A room of one’s own

For the last year I have been using my car and the kitchen counter as my studio but thanks to a little bit of juggling in my house I now have a studio to work in, and that makes me pretty happy. I also have an amazing drafting table to use, with a two-inch thick wood top and a surface that is almost six feet wide. Plenty of room on there to paint — even full sheets if I choose — and place to leave my work-in-progress. This sketch of the balcony on avenue Mont-Royal was done on location but I added the finishing touches at home, just to try out the new space.

Kalamata

Not much time to paint today. Not much time to write today. Just enough time to sketch a few olives on a plate while getting dinner ready.

Indian Summer

Indian Summer is a heat wave that occurs in the autumn, or so says Wikipedia. The weatherman on my local radio station says that for it to be a real Indian Summer we have to have three days in a row of hot weather. The other defining quality of these type of autumn days is a haze that seems to soften and mute all the colours. Well I think there may be a storm coming my way tomorrow but I know that today is Indian Summer for me, and for all the people who were out along the canal in Lachine — riding bikes, walking dogs, catching some rays and having lunch on terraces. I sketched this from Parc René-Lévesque looking across the canal at Église Saints-Anges Gardiens and the domes of College Sainte-Anne.

Barista

Last summer I tried a Derwent Inktense pencil for a small sketch that I was doing in a workshop. I loved the inky black that I could obtain with it, but the pencil I tried was borrowed and I haven’t been able to find it until today. This was done in my watercolour Moleskine with the water-soluble Inktense in Charcoal grey and also a water-soluble graphite pencil in some of the lighter areas. Still loving how dark you can get with this when you add water.

This coming Sunday, October 28, is the monthly outing for Urban Sketchers Montreal. We’re going to be trying something new this month: a sketchcrawl on avenue Mont-Royal (because the weather is looking kind of cold and possibly rainy). The plan is to meet at the Mont-Royal metro station (upstairs, not on the platform) at 10 am.  We’ll spread out a bit, sketching indoor or out, going in and out of shops and cafés to sketch, and then meet at the end to have a look at everyone’s sketches and warm up somewhere. Mont-Royal is a really interesting street with lots of unusual shops on either side and a great view of the mountain. Everyone is welcome to join us for a day of sketching and meeting new people. If you are interested in adding your name to the mailing list for this or future events please email me at sblaukopf (at) gmail (dot) com.

Senior crossing

Since I began my blog last year, the seasons and the weather have become so important. When I wake up in the morning I look at the forecast on my phone to see if I can get out to sketch. And then I look at the thermometer to see if I can sit outside. And these past few days I have been looking at the trees to see if there are still leaves to paint because when these fall in the next few weeks the world will be gray for so many months.

In Chapters

I was inspired today by Bernie Feder, a friend who moved to Toronto years ago and who recently started a blog called McPortraits. Yes, it is what you think it is — iPad drawings of people he observes while having his morning coffee at McDonalds. I love how he captures the character of each person he draws with a simple yet accurate line and a limited colour palette. I stopped at Chapters after work today to research some book illustrations for a project I am working on and did my own coffee portrait at the in-store Starbucks.

Striped socks

The smooth paper in my Moleskine sketchbook is made for pencil drawing. I keep struggling to put watercolour on it but using a pencil on this is no struggle at all.

Under the tree (autumn)

It seems that all the hostas in my garden turned bright yellow, probably due to a hit by the first frost earlier in the week. In the springtime I did this very same scene and you can see it here.

My favourite tree

Perfect maple trees are difficult to find in my neighbourhood because many of them have had branches hacked off in a seemingly indiscriminate way by the power company. Some have gaping holes in the middle or huge limbs missing but this one must be far enough away from the wires to have been left intact. I’ve been wanting to paint this tree for a long time but couldn’t figure out how to fit it all on the page. I didn’t manage to get the full dome of the foliage but the part that I really wanted to paint was the contrast between the electric yellow of the autumn leaves against the dark of the trunk.