’s this ‘little’ brick house on Rue Guy – (not so little actually, but cute compared to the big mansions all around here). I’ve always enjoyed it’s ‘hobbit house’ feeling. It has these strange tiny entrances — two narrow doors, set at right angles to each other, but with only one set of steps serving both. Very strange. Also odd to have a cocky little minaret – despite the fact it’s only a single story structure. Maybe I’m looking at the back door, and it’s actually quite grand from the other direction.
But in any case, here’s a drawing of my favorite house on Rue Guy. (Correction! – actually at: 3547 Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges – Guy changes names where it goes uphill at Sherbrooke – thanks Suzanne)
Wintering Bikes
Here’s a slice of life in Montreal. The mournful sight of bikes rusting away in the snowbank.
There’s lots of reasons to bike in Montreal. The bike lanes pretty much go everywhere, and there’s nowhere to park a car anyway. Plus it’s greener, and saves money. So lots of people bike. Some ride all winter. Snow and sleet be dammed.
Here on the Plateau, people live in these 100 year old buildings with precarious external staircases. There’s no place in your tiny apartment for a bike even if you didn’t fall to your death trying to take it upstairs. And your tires are full of salty/gravelly/slush. Probably why you’re always seeing them on the sidewalk locked to a little iron railing, axle deep in the snowbank.
After the melt the streets are littered with these frozen bike-corpses chained to posts. Many have been crippled by the snow plows crushing their wheels into pretzels. It’s like the Russian front for bikes. Dead soldiers frozen into the ground. If you’re a bike, you do not want to get sent to Montreal for the winter.
Citizen Sketcher 