More B & W

a scan of the lino, itself...."backwards"

It seems I've gone back to my old black and white ways.  I drew with ink  for fun for years and then stopped as it became an occupation.   As an architect, it was all about lines, or sometimes lines and heavier lines, not colour, so I  think maybe, that I started to think that way, in my very visual mind.

My wonderful mentor, Jim Belisle , explained that to me a couple of sketching trips ago.   He makes wonderful "smudges" in his endless sketchbooks and has become very painterly in his approach.

All to say, I've been playing around with lino-cut this winter and have ambitions to do a series of the huts that I love to cross-country ski to in Gatineau Park.

Several winters ago I visited each one and it was great fun to experience different trails and be first, often, to light the wood stoves.  (that's another theme - lighting fires)

Anyway, back to the lino-cut.  Shilly Shally was the first one to come to mind, as I'm very fond of that little cabin.  The first lino-cut  was a "learner" and I will never show a print, in part because, duh,  I forgot about the mirror image part and also, I've been working on a two press thing, to add the red of the barge board, window frames and doors.  Although, this image does remind me of skiing in at night, which I love to do.

I've got to get this series done then find a good workshop on woodcut print-making.....

Masking a Border

ink and watercolour crayon 

Jim absorbed and unaware of me drawing him

The sketchmaster, Jim Belisle, also introduced me to using masking tape to create a border when we were making smudges on Centre Island.  He recommends the green coloured masking tape and shared his secret of tacking it several times to your shirt so that it's not so sticky that it takes up the surface of the paper.

Many people draw a frame within the page, but the tape very sharply limits the paint and sets off the sketch quite nicely.  It's a rewarding moment removing the paint and seeing the crisp white border.

The upper sketch was done with watercolour crayons - I liked the intense colours but was having trouble controlling values to convey depth,

Sketching with a Friend

10 1/2" x 2" Franklin's Garden

Jim busy "smudging"

with some new friends

On of the things that I learned and accessed through Urban Sketchers is how fun and it is to sketch with others.  Last weekend, I was in Toronto and spent a delightful afternoon with Jim Belisle sketching on Centre Island.  Jim was one of my wonderful professors at University of Toronto and I got to know him as a teaching assistant for a couple of terms.  He kept sketchbooks then and also introduced me to drop-in life drawing. He has been filing sketchbooks all his lfe and has not lost his enthusiasm to "make smudges".

So all these years later, it was not only fun to catch up but compare techniques and ideas.  He had generously bought me a box of watercolour crayons.  These are softer and more vibrant than  watercolor pencils and amped up my usual muted wash. So in addition to catching up I tried something new and came home full of ideas and enthusiasm for filling sketchbooks.

We encamped and did three sketches, of increasingly larger sketchbooks, from the same location.  That was an interesting exercise in itself and always fun to compare what we chose to portray.  I focused on the landform while Jim (lower sketch) dove into the colour and texture of the perennials in the foreground.