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Here’s a great way to get to know the pigments on your palette, or to find out more about a colour you are thinking of adding. Instead of just painting it into a little square swatch like we all do, paint a whole sketch with it.

I got to try this out the other night at life drawing. My group meets in a room at the back of an art supply shop (Galerie d’Art Pointe Claire) — a very convenient location if you happen to run out of paper or charcoal, but also highly dangerous if you love to buy art supplies (like me). On a break from drawing the model, I was talking with Pierre (the owner) about Holbein Irodori paints and he gave me a blob of the Antique Orange to try. Just squeezed some out on a scrap of watercolour paper. I was about to paint a little rectangle to see what it looked like, but instead I decided to sketch Jimmy, our model. In other circumstances, I probably never would have chosen bright orange paint for life drawing, but it was the perfect opportunity to see if the paint was opaque or transparent, staining or granulating, etc. You can see where the original blob of paint was, right above Jimmy’s head. I kept on painting until the blob ran out. Turned out to be my most successful sketch of the night, I learned a thing or two about the paint (it’s definitely more transparent than I thought it would be!) and it made me realize that this is probably what I should be doing each time I try out a new pigment.

Join me for a sketching workshop in Tuscany in 2019

It’s a cold and windy day in Montreal, which naturally lends itself to thoughts of warmer places. That’s why I’m already planning workshops for autumn of 2019 — including the one I’m announcing today for Tuscany, Italy. Yes, I know it’s a year and a half in advance, but it’s never too early to plan a once-in-a-lifetime trip like this.

I’m thrilled to be teaching two weeklong workshops in Tuscany from September 17 to 24 and September 25 to October 2, 2019. French Escapade, which offers plein-air painting holidays in Europe, is a small outfit that handles everything — from accommodations and transportation to locations and gourmet meals. So all we have to do it paint and have a great time!

And what could be better than the Chianti countryside in September?

This will be a small group (maximum 12 students) and all the details about the workshop, the spectacular locations, accommodations and rates are on the French Escapade website.

The best thing about our travel sketching itinerary in Tuscany is the sheer variety of subjects to choose from — that, and the magical light and colour of this unique part of the world. As well as painting the vineyards and olive groves from our home base, we’ll be taking day trips to the hill town of Certaldo, the Unesco World Heritage Site of San Gimignano, and the iconic city of Siena.

A weeklong workshop is ideal for developing, honing and integrating your sketching skills. In our time together I’ll teach you techniques for capturing the close-up and colourful in villages and towns, as well as the distant and scenic in Italian landscapes. We’ll sketch vineyards and olive groves, Renaissance architecture, medieval piazzas and panoramas.

Of course, since we’re in Italy’s gastronomic paradise, we’ll also build in some time for wine and olive oil tastings, fabulous meals and plenty of exploration.

In true travel sketching tradition, we’ll pack light — carrying a small bag for art materials and a folding stool. We’ll focus on having fun while we sketch, recording as much as we can as we move from café to hilltop. The aim is to have you return home with a fat book filled with fresh and colourful sketches…and lots of memories.

If you’ve already taken a sketching workshop with me, you’ll know that I believe in working plein air. There is no substitute, in my view, for the shifting colours, shadows and textures you can only get in the great outdoors. The goal is to become better at what you already do: to express your individual style and ways of seeing, which are fundamental to you. That’s what I want to reveal and strengthen. My workshop schedule includes a demo each morning and a critique at the end of each day as well as plenty of individual attention.

If you want to know more, send me an email here. Or to register, here’s the link for French Escapade.

Direct Watercolor: A new book by Marc Taro Holmes

My best painting buddy is Marc Taro Holmes. We often paint (and talk) side by side for hours, sometimes facing in different directions, and during our long conversations we solve all the problems in the world. Or so it seems. But because we are both so focused on our own watercolours and never really watch each other work, it took an hour in a comfy chair at Starbucks with his newest book Direct Watercolor in my hands to really understand how he paints.

In this new book Marc takes us through the shape-based method of how he paints directly in watercolour, with no ink lines and often (miraculously to me) without so much as a pencil line to guide him. It’s always seems like a mysterious process when I look at his finished paintings (I often go home thinking I should have watched him paint!), so I appreciate the step-by-step images of his approach. As we follow him from Brazil to Portugal, Italy, Cambodia and Ireland, there are detailed descriptions of how each painting was created.

The book starts with a really insightful page about the unpredictable nature of watercolour and why he loves it. If you paint in watercolour, you’ll really appreciate his loose, flowing style and distinctive brushstrokes. There’s a huge amount of simplification and abstraction in his work (which comes from much skill and tremendous drawing ability), but when you see it broken down into steps, the process is demystified. Carefully painted shapes with interesting edges, filled with brilliant colour, one next to another, make up his compositions.

My favourite section is reading about his approach to painting a plein air seascape in Portugal, and how the lessons learned are adapted to a studio painting that has as much spontaneity and flow as one done on location.

With watercolour, something new can be learned every time we pick up a brush (or read about someone else doing it) so it was a pleasure for me to be an armchair traveller through Marc’s painting experiences. Direct Watercolor is available in print or e-book on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.

The exuberant bouquet

This bouquet wasn’t exuberant when I received it the other evening. It was quietly waiting for me at Studio 77— a gift from my loving family at the opening of my show — tightly wrapped in cellophane and tied with raffia. But once unwrapped and left to its own devices in a vase, it has slowly opened into the most beautiful expression of spring that I’ve ever seen. Unlike the past-their-prime discounted grocery store blooms that I buy for myself, these are the real deal. Tall tulips, bright daffodils, elegant irises. I want to enjoy their beauty for as long as I can.

As for the show, the vernissage was a success on all accounts — a great crowd, good wine and lots of positive feedback. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and to David at Studio 77 for the hospitality and the opportunity to exhibit. The show continues until April 29.

The extras on Wright Square

Savannah is one of my favourite cities and if I had unlimited time I would make it my mission to sketch in each of the 22 historic squares in the old part of the city. Surrounded by elegant homes, inns and houses of worship, each of these squares could be considered the perfect place to sketch because of the numerous benches and the shade from the live oak trees overhead. Last week I only had time to draw in one of them, but it seems that I picked the right (or Wright) square that day. As I discovered after I was part way through my drawing, they were filming a scene from “Gemini Man” in the park. Even after I realized what was going on, I kept on sketching until a production assistant asked me to leave the square. Although I didn’t get to see Will Smith or director Ang Lee, it was pretty cool to watch the action and add a few of the extras into my sketch.

Stella with her eyes open

This is only one of many drawings I did of Stella last night, but this captures her the best. Her face is not an easy one to draw (come to think of it no face is ever easy to draw) but it’s one that’s full of character and beauty. The amazing thing about most of the models we have in life drawing studio is their capacity to stay awake during a single pose three-hour evening session. I know I would be nodding off. No doubt this is a testament to their experience. Sketched in black Conté on Strathmore Pastel paper.

Storm over Bluffton

Last week during a workshop demo, we were gathered on a wide screened porch, watching the swirling clouds over Bluffton. It was the opportune moment to paint skies. But as I painted, the storm got closer and closer. I continued to paint — a bit too absorbed in painting the palms to realize that it was getting darker and darker — until I could barely see my paper or the colours on my palette. I have a good chuckle when I look at this now, remembering the clever student who discreetly slipped away and came back moments later with a tiny flashlight that she held over my head so I could finish the demo. I am very grateful for her resourcefulness.

Corner to corner

From my seat at The Corner Perk coffee shop in Bluffton, I had a great view of the opposite corner of the street. The small building in front of me was once a carpentry shop but is now for sale (found this out from someone on Instagram). This was my warm-up sketch upon arrival in South Carolina last week.

It always takes some time when I go from a winter to a summer location to get the colour going in my head, and on my palette. Painting winter scenes is all about subtleties — soft cobalt shadows on snow,  pale winter branches, lots of greys and browns — so painting all this green is a bit of a shock to the brain. In a good way. The pen drawing is pretty loose and scribbly, which, upon reflection, is a telltale sign of being in a rush to get the colour on the paper. It’s a bit like a shout of joy, but with a Pitt Pen. Sketched in a Handbook Travelogue Journal, 8″ x 8″, using all the colours on my palette!

What I learned while teaching

I’m just back from my spring break week in South Carolina and Georgia, where I spent a few days teaching a workshop in Palmetto Bluff, and then a few days wandering around Savannah before heading back to Montreal.

I still haven’t scanned the sketches I did during the week, so I’ll save those for another post. In this one, I thought I’d focus on the workshop itself, the students’ work, and the things I learned while teaching.

When you teach outdoors, you have to adapt to changing weather conditions (we had our share of those this week) and be prepared with lots of “Plan B” exercises in case of rain. Urban sketchers are traditionally a hardy bunch: we’re ready to take whatever comes, meteorologically speaking, prepared to travel light, move quickly and, judging by my Palmetto Bluff students, willing to work hard. I’ve realized that every time I teach a workshop, it’s as much a learning experience for me as it for the participants. The main lessons I hoped to tackle in our three days together were composition, value studies, simplification, painting with lively washes, and using a limited colour palette. Over three days, we managed to cover all of that, and more.

On the first morning we picked a spot on the property and used a view of the salt marsh as a way to study values. The dark curving branches of Southern live oaks, in the foreground, provided a perfect dark contrast to the light sky and headlands in the distance. In the afternoon we used the values studies as reference for larger colour sketches. The marsh setting was a great subject for value studies since the lights (sky), darks (trees) and mid-tones (marsh and headlands) are very easy to identify.

So what did I learn on the first day? It took some thinking (which I did on the airplane ride home), but I realized that Day One is when I get to know each workshop participant and try to figure out what they’re trying to achieve in their sketches. As you can see, this group’s skill level was very high.

On the morning of Day Two, I asked students to put away their pens and pencils and instead use brushes to draw the framework for their sketches. Many had never tried going straight to paint before, but the sketches of houses and plantation ruins around Palmetto Bluff were fresh and lively.

After lunch an impending rainstorm moved us indoors to a wide wraparound screened porch with great views of a dramatic sky. At one point it became so dark when the rain finally arrived that a student pulled out a flashlight from her bag so we could all see the demo I was working on.

The Day Two takeaway, for me: no matter how well you pick your locations, it’s crucial to have some shelter close by in case of rain. (And a flashlight!)

The forecast for Day Three included lots of sun, but with the addition of cold temperatures and gusting winds, we found shelter on a quiet street of Old Town Bluffton. After my demo, students settled down to sketch. Often on the third day of a workshop I find that the concepts I’m teaching start to gel. I noticed that everyone was more relaxed (or possibly exhausted or frozen!) and also taking more time to draw, so instead of moving to another location for the afternoon we stayed in the same spot for the entire day. What did I learn on Day Three? I learned to give students more time to finish their drawings and integrate the concepts they’ve learned. This resulted in some amazing work!

We ended each day with a critique, which included looking everyone’s sketches and identifying how they could be improved or completed. I don’t know about you, but when I’m a participant in a workshop, I’m so focussed on my own sketch that I don’t see what other people are working on, so this gathering is really important.

And in classic Urban Sketchers style, there has to be a group photo with sketches in hand.

If you think a workshop is something you might be interested in, have a look at my workshop page for upcoming events in 2018 and 2019. Or drop me a line if you have a local group and are interested in inviting me to your city.

The Village: an exhibition of my Pointe-Claire watercolours

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you may know that I’ve been painting scenes of Pointe-Claire Village for years. I often stop there on my way to school for a quick sketch, or set up my easel in the shade of a willow in the park with a view of the boats in the yacht club. I frequently paint the same corners in many seasons and often go back to draw the iconic windmill on lazy August days.

Now it’s my pleasure to have a show and sale of those paintings at Studio 77, a cafe and exhibition space in the town where they were painted. The show opens on Saturday, March 31. If you’re in Montreal, join me at the vernissage from 6-8 pm, or stop by Studio 77 for a latte any day until April 29. It’s located at 271 Bord-du-Lac in Pointe Claire.