79 Lafayette

On the past few visits to New York City I’ve been exploring different corners of Brooklyn, which to do properly could take weeks if you want to cover all the different neighbourhoods. I’ve mostly only walked through Fort Greene, which is where, if you go on Saturday morning, you’ll find the Brooklyn Flea. It’s a great place to watch the hipsters choose their wardrobes and furnish their apartments, and if you go at lunch time the food trucks are worth the wait. After the people watching and the eating, I paused for a time on a stoop a short distance from the market, hoping to find a brownstone to sketch, but ended up with a drawing of brick that looks in many ways like the sketch I did of Pearl Paint!

Sun shower

When you are sketching from a moving car, the landscape changes every few seconds but the cloudscape is more constant and somewhat easier to capture. In fact, you can really study the forms of the clouds when you have nowhere else to go… These wide vistas are something you never get a chance to see in the city where rain clouds frequently come upon you with little warning. It was pretty cool to glance up from my sketch and see the rain approaching. After checking that the paper was really dry, I rewet the lower part of the sky with some clear water, flowed in a little dark wash on top of the existing clouds and tilted the book to let the wash move.

Angelo in The Village

Rusty like my old wheelbarrow. That’s how I felt when I started to draw Angelo. It’s been so long since I’ve drawn on the street and how quickly one can lose that fluidity of line that you need for drawing people in motion, especially if you are sitting on the curb across the street and there’s a constant flow of traffic blocking your view. It took two warmup drawings to get Angelo’s intensity and pose right. But it also felt great to be drawing in the middle of a little bit of chaos. And Angelo can really play.

The end of an era

It’s a sad, sad sight to arrive in New York City and see Pearl Paint closed up for good. I knew as soon as I caught a glimpse of its wonky red and white checkerboard facade that I had to do a sketch of it, because who knows what it will look like next year when I come back. No doubt a condo will be in its place. I started shopping for art supplies at the Canal Street location when I was an art student in university and since then no trip to NY has been complete without a pilgrimage to this art supply mecca. I couldn’t get the whole building in my sketch because I’m travelling with only a small sketchbook, but the thrill of shopping here was always taking the worn out stairs from floor to floor and picking up something new on every level, usually something I couldn’t find in Montreal. I will miss you Pearl.

On the road

It’s a good visual challenge to sketch when you are on the road. Not while you’re driving of course, but if you have the luxury of being a passenger and there is a constantly changing vista out the window, try to sketch what’s in front of you. The view will change with every bend in the road but if you quickly plot in the big shapes in the beginning, then one group of trees will look like the next and you’ll be able to fill in the missing bits quite easily. Sketched in the Adirondacks on a 3″ x 5″ Moleskine sketchbook.

The dep

There are so many great corner stores in Montreal and it’s hard to believe that I haven’t sketched any of them yet. I love the wooden crate by the door — conveniently located as a place to rest your feet and watch the world go by —  but it’s too bad no one was sitting there during my sketching time. I thought that this might be the perfect day to post a sketch of a “dep” since they will no doubt be doing a brisk business in different vintages of beer before the hockey game tonight.

The house that Jack built

This evening I gave a little talk to the Lachine Artists Association. In advance of the event, I prepared the drawing of the nearby Resurrection of Our Lord Parish on site, and then painted indoors in front of the group, using a triad of primary colours (Alizarin, Azo and Ultramarine). It’s always a bit stressful doing these demos because you never know if you’ll be successful, or run into painting problems and humiliate yourself in front of everyone, especially when you are trying to paint from memory. To add to the pressure I found out about halfway through the evening that the pastor was in the audience, keeping a watchful eye on how I painted his church. I hope I did it justice, Father Jack.

Mother’s day

Capturing yellows is always one of the biggest challenges for me, especially the parts of the flower in shadow. Sometimes I add purple to dull and darken the yellow and that seems to work. Today I veered towards the green. Sketched in a Stillman & Birn Beta Series, 5.5″ x 8.5″, using Azo Yellow, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson.

Two birches

If you live in or are planning to be in New York City on May 17, there’s an event that might be worth a visit. It’s called Moleskine City Stories, a live sketch event hosted by Moleskine and featuring some New York Urban Sketchers. There are workshops, opportunities to display your work and Moleskine will also be giving away some sketchbooks. Definitely of interest to sketchers.

As for me, I’m still experimenting with the new paper in my Moleskine. Sketch no. 3 in the book and I’m liking it a little bit better than this first two tries. I’ve learned that I can’t really go back over areas too often, so the colour and value have to be right the first time.

Drawing Alice

Shortly after completing this drawing I received my daily post from James Gurney’s blog Gurney Journey called “Sketching animals from Life” . It was excellent timing because Gurney is writing an article for International Artist magazine and in his first installment he discusses getting started by drawing sleeping dogs. Since I’ve completed step one, the next installment will be to draw some farm animals. If you aren’t aware of his blog, be sure to check it out. It’s one of the best art blogs out there, and there’s different content every day. Sometimes it’s Gurney’s own drawings but there are also posts about art history, illustration, perception, colour, etc. I learn something new every day from reading it.