The last page in my small sketch book was used to sketch the picnic shelter in Bowen Park. The metal roof is actually green, but the picture needs some warm colours, thus the red roof. Alrhough I love trees and our natural environment, for paintings, we have way too much green.
Watercolour was applied with a water-brush. I don’t favour these brushes, but sometimes convenience prevails.
Tonight was the first downtown market of the season. It was very busy and noisy on Commercial Street; to many people makes me feel uncomfortable.
It turned out to be a very nice summer evening, so I escaped to the crabbing pier in the harbour to make a quick sketch of a very large tugboat that is sometimes moored here and visible to me for a sketch.
Sometimes people stop and look over my shoulder. Tonight I had a very pleasant conversation with a Lady who used to have an art-gallery in Ottawa. We went through my whole sketchbook and I directed her to the Store downtown where I have completed paintings for sale.
The local group of people who get together on Monday mornings in the summer, visited Departure Bay last Monday. I made a sketch from a house on a sloping hillside with many trees and bushes, and had a good time.
It is obvious that I took some liberties by editing the various visible components. I find that the most exciting aspects in portraying the real world on the spot, one could call it ‘designing’ as you go along. That is both in the drawing phase and the painting activities.
Afterwards most participants got together for coffee on a patio to discuss the work produced that day, before going in the mode of just sitting around and ‘shooting the breeze’.
The evenings are long and sometimes warm at this time of the year. This makes it nice for a walk and making a sketch like the next two, both in Maffeo-sutton park.
In the last sketch it was my intention to bring out some colours. However, the pigments available in my limited colour box, did not contain green, nor did it have two pigments that could be mixed to produce green. The ultramarine and ochre yellow used here produce only some neutral grey that leans towards green.
Every year in June the museum takes in photos and paintings for an exposition in the corridor. The theme this year is to make a picture of a window or a door of a historic building on Vancouver Island.
There are two places that came immediately to mind. The entrance door to the courthouse and the windows of the Vault cafe. It is likely that the majority of the submissions will portray the latter, but time will tell what people come up with. The building was originally brick masonry, but was stuccoed over at some time, and more recently, the yellow finish paint was replaced with pink. I find that colour strange for a building and less conducive to work with, but alas.
The vault is a very popular place visited by people of all ages and walks of live, that come in for the fresh coffee, the good food and the pleasant atmosphere.
Last Friday morning, I sat down for a while at one of their picnic tables outside to study the beast with a pen sketch, before deciding that it needed colours, particularly the reflections in the window.
Another sketch on site from the same location but from a couple of years ago.
I am still working on the door of the courthouse, and if successful, will have to decide which one to hand over. That one has an arch as well but is less colourful and more work to depict the nuances in the sculptured sandstone.
Seniors in this province do get some breaks. The one I make sometimes use of is free BC Ferry rides on some work days from Monday to Thursday included. Only a person is free of charge, no cars or bikes, referred to as “walk-on”. So I pack a lunch and take a sketch book along to find a confortable seat on the boat, disembark at the other side to get a coffee,o find a nice spot in the shade and start drawing.
I like a complicated structure to sort out and scribble down in my sketchbook. A water-brush was used and a limited palet to provide shading.
After lunch, I drew some recently completed apartment buildings. By the time I was finished, the sun had turned and I was looking against the light, so I left the pen drawing for what it is.
Also, not knowing how to treat the background hill, I did not feel like finishing this sketch as it was a hot day and hard to find a shady spot while maintaining the original view. Enough excuses to justify finding a cool spot with a cold drink before boarding the ferry going home.
At the south end of Haliburton Street is a spot at a high elevation along the road where one has a magnificent view of the river estuary. There is even a log to sit on.
I use this street to get back to downtown when riding my bicycle as it is fairly straight and has only minor ups and downs. When the tide is out, the river has many channels before discharging into the ocean, providing an interesting landscape to sketch.
Recently, I was thinking about colours again. This was brought about by my work on a request to make a painting of someones house, which can be challenging or even fascinating but also stressful depending how the project develops and host of other reasons. The first version was presentable but only so-so. I made a second one, based on my experience gained with the previous one. I don’t post this kind of work on my website because the house owners may not appreciate publication.
Anyways, while sketching the same foot-ferry for Newcastle Island again, I used my limited colour box and a water-brush to finish this picture.
Today, I replaced the watercolour paint in my small carry-on box as they were dried out; hard as a rock, and settled down in Nob hill park to experiment with this set-up. I used a thin pencil drawing to define the shapes of the rock outcroppings and then applied some colours trying to give the landscape some form, based on values observed on site.
At the end, the use of my black pen became inevitable to clearly separate shapes. The problem with water brushes is that you cannot rinse these things properly, nor is it possible to vary the strokes or grade a wash like you can do with normal brushes. Water brushes work better for flat surfaces such as building walls.
The cemetery in Nanaimo dates to the late 1800’s. Many of the grave markers have the date of an 1887 mine explosion killing 150 miners. Here and there are upright grave markers of various designs, but without a cross. Most headstones are flush with the grass or they are settled leaving depressions over time. In some of these the marks are worn, so that the memorial text became indiscernible.
This cemetery is quite large, about 12 acres, and was probably located outside of the city core at one time. The two markers that I drew here were spaced far apart, leaving my drawing looking incomplete. So houses and trees were added in the background.
I like to experiment with this brown ink and blue-grey markers. The results are not yet where it should be, but there will be more opportunities to play with this combination of material use.
I found a safe spot ( no caterpillars in sight) in Bowen Park in the shade of coniferous trees to sketch the curvatures of the amphitheatre. Always a challenging scene.
Sketch-It 