Musée Maritime de Charlevoix

The Musée Maritime de Charlevoix is my kinda place. It’s right on the water in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive, and even if you don’t pay the entry fee, you still get a great view of the old shipyard from across a little bay. I love painting old boats, but had never had a chance to go inside a wooden schooner so after sketching I visited the museum too. It was the first time I’ve visited a museum since the pandemic started, but it wasn’t very crowded, and with a mask on I felt perfectly safe. Definitely worth a stop to see the old sawmill, tour the four wooden schooners and one tugboat that are outside, and learn a little bit about the history of shipbuilding and navigation on the Saint Lawrence River. The sketch of this survey ship was done in my sketchbook but I did a larger painting with a wider view that I will scan and post soon.

Hydrangeas before and after breakfast

While I was weeding the garden the other day I discovered lots of hydrangea blooms hidden under some other plants. Since they flower too low to be seen from any other vantage point in the garden, I cut them and stuck them in a vase so I can enjoy them in the house.

This morning before breakfast I sketched them quickly in Procreate, on my iPad. I love how they flop out of the vase and bend in all directions. That’s likely because they were blooming on the ground so all of the flower heads are flattened on one side and a little bit odd.

After breakfast and a walk with Alice, I tried them in watercolour. I was hoping to keep the same simplicity of shapes as in my digital sketch. White blooms can be tricky because you want them to have a light side and a shadow side, but you still want them to be white. I used a variety of colours in the shadows but still tried to keep the values light. Painted on a block of Winsor & Newton Rough paper, 16″ x 12″.

Chez Chantal

Chez Chantal is one of those places that begs to be sketched. It’s pink, it’s covered in colourful signs, it’s next to railroad tracks, it’s backed by trees, it’s surrounded by blue and yellow houses AND you can buy ice cream or poutine when you are done sketching. If you are looking for it, it’s on rue du Quai in La Malbaie, right next to where the Train de Charlevoix picks you up to take you to Baie St. Paul. Just don’t make the mistake of painting there on a Monday when Chez Chantal is closed and the train is not running. There will no people to add to your scene and, more importantly, no ice cream when you are done sketching.

West Coast inspiration

These days painting inspiration can be hard to find. The pandemic has confined so many of my sketcher friends to home, and let’s face it, after a while, drawing your immediate surroundings can get tedious, even for the most motivated sketchers.

Yesterday my painting inspiration came in the form of a text message. My son — who is on a kayaking trip on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia — sent me a photo of a bay he had just paddled into after a long day on the water. The low viewpoint of the image (taken from the kayak), combined with the deep green West Coast trees and inky dark water spoke to me immediately. After dinner I headed down to my studio to paint it. It’s just a little painting (9″ x 12″) on a pad of Arches CP paper, but it was good practice for moving paint around on paper. And it satisfied a little bit of the urge I had to paint that part of the country since I was, in fact, supposed to be teaching in BC this month.

I’ve given up

I’ve given up on growing tomatoes. I can’t compete with the squirrels and chipmunks. I was destroyed this morning when I found this almost-ripe very fat heirloom tomato knocked to the ground and partially eaten. I’ve watched this beauty grow and ripen all summer. I had big plans for it. And while the squirrel watched from his perch on a fence, and to torture myself even more, I weighed it after I found it this morning. One pound, two ounces. Probably would have been one pound three if you count what the squirrel ate.

So that’s it for me and growing tomatoes. That’s why this sketch is my form of a note to self: Leave it to the farmers next year and stick to sketching.

Dark beauties

When I first receive my bouquet from Ferme Tournesol, it’s wrapped in brown paper and the flowers are hidden under foliage. As I unwrap it on my counter and separate the blossoms from the greenery, its beauty is revealed. This week it’s a dark beauty, with lots of deep magentas, oranges and reds. To play up the dark flowers, I keep the rest of it light in value, including some of the foliage. Painted on a block of Winsor & Newton Rough, 12″ x 16″, using lots of Permanent Magenta and Sap Green.

My most minimal kit

Yesterday I posted a drawing that I had done while waiting for someone at the hospital. A few people wanted to know what was in the smallest kit that I carry in my purse for sketching while waiting. Instead of describing it, I took a few photos for a show and tell.

I have lots of small sketchbooks that are “in progress”. That means that they are not the A4 size ones that I use for full colour sketches, but rather ones for doing value sketches, jotting down ideas or throwing in my bag for days when I know I will be waiting somewhere for a few minutes and may have time for a quick drawing. These books are full of warm-up drawing, bad drawings and scribbles. The stuff sketchbooks are made for.

The books I like best for this are the softcover series by Stillman & Birn. They are very light and the paper is excellent for drawing and light washes. The one I used yesterday was an 8″ x 8″ Beta. The paper in that one is fairly thick and it takes wash well without warping.

I also take along a pencil bag that I bought years ago from Muji. It’s transparent, which allows me to find stuff quickly, and it’s pretty durable too. Of course, there are bags like this everywhere, including at my local dollar store.

In the photo above are the necessities that I carry in the bag when I know I have no time to paint, just to draw. Of course there are duplicates, so the bag looks a little fuller, plus there’s a pencil sharpener in there which takes up lots of space.

So, from left:

• A Derwent Line Maker permanent pen
• A white Gelly Roll pen for white lines
• A Platinum Carbon desk pen with Platinum carbon ink in the cartridge
• A brush pen with black water-soluble ink
• A brush pen with black permanent ink
• A Pitt Artist Pen, Black (assorted sizes in bag)
• A mechanical pencil with a 2B lead
• A tiny spray bottle
• A tiny travel brush
• A 6″ metal ruler for making vignettes

A good addition to this would be a water-soluble graphite pencil or a Art Graf block to get grey tones quickly with a little water. A water-brush with a reservoir would also be useful.

Today I was out painting with friends at the Fort de Chambly — a beautiful spot just south of Montreal with an old French fort. It’s right on the water and surrounded by trees and parkland. We painted in the shade, on the water side, and my sketch was done in watercolour and gouache. I add a blob of white gouache to my regular palette and I’ve included a photo of what the palette looks like at the end. Quite a mess, with lots of white paint on top of the watercolour, but with a quick rinse in the sink, it’s back to its pristine self.

Have brush, will travel

The remnants of Tropical Storm Isaias came through Montreal yesterday. This morning the sky was still turbulent, although there were patches of brightness in the distance. I had some time to draw the overcast view from the 4th floor of the MUHC (that’s our newish superhospital) while waiting to drive someone home from an appointment.

My bag always has some sort of sketchbook in it, especially when I know I have to wait somewhere. This time it was a Stillman & Birn Beta, square softcover version. I started my skyline drawing using a Platinum Carbon desk pen, but with all this hatching, I soon ran out of ink. I managed to find a Pitt Artist Pen with a fine point in my bag, but had no paints with me to add a grey wash. Fortunately I found a brush pen filled with water-soluble black ink in my bag, so on the left hand page in my book, I blackened in a dark square of ink. I sprayed that with a little water (I also always carry a little spray bottle) which created a puddle of grey wash. And with the little travel brush, that I also carry in the bag, I was able to pick up some diluted ink and finish my drawing.

Low tide

I had one little 7″ x 10″ sample of paper left from Papeterie Saint-Gilles so I tried it out yesterday using a reference photo I took in La Malbaie at low tide. This sheet has rough-textured surface, and is 100% cotton rag, handmade in Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive. If I had to choose between the two sheets I tried, I would say I prefer the smoother surface one that I used to paint cherry tomatoes. It really took the colour well. In fact, before coming home, I did go back to the store to buy a few larger sheets that I hope to use in some studio watercolours. I have a feeling I will have lots of time for that this winter!

A hole in the mountain

Rue du Quai in Pointe-au-Pic is a popular spot for many reasons. There’s a row of colourful buildings at the base of a cliff, a spectacular view of the bay, a steep staircase that leads you up to the historic Le Manoir Richelieu hotel, a railway stop for the Train de Charlevoix and an iconic snack bar. On the overcast morning that I painted it, the masked crowds had just departed on the train, heading towards Baie St. Paul.

I chose to paint this view because having the dark cliff and the distant mountains in the sketch is so typical of many of the views in Charlevoix. That’s the reason I like painting there. There’s always a wall of trees or rocks behind everything. In fact, if you look up the topography of the region, you’ll find out the rolling hills were created by the impact of a meteorite about four million years ago.

Compositionally, this was a difficult sketch because of the road that curves up the left and the tracks and path a bit lower down that curve to the right. Plus I sketched standing up, with my palette precariously balanced on a fire hydrant, just to make things even more challenging.

When I got home I realized that the sketch didn’t really work well because the light rocks of the cliff and the dark trees around the rocks were too different in value. I pulled out my palette and darkened the rocks with a light wash of grey. In hindsight, with some advance planning on my part, I could have avoided the problem.

After I did the sketch in colour, I wanted to evaluate where I went wrong, so I created two value sketches to analyze the problem. My first colour version was something like the “before” sketch below. The rocks on the cliff were about the same value as the sky, so compositionally, there was a hole in the cliff.

After I darkened the rocks, it became more like the “after” sketch. The trees and rocks combined to form a more unified shape. This is something I will try to remember when I turn some of my Charlevoix sketches into larger watercolours.