Rotonde de la Villette

Looking at this demonstration that I did Place de Stalingrad this morning you might think that it was a beautiful warm day in Paris. Wrong! When I opened the curtains before 7 a.m. the sky was charcoal and the Paris streets were slick with rain. But these French sketchers are pretty tough and despite the cold and the damp we painted all day. The sun appeared infrequently in the afternoon and we had to capture the cast shadows pretty quickly sometimes but mostly everybody managed to get in two or three paintings.

Dominos on the Bassin de la Villette

Between two trees

Today’s post is a quick one because I am leaving today for my Paris workshop. Before packing my little Moleskine I had to do a quick sketch of the oft-painted wheelbarrow in the morning light. If all goes well (wifi mostly!) the next post will be from the city of light. À bientôt!

Hosta la vista baby

After two days of teaching I stayed home today to try out a few new things. One of them is a square multipurpose sketchbook that I purchased in New York. It’s a challenging format to compose with but it’s a good change after working so many horizontal and vertical sketches. This hosta was drawn using my Lamy pen and bulletproof ink which surprisingly did not bleed when I put a wash on top of it. That means it was the paper I was using and not the ink that was causing problems. I guess my Moleskines have too much cotton in the paper and not enough cellulose. Now I know.

Montreal workshop day 2

There were some unexpected events that occurred during day 2 of my Montreal workshop. Everything started off well as the group gathered at Macdonald farm in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. I set up my easel at a quiet dead-end, did a drawing for my demonstration and was about to start painting when a big tractor went by and the driver asked us all to move because they were doing silage (had to look that up when I got home!). So we all had to move to the other side of the road and then I couldn’t see the silos and barn I had just drawn and had to paint from memory. To top it off the tractors went by our spot many times during the day, churning up dust and creating lots of noise. Besides that there was some digging going on in another spot nearby and that also created lots of dust and noise. But in the end everyone did amazing work. I never really finished my silo painting but here’s the afternoon demo of ink and wash in my Moleskine.

Here’s most of the group at the end of the day with their silo paintings. We experimented with a wet-in-wet technique and the students had a limited palette so there were lots of pink and yellow skies.

Montreal workshop day 1

It’s a bit of a different post today because it’s day one of the first of my summer workshops. The weather took a turn for the better so we were able to paint outside all day which really helped. It would have been quite a different experience had we been inside a classroom! I have to say it was a really fun group of people who were all up to the challenges I gave them and they turned out some wonderful paintings by the end of the afternoon. Today we worked on finding and keeping lights and darks in the painting and tomorrow we will experimenting with wet on wet. I think they are ready for that. As for me, it was a bit of a challenge to paint in front of a crowd and talk at the same time but you can see my demo below, in progress and at the end of the day.

Here is my demo in progress:

Here is the painting at the end of the day:

And here is a montage of the great work the students did:

Superhospital

The most striking feature of the Montreal skyline for the past few months has been the construction site of the MUHC superhospital. The six or seven giant cranes that hover over the area are visible from the highway that goes into downtown and for months I have been trying to find time to do a sketch of the site. I was nearby this afternoon and found a good parking spot but it wasn’t exactly the angle I wanted. The view from a distance is very dramatic because you look upwards at the site but I would have to stop in the middle of the highway to do that. So I had to settle for setting up my travel stool on a corner and doing a drawing from below. Far less interesting but infinitely safer.

Front steps

Here is the pretty much finished painting that I started yesterday. The scene was as I left it except for a cushion on the wicker chair and two cats who perched on the stairs and were definitely hoping for a place in the painting. When I scan my work I always see a few things I want to change but for now I will leave it as is.

In progress

I ran out of time today so for the first time ever I am posting a work in progress. My preference is to sketch in the morning but that’s not always possible so today I started quite late. And while I was rushing to finish I realized that it might be interesting to do a two-part post. There is a risk here, of course. If I mess this up, like I do quite often, I will still have to post it tomorrow. But I’m living life on the edge. Here’s a scene I started in Ste. Anne de Bellevue and will finish tomorrow morning. Hopefully my parking spot will still be there when I arrive.