Four spikes

Even though I draw most every day, I am always ready for a challenge. And perspective is a challenge — it just never gets any easier. The St. Joachim presbytery in Pointe Claire has all these great spikes that pierce the sky but boy are these things hard to draw. I did this in my Moleskine sketchbook with a MUJI mechanical pencil and many sighs of frustration.

Centennial Hall, before and after

I’m not quite sure why I never finished my sketch of Centennial Hall this summer but I found it in a box recently and thought it might be worth hauling it out and adding some darks.

The only problem with working on a painting some months later is that you forget what your colour palette was. I can safely say that I used a limited palette when I started this sketch but I threw caution to the wind today and used whatever dried leftovers I had on my palette from this week.

Oranges

As a reward for getting through (well, partly through) piles of exams and projects that I have to grade, I took a break for a few minutes to sketch the oranges on my counter. The paper I have in this sketchbook is not the best for watercolour but I like all the blooms and accidents that happen on it.

The musician

So glad I carry my Sharpie with me to events now. It may be my new favourite pen. Sketched this guy at a family gathering on the weekend.

Little green house

I don’t get much practice drawing from above, but from my hotel room in Princeton I could see this green house. The only sketchbook with me on this overnight trip was a small Moleskine which was an unfortunate choice. I think I really needed a bigger sheet to situate this building properly in its surroundings. The result of working on paper this small? My little green house looks like a doll house!

Five minutes in Princeton

What do you do when you have only 15 minutes to devote to a sketch? In my case I use a thicker pen, which today was a Sharpie.
I love university towns in the autumn, especially in New England. I spent a few hours in Princeton, New Jersey today and would have loved to sketch the campus grounds, the vine-covered buildings, or a library or two. But I only had five minutes to draw the trees, five to add a bit of detail and five to throw on a bit of paint from my tiny travel palette. I did spot an incredible Tudor building that looked like it was straight out of Stratford, England but it would have taken more time than I had to draw it.

Not my wheelbarrow

Of course when I spotted this wheelbarrow on a street near my own, I had to sketch it. Like my own wheelbarrow which sits idle most of the time, this one has been overturned in the same spot for quite a while. Discarded? I think not. Forgotten? Probably. Either way I hope it stays there because I will be coming back to paint it when the snow falls, which if the forecast is correct, could be as early as tomorrow.