A New Sketching Season

For the last few days we had to put up with rain, sometimes day and night. But last month we enjoyed several days with warmer weather and a lot of sunshine.

I took advantage of the favourable conditions to get some sketching done around the neighbourhood and in the Old City Quarters of Nanaimo.

Houses on the corner of Albert Street and Rideau Street. A pen sketch colored with illustration markers.

To my great surprise, the City Works Department removed some decorative steel structures including a huge replica of a tuning fork that stood for many years on the Diana Kroll plaza in the centre of town. I made a sketch of one of their pick-up trucks from the second floor window of our studio.

Another sketch depicting a view from a bench in the park downtown, looking across the river estuary at some old houses. This is a repeat sketch from many previous occasions of this view while sitting on the same bench.

Pen and ink sketch with grey markers.

I start to like the use of illustration markers. They beat watercolours in terms of expediency of use; less tools to manipulate. And markers don’t wrinkle your paper. But they are not as versatile in choices of value and colour. This is a sketch of a house on Selby Street as viewed from a bench in front of a coffee shop called “the white rabbit”.

House on Wesley Street.

The next one is a house on Albert Street. The choice of markers with light colours seems limited, at least in our local stores. Also, they are expensive and they don’t last. However, there is quite a variety in very bright and/or dark colours available for illustration markers.

House on the corner of Selby and Albert Street.

My favourite downtown square at the waterfront is the Pioneer Plaza featuring the “Bastion”, a historical timber structure. It is always a challenge to draw this thing on location.

The Bastion

I mix the purple with the (too bright) yellow markers to get a subdued warm grey.

Sketching on Location

Milton Street has both genuine heritage and newly constructed houses with similar designs that are equally attractive to draw. It was raining on Tuesday so that I had to park my car and get a good view. There were several jeeps in this neighbourhood and I wonder if that is part of the local old city quarter fashion. I started out with the Jeep as I like drawing cars, but after the houses were added, I came close to the end of my attention span and decided to leave any shading or colouring for some other time.

Around lunchtime on Wednesday the sun was shining and I found the perfect spot to make a quick sketch. The bench at this location is usually occupied by the same people but at this time it was vacant and inviting in a bleak wintery sun and shielded from the northern wind. The view includes some downtown buildings when looking overtop of the commercial harbour; altogether way to much to draw. So I focussed on the buildings beyond and left out the forest of masts of the fishing trawlers and recreational boats.

Last Week

Last week I went out a few times to park the car and make some sketches. Two were made on the day of the Super Bowl, when it looked like all of Canada likes to forget about politics and watch the American game. 2020.02.02 was the predictable outcome.

These were made at various residential areas around the centre of town, where the realtors refer to properties as character houses. The “infill” with watercolour was done at home.

Kennedy Street

Lately I have been confined to drawing inside the house or in the car, as it keeps raining. These two sketches are both from Kennedy Street, which looks like it was at one time a prestigious residential neighbourhood. Both houses look well maintained with elaborate landscaping in the front yard. The inhabitants need to climb a lot of stairs as this neighbourhood is located on a fairly steep hill side.

The house at 305 Kennedy is referred to as the Wilkinson Residence, built in 1913. The two-storey circular front wall gives this building a unique character.

The pen-drawing was done on site, while sitting in the car. It was further developed with shading and colouring at home. It is painted in a barn red colour, which I tried to mimic in my sketch.

The house next to it at 307, is the Woodman Residence also built in 1913 and was occupied by May Woodman from 1913 to 1971. A teacher for 43 years, May was a well know and a respected member of the community.

Both of these were added in my 7″x10″ sketchbook.

Car Studio.

The weather here is generally too wet and too cold for sketching on location. That’s where the car comes in handy. The passenger seat gives you a clear view and all the elbow room you can ask for.

I parked on Selby Street across from a liquor store on a Friday afternoon, so lots of traffic coming and going. This spot gave me a clear view of the former Occidental Hotel, now referred to as the Oxy, a cosy neighbourhood bar.

This two storey building is about 130 years old and over the years a third level was added in the 1920’s and removed again in the 1980’s. It is obvious from my sketch that the back of this building was added on too and modified over the years.

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Car owners keep driving their vehicle away as soon as a decide to include it in my sketch, but the empty spot is not left vacant long enough for me to see the bottom of the building. So I have to improvise a bit and finish a car that started out as a Ford with the likeness of a Chevy or something like that.

295 Wallace

These storefronts are actually painted with bright colours such as teal green (or is it teal blue), yellow and purple in the general field of the wall areas, surrounded with black accents. The sketch with the grey watercolour wash was made today; the other one about a month ago while sitting on the same comfortable bench in the shade of an old plum-tree at the corner of Fitzwilliam and Wallace.

I am not sure how to go about applying the diverse colours that are on this building while keeping the picture coherent; maybe some day I will figure it out.

Monday’s Paint-out

Today’s paint-out in the Old City Quarter was different in that it was very hot weather and the corner where I was sitting was busy and noisy. Nevertheless I finished this sketch sitting on a bench under the shade of a tree.

As usual, shortly after committing to drawing a car or truck the owner comes out of the coffee shop and drives away.

Same Building, Different Shirt

Playing with paint; mixing pigments for light versus darker values and warm greys against cooler versions is a never-ending game.

St Andrews Side by Side

St Andrews on Fitzwilliam has several sides to it as it is not only used for church services but also for other appropriate community events such as concerts.

When it comes to making pictures of this heritage building there is again more than one interesting side to it. What is more, making a sketch allows the freedom to move and shrink the trees somewhat that conceal the building from view, thus showing more of the architectural shapes that make this monument so interesting to most of us.

Same Pigments Different Mix.

When experimenting with colours and values one realizes that there is no end to it. These are the same three pigments that I used in my last blog for a picture of the same church viewed from the other side with the old rectory included.

This time more extreme dark and light contrasts were applied.