Sailing lesson

In my workshop last week, we spent a long time talking about how to decide what to sketch when you are looking at a complex scene. My suggestion was to begin with the thing that interested you most, and work outward from there.

This morning I spent some time contemplating the scene at the Pointe Claire Yacht Club. I walked along the shore looking at the boats, then I moved further back and took in a wider angle which included the clubhouse, but it was only when the sailing class came out that I knew what I was going to paint. The instructor stood for a long time with his arms akimbo — blue shirt framed by the white sail — waiting for his group of kids to get ready for the lesson. When I saw his pose I knew that would be my starting point. In a fairly monochromatic setting, the touches of colour and movement from the group as well as the white sails set against the dark building formed the start of my drawing.

Yellow Loosestrife

This is a good year in my garden. Things that I planted three years ago are finally starting to mature. The tall spikes of Lysimachia vulgaris (Yellow Loosestrife) stand out in a shady part of the bed, and since it was too hot to go anywhere to paint yesterday, I set my easel up in my backyard and worked from there. Painted on a Winsor & Newton Watercolour pad, 10″ x 14″, with no preliminary pencil drawing.

Retired

Sometimes you just know when it’s time to give up your day job and move on to other things. My trusty wheelbarrow is a perfect example. A few weeks ago, the axle broke, rendering it useless as a garden machine. Despite what you naysayers might think, this old friend was often put to good use — to haul bags of mulch and to move logs around in the garden — but now it’s been replaced by a new, more industrial model.

Sadly, the newer model is quite unsightly, at least to me. All shiny metal and bulbous red handles, and of course no rust. But happily for the old wheelbarrow, it’s still my first choice as a model, both in summer and especially in winter.

People on Canada Day

Happy Canada Day! The weather is perfect for plein air painting and since I had an errand to run in the same neighbourhood, I was back in Carré St. Louis today, painting the famous kiosk.

I’ve been trying to incorporate more people in my work, and the hardest thing, I find, is to not overwork them. I try to make them look like they fit into the scene. When I might previously have avoided this, I also included the guy sleeping on the bench. He’s part of the scene, after all, and part of what makes the park interesting. Although the Victorian houses surrounding the park are very beautiful and very expensive, there are a fair number of homeless people who sleep on the benches and on the grass, and on hot days cool off in the fountain too.

My aim when adding people is to draw the shapes to scale, to paint them simply without going over the details again and again, and then to avoid touching them again. When they’re not successful it’s because I went back into them too often with a small brush. When they work, it’s because I haven’t added more paint than in any other part of the painting.

Montreal workshop photos

Even though I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to so many exotic places to teach, I’ve always been reluctant to give workshops in my own city. When people ask why, my answer is always that the weather in Montreal, even in summer, can be unpredictable and I don’t want to be caught out on the street with fifteen students and no place to take shelter. That’s one of the drawbacks of teaching on-location sketching. It’s fine if you are sketching on your own — you can always duck into a café and finish your sketch in there. But if people have committed a workshop for a whole day or two, a sudden downpour can ruin the experience for everyone.

This year I decided to take the leap (and keep my fingers crossed for good weather) by giving a couple of two-day workshops. I’m an optimist, after all. One of the groups met me last week for one day in Carré St. Louis and another one in Vieux Montréal. We were lucky. The rain held off on both days, although in the evenings there were huge downpours.

We crammed a lot in during the two days. We worked on values, colour, composition, limited palettes and vignettes. Basically the same stuff I teach in a longer session, but crammed into two days. My demo on the first afternoon was of the kiosk in Carré St. Louis. One of my favourite spots in the city.

Montreal is so beautiful in the summer, and it was a real pleasure to take advantage of the city’s historic locations.

We painted in Vieux Montréal as well, facing City Hall (which is now being renovated). I thought that would be a great backdrop for a group photo of this talented bunch.

Although no one ventured in there, we were right next to the historic garden in back of Chateau Ramezay. There’s a shaded bench in the corner of that garden that’s one of my favourite spots for sketching.

And although we didn’t sketch it, I had to take a photo of the fountain in Carré St. Louis, because on a sunny day, it’s a stunning sight.

Alice in the afternoon

Alice takes a nap in my office in the afternoon. She’s always partially under my drafting table which creates great shadow patterns across her body. And like all good models she switches sleeping positions often, so I do several drawings with a new (and wonderful) drawing tool: a Caran d’Ache Grafcube RGB. This was in the goody bag from the Chicago Sketch Seminar a few weeks back. It’s like a graphite stick but better — water-soluble, rich and dark, and instead of being pale grey it’s got a blueish tone to it like a tube of Payne’s Grey watercolour. Just gorgeous to work with as it releases pigment easily, and lets you draw right into wet areas. Sketched on a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook.

Rockport harbour

It was an unusual Rockport trip in more ways than bad weather. This time I did hardly any sketching because I took a three-day oil painting workshop. I’ll save that for another post…

I did manage to get in one sketch of the famous Rockport harbour. Now that I look at the sketch, it seems that I tried to cram everything into one sketch, knowing that I wouldn’t be doing many more. So I put in Motif No. 1, winches, lobster traps, rowboats, fishing boats and buoys. The only thing missing is a fish jumping out of the water and a diving osprey.

New: Urban Sketching Workshop on Madeline Island

I’m so excited to announce a new five-day workshop for July 2020. I’ll be teaching alongside Paul Heaston, Uma Kelkar and James Richards at the beautiful island campus of Madeline Island School of the Arts in La Pointe, Wisconsin, right on Lake Superior. During this week, you’ll get to spend a full day with each instructor and on the fifth day we’ll all be sketching together and sharing our work in a final display at the campus gallery.

If you don’t know the school, have a look at their website. There’s no shortage of sketching locations on the island, and this will be a unique opportunity to really experience a fully immersive sketching week in a beautiful setting. With accommodations right on site, along with group dinners, it seems to me a lot like summer camp for sketchers!

Dates are July 13-17, 2020. Here’s the link for details and registration.

Rockport grey

I’ve been coming to Rockport for several years, but this is the first time the weather’s been mostly cloudy and rainy. That gives me the opportunity to use limited colour and practice my grey mixes.

There’s a view across the channel that I love because instead of looking out at boats on open water, there’s a backdrop of rocks and houses and trees. When I got out there early yesterday, on a windless morning, the reflections were amazing. But as with all rapidly changing views like this, it’s best to record them in pencil before they change. Soon the wind picked up, other boats entered the channel, and the reflections were gone. Having the pencil lines in there helps, as does having a good visual memory.

I painted a second watercolour in the afternoon, of the lunch crowd at Roy Moore Lobster Co. Luckily this scene is right outside my door, because as soon as I had penciled in the shapes, the rain started to fall and I had to move my easel indoors to paint them.

Lobster lunch

This is always the first view I sketch in Rockport — the one right from my door. To the right of this scene is Roy Moore Lobster Co, and today, on a sunny Saturday in June, the picnic tables on the back deck are packed. Standing room only for lobster rolls and clam chowder. This family was smart. Instead of waiting for a table they took their lunch out to the wharf and found a spot to eat. I would have done the same thing.