sketching

This month I’ve been working in a Moleskine A5. This format used to be my favourite, but I am now feeling hemmed in by it. My towers barely fit on the page. These are two street scenes, the first from my car, the second done as I was perched on my stool on the sidewalk. For the Belleville sketch I wanted to be able to see right down the street and my car was a good spot for that. It is relatively private and luckily the view was unobstructed. In Kingston, a busy tourist spot even in September, I thought my spot on the sidewalk next to a bench where I could set my paints and water was good, but I realized too late that I couldn’t see the bottom of the buildings. I did the sketch anyway as well as most of the paint as I sat there, many people stopping to look and comment. I’m getting used to that–and people are invariably encouraging.

It is perspective that I am concentrating on–translating what is in front of me to the page.  Shari Blaukopf made this look so easy in her class demo in Montebello last June and I am inspired by her street scenes. We are going on a trip to Ireland soon and I plan to sketch as many buildings and street scenes as I can. And I have a new coil sketchbook, 7″ x 10″ ready to go.  This size is compact enough to carry easily, but big enough that I should be able to keep the scene from running off the bottom. Fingers crossed. 

“Never worry about making mistakes. All the marks you make, even the ones you aren’t happy with, contribute to the overall drawing. Think of it as a tapesty of lines. Sketching is also a learning curve. It’s always interesting to revisit old drawings and see how much your work has changed, modulated and improved during the time that you’ve been sketching.”

This is a quotation from Simone Ridyard’s marvellous new book, Archisketcher. Urban sketching is a rapidly filling field; there are almost too many books to choose from. But this one is a great one. The text is well-organized and carefully explained and the concepts are illustrated with excellent examples from a variety of the best urban sketchers.

But back to the quotation. I take heart from the thinking about mistakes, and being a fibre artist, I love the idea of a sketch being a tapestry of lines.

We were in Kingston yesterday and I had an hour to sketch. I sat in the open window of a café with a good view of the tower of the City Hall. This is one of my favourite buildings and I have sketched it before. Yesterday afternoon there was a big storm coming. I just finished the sketch as the drops began to fall. I’ve been experimenting with skies and yesterday’s sky was full of grays and purples. A run back and a blob are a few of the mistakes in this quick sketch but just looking at it now I am reminded of the stolen hour before the storm and the great fun it was to sketch such a magnificent building.

On Sunday, I sat in my car on a deserted street and did a quick sketch facing north. It was an hour out of this week’s too busy schedule.  I am trying for a looser scribbly line and quick impression. As I sketched I listened to Radio Lab –it’s sad that the best programming on CBC is no longer Canadian–and did this quick sketch. I find that an amazing way to recalibrate. It’s like a good bike ride or a good massage–a kind of mental realignment.

Today I sat on the dock with my paints and sketched the island across from ours. I took an excellent class with Shari Blaukopf in June at Montebello Quebec and since then I’ve been working on foliage. Here I’ve tried to do the whole thing in one wash, varying the colour as I went across and then coming in later with darks. The lake provides lots of opportunity for practice at foliage. As well, the big expanses of sky and water make for more challenges. But with the rest of the summer ahead,  I’m going to head out in the little boat with the anchor and see what I can find.

Already 2015 has had too many unnecessary and unprovoked episodes of violence and tragedy. The sketches on the cover of the New Yorker capture our grief and honour the victims without words. How else to face such anger and insanity?

We were away last week and stayed in Boston for three days in an AirB&B on Commonwealth Avenue. This is a street of beautiful early buildings with great curves and turrets. We had a busy visit but I had a little time on the first afternoon to sit in the park across the street from our building and sketch. The top building was next door to ours. The  second one, which wrapped itself around the corner, looked to be vacant. I didn’t sketch the Spicy Tequila Burrito billboard on the roof, preferring to capture its stylish dignity while I still could.