Pots on my stairs

I bought a four-pack of herbs at Costco this morning — basil, thyme and two types of oregano. And because I’ve been filming a new online course indoors all week and haven’t been able to enjoy the spring weather, I rushed to put away the groceries so I could get out and sketch these. I guess my arrangement wasn’t very creative but the shadows on the ground were great and it felt so good to be outdoors. These herbs will go into the ground eventually but before that I may just have to rearrange them and paint them again.

Painted on Arches 140 lb cold press paper using lots of my special shadow recipe: cerulean blue, violet and a bit of yellow.

Bennie and the fish

Bennie fishes off the pier in Pointe Claire. He casts his line into the dark water, attaches his fishing pole to the concrete barrier in the parking lot and then, because it’s quite cool and windy near the water, he gets into his car to stay warm while he waits for a fish. I’m also in my car, sketching him quickly as he fiddles with hooks and bait, and later filling in the background with water-soluble graphite. Periodically he gets out of the car to check on the line. No bites. It starts to get warm so I open my window. I can see him looking at me, try to figure out what I am doing. Eventually he takes a few steps towards my car and we exchange greetings. I show him my sketch and in return I get to see a photo of the huge sturgeon that he caught last summer. We talk for a while and then it’s time for me to go. I don’t get to finish my sketch, but we’ve had a nice chat. Hopefully next time, when our schedules coincide on the fishing pier, there will be success for both us. Bennie will have caught another sturgeon and I’ll be sketching both Bennie AND the fish.

Five lonely daffodils

There were five sad and lonely daffodils in my garden, each about three feet apart and each alone in its clump. I’ve been eyeing them all week, hoping more blooms would appear, but nothing. I guess I’m not a very good bulb gardener… The weather forecast says five days of rain to come, so I picked them today and brought them into my studio to paint. They definitely look better in a vase than they do out there in the rain.

Do you have a good recipe for painting yellow flowers? I experiment with different mixes all the time. Today I used Hansa Yellow and Lemon Yellow for the lights, and Raw Sienna for the centres. I’d love to hear what you use!

Rue St. Paul facing east

Old Montreal is at its best in the morning, so when I go downtown to cut my hair I always make an early appointment and arrive even earlier to draw. It’s not easy to park on the narrow streets but I found a spot on rue St. Paul, facing east, and drew a view with a slice of light hitting the building at the corner of McGill Street. My paper was a bit too textured to get a smooth tone with graphite but when I got home I used a blending stump to even it out. Sketched in a 8″ x 5″ Hkie sketchbook from Indonesia.

Hyacinths

There was a spot of warmth in the garden, finally. I got out my paints, dusted off a garden chair, and painted the hyacinths in my garden. Alice kept me company, happy to snap at the occasional fly and soak up the sun. Usually I’m out there earlier in the season, to sketch the first crocuses and snowdrops, but I missed them this year since I was teaching in Santa Fe during the week they bloomed.

Painted on a 10″ x 14″ pad of Arches CP paper, using lots of Cobalt Blue and Quin. Rose to get that deep Hyacinth blue.

Denver airport people

What started as a long layover in the Denver airport became even longer when the Air Canada plane that was supposed to arrive had mechanical issues and had to be replaced by an aircraft coming from Miami. Three hours to wait became five. I wandered, I read my book, I ate, I looked in all the airport shops and then I took out my iPad and drew all the people who also had time to kill. I love drawing people, and airports are always such a good place to sketch them since you know they will likely be sitting and looking at their phones for a very long time. I use the simplest of tools in Procreate — a Procreate pencil because it’s closest to drawing with a real graphite pencil, and occasionally a bit of shading with one of the sketching brushes.

Santa Fe spring

It’s definitely spring in Santa Fe. I’ve spent the past few days getting ready for a workshop that starts tomorrow, but mainly I’ve just been enjoying the bright spring light and the budding trees. I haven’t managed to sketch a crabapple yet, but they are in full bloom here this week!

I started the day by sketching the Loretto Inn. I’ve done a sketch of this from a photo but it’s a different thing entirely when you’re watching the light travel across those stacked adobe cubes. I couldn’t find a bench with a good view, but there was a curb across the street to sit on and not too much traffic to block my view of the architecture and the budding poplar trees.

My second sketch was of the artisan market near the Loretto Chapel. I love sketching markets, especially if they’re topped by white umbrellas.

For my final sketch I made my way to the San Miguel Chapel but instead of drawing the chapel itself I tried to capture the spring light on the trees across the way.

The workshop starts tomorrow so I will likely not have time to write again this week, but hopefully I’ll be sketching more views of this wonderful city in spring that I’ll post when I get back home.

Back to Tucson

As I wait for the weather to warm up in Montreal, I’ve been continuing to paint desert scenes from Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, Arizona. This is one I painted a few weeks back, of the wash at sunset. It’s the companion to this one, which was at the same time of day but facing the opposite direction. And here is that same area in the afternoon, painted as a workshop demo with my group.

I really did fall in love with the subtle colours and varied textures of the Sonoran desert. There’s so much to paint and the weather at that time of year (January/February) is perfect for plein air sketching. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Madeline Island School of the Arts invited me back to teach in 2024. We had a great time at the ranch, we loved seeing (and drawing) all the horses, the wranglers, the pancake breakfast and the many varieties of desert plants. The food is fantastic, and you can’t beat the setting which is walking distance to a trailhead of Saguaro National Park. In fact, next year, I plan to arrive a little earlier or stay a little longer to hike. If you are interested in joining me on next year’s desert adventure, dates are January 22-26, 2024 and January 29- February 2, 2024. And if you have any questions, just drop me a line.

Ice storm drawings

There’s nothing like an extended power failure to give you the time to draw. It started with Wednesday’s ice storm that lasted for many hours, with 15-30 mm of ice accumulating on trees and branches. Once the ice built up on trees, we started hearing deafening cracks as the weight of it split big branches and devastated huge trees all over the city. Next to go were the exposed power lines which started coming down too. By 3 p.m. our power was out and most of the city was in darkness.

Luckily we have a wood-burning insert in our fireplace, so we were able to stay warm. And with the help of our kind neighbour who hooked us into his generator, we were able to keep the sump pump going and avoid a flood in the basement. Once those necessities were taken care of, what else was there to do but draw?

My first ice storm drawing was a view out my back window. I tried to capture the cedars that were curved and split from the weight of the ice. And the drippy grey atmosphere of the day.

I ventured down into my dark and cold studio with a flashlight, and found a mug of Micron pens of different sizes. I haven’t drawn with these in a very long time because I find that the nibs wear down too quickly, but I love the super fine 005 and 01 pens. Of course my first drawing was of Alice, who was finding the whole change of routine and sleeping in front of the fire quite tiring.

Like Alice, I did not want to leave the one warm room in the house so I kept drawing from my seat by the fire. By Thursday afternoon (still no power) the sun came out, so I drew the Norway Maple that’s outside my front window. With nothing but time on my hands, I built up the tree texture with A LOT of fine lines.

Of course the cold house extended the life of my yellow tulips, so I brought those into the warm room and drew those with my Micron pen. Just as I was finishing the tulip drawing, and almost exactly 48 hours after it had gone off, the power came back on with a whir and a hum throughout the house. It felt great to feel the house warm up again, but after 72 hours of this ice storm there are still many people in the city with no power, sleeping in shelters, charging their phones in malls and librairies, and waiting for their lights to come on too. Hopefully it will all be restored by tomorrow for everyone.

Tulip greens

The other day I spotted a few tulips in my garden — little resilient red leaf tips that have miraculously forced their way out of the frozen ground despite the still-frigid temperatures in Montreal. There are no flowers in sight just yet, so I succumbed to these tulips at the grocery store. The yellow flowers have tall stems and large petals, and are definitely more elegant than what I usually find in the bucket at the store. I just had to sketch them!

Tulip foliage is a matte greyish-green colour, and I always have a hard time figuring out what blue and what yellow to use to convey that soft green. For today’s sketch, I tried something new. I used Phthalo Green (not a colour you would use on its own for foliage) and mixed it with Burnt Sienna. I tested the combo out on some scrap paper. On the left is Phthalo Green on its own, then Burnt Sienna, and then a mix of the two, in different proportions. On the left I used more Burnt Sienna and on the right there’s more green in the mix. Occasionally, while I was painting the bouquet, I added a little yellow or a little blue to the base mix to vary the green tones. Sketched in my Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook, A4 Portrait size.