sketching

Sunday mornings are the best for sketching. The city is quiet and I can park easily and sketch views otherwise unavailable. But this past Sunday was frigid and my feet were nearly frozen after I completed this sketch. I think the cold distorted my vision too–I’ve made the yellow building much taller than it really is. 

This sketch was completed at home the next day. Over the course of this year I am going to try to sketch as many of the historic buildings in the city as I can. Even though this one is on a city street, it has the feeling of a country setting. This was done without my usual ink outline, so seems softer. Lots to experiment with and work on this year–hope to do a sketch a day around the city, improving  technique and composition. Goals. That’s what the new year is about, right?

I had no plan to photograph my pile of sketchbooks, but when I lined them up I was astounded at just how many there were. My plan was to choose a few of my favourite sketches and post them as a review of the year as I did last year. But I just couldn’t resist stacking them and taking a photo.

When I started sketching last January I had two goals: improve the composition of my sketches and work on the depth of colour. I’ve chosen my favourite sketch from each month and I think overall they reflect an attempt to work on both goals. And just as important, they evoke the feeling of time and place for me, the weather, the company, the mood.

This first sketch is was done in Picton Ontario, sitting in a parked car with my great friend A, she in the front seat, and I behind her. It actually was done in late December, but I’m including it because it is in the first sketchbook.

This is January’s sketch. I parked on the side street facing the Moodie cottage in Belleville. This sketch is particularly meaningful to me because I once lived in that apartment behind the main house.

February’s sketch is also in Belleville. Again I was in the car, parked behind the main street. My favourite building, the City Hall, is peeking over the old stone chimneys of Belleville’s early storefronts.

This is on the road to Napanee, the town next to ours. Again, sketched from the car.

This one was sketched in April, but it was warm enough for me to be sitting on a bench in Stratford Ontario. Recorded are the people who came by to comment.

This is my favourite sketch of the year. I was sitting on a bench behind the City Hall in Kingston to capture this view.

Again Kingston and the same Church tower, from a different spot.

I’ll continue tomorrow with the next 6 months, including our trip to Scotland.

For the last two years I have been enjoying the New Yorker Cover page-a-day calendar. A different New Yorker cover, sometimes from more than 75 years ago, was the highlight of my early morning, along with steamed milk and strong coffee. So I am very very disappointed to learn that there will be no 2017 version of the daily Cover-Calendar. Over the next week or so I’m gong to share some of my favourites beginning with this 34 year old gem by Lonni Sue Johnson. I love watercolour sketches of buildings and this one is particularly charming with the ochre sky and cartoonish cars almost obscured by snow banks. On doing a little research on Lonni Sue, I learned her fascinating story. You can read about her anterograde amnesia here and the restorative power of art.

Earlier this week I was in Dundas for a watercolour class. At lunchtime I walked to the Detour Cafe for a cup of their coffee. It was a beautiful day and the shadows were deep under the awning. I did very little of this sketch on site–instead I took a photo and worked on it later at my open studio day. There I had lots of encouragement to ‘go darker’.   I had only time to finish the building and add the xmas wreath hanging from the lamp post, but somehow this seemed ok. A memory of the wonderful November sunlight (happily not an oxymoron this year) we have been enjoying.

I have been trying to sketch more these days, both at home and on the road. These sketches are from the last couple of weeks–stretching my grasp of perspective and pushing myself to add more colour and depth. The sketch below was the hardest as I was angled above my beloved train station. I spent so much time getting the angle that I had no time for colour even though the train was 25 minutes late! The notes on the page make the rest clear enough–I wondered about leaving them and decided it was fine to record publicly the sad events of last week and the wonderful restorative power of Mystical Landscapes at the AGO.

Most of these were done from inside–but the last one, in Guelph, was done sitting outdoors at a cafe–in mid November!

I spent some time sketching the cottage this past weekend, sitting out on the rocks and looking up. We are soon going on a trip and I want to sketch faster and more often than I’ve managed on previous trips. So I was giving it some practice.  The second sketch here is my favourite, even though it has a big runback. The shadows and the ink line have a light touch which I’m striving for. I want to remember to take a moment to plan, even do a value sketch, find the eye level line and draw a casual border before before beginning the sketch. We will be gone just under three weeks and I’ll try to post as I go.