the cassandra pages

Snowy Fields of Central New York

 

I made a video about some charcoal drawings done during a recent visit to central New York, when the landscape that I love was covered with new snow, in all of its graphic beauty. For the best experience, please view the video at full screen size (after pressing the "play" arrow, click the little square at the bottom right of the video screen.)

Please let me know if you like this sort of thing and would like to see more! I'm planning to do another that explains the materials in more detail, and some that show drawings in the actual process of being made.

Below are the finished drawings shown in the video. Enjoy! It was such a pleasure to make them, and I'm looking forward to doing more.

 

 

 

 

Working in Monochrome

When the view from your studio window is this monochromatic, sometimes it's best to take advantage of nature's prompt to interpret things in black-and-white. That's what I was thinking when I bought a new Fabriano sketchbook last week with the intention of using it for charcoal drawings. Maybe some dry pastel and oil pastel, too, but mostly black-and-white work, in a large format. I've been drawing in it almost every day since then. 

In this fast sketch of the little park below us and the parking lots beyond, I was just trying to see the various geometric shapes and make a lively drawing. I'll be doing more like this as I figure out how to use the essentially boring view in a more graphic composition. What really interests me are the tire tracks in the snow. Along with the little trees and bushes, these are the only organic, irregular shapes in the scene and they bring something otherwise static to life.

This one, of the neighborhood beyond the parking lots, also appeared in the previous post, and is the view I was drawn to initially and have depicted a number of times, mostly in watercolor.

View of the Jewish cemetery in snow. Charcoal on paper, 11"x14".

I've been wanting to draw the Jewish cemetery, over on the left, but hadn't felt ready until I saw it covered with snow, on a foggy day, with the ethereal trees behind it. Charcoal lends itself perfectly to a scene like this.

We went out into the countryside to make a quick trip across the border two days ago. This is a snow-covered field near St-Jacques-le-Mineur, Quebec, and was completed very quickly. The effect of trees in the distance is just vine charcoal smudged with my finger, with some harder, dark Conte crayon applied over it. The birches are picked out with a fine-pointed white eraser.

 

The very first drawing in the sketchbook was of this vertebra and two rocks. It also combines soft vine charcoal for the midtones with some harder compressed charcoal and Conté crayon, and a few details in charcoal pencil. White erasers in different sizes and shapes are indispensable tools for charcoal work - they allow you to erase large areas, for sure, but also to go backwards and forwards, working with both the charcoal and the eraser. The main use is to lighten areas or pick out highlights and create texture. And you must work on good paper that has some "tooth" to catch all the little particles of charcoal, but will stand up to scrubbing and both the buildup of dark areas and the erasure of others. I usually work on Canson or Fabriano sheets of pastel/charcoal paper, but I really wanted a sketchbook right now because storing a lot of small drawings is a problem for me in the new space, and I knew this format would encourage me to do daily drawings. The sketchbook I'm using is a 100-sheet wire-bound book in the Fabriano 1264 line, in the series labeled "Sketch," and except for wishing the paper were just a little heavier, I'm quite happy with it.

And don't worry, color hasn't disappeared!

New Year in a New Neighborhood

New snow. Watercolor with pencil, in Stillman&Birn sketchbook, 9" x 6", 12/29/22

The Christmas storm blanketed Montreal with a thick, wet coat of snow, and then freezing rain fell on top of it. On the 27th, we went out into the countryside to a friend's house, where there had been no rain, and even more snow -- several feet of it -- lay pristinely on the ground and the rooftops. Not so here in the city, where by New Year's nearly all the snow was gone.

Until last night that is, when it snowed again. The weather has been unremittingly grey, but I've enjoyed the changing moods outside my studio window. There's really nothing very exciting to draw, on the surface of things -- a little park, a car dealer close by, an empty parking lot, a street heading off into the suburban rooftops of TMR (Town of Mont-Royal) with lots of trees, and beyond them, the distant buildings of northern Montreal past rue Sauve. On clear days we can see the foothills of the Laurentians. None of this is worth a painting on its own strength, but what interests me is how the weather affects the scene, how every day is actually as different as the moods of the sea, how the changing light and atmospheric conditions alter the emotional temperature of what I see -- and feel. Trying to capture some of that is a worthy sketchbook challenge.

The painting at the top was a difficult one and I struggled to pull something out of it after getting very discouraged with the page about halfway through, and not wanting to overwork the watercolor. Adding some sketchy, loose details in dark brown helped a lot, as did increasing the contrast overall by deepening the shadows.

Melting snow. Charcoal in Fabriano sketchbook, 14" x 11". 

I bought a new, large sketchbook this week specifically for charcoal drawings and pastel sketches, such as the image above.

While I often drew or painted the park across the street from our old place, and documented the seasons, it never seemed to change so much day-to-day and therefore wasn't as interesting to me, even though it was vastly more "beautiful." Probably if I'd had a higher vantage point it would have been different, because here the sky takes up more than half of my view, and the condition of that sky says everything about how the land and city look below it.

Snowy day. Direct watercolor in sketchbook, 9" x 6".

Right now it's starting to snow again, so the scene is even whiter and more ethereal than in this watercolor sketch, completed only an hour ago. Color fades to the barest hint of itself; the indistinct horizon blurs even more and comes closer; trees and rooftops lose their sharp edges. 

Today's view feels chalky, and I'm looking forward to trying to capture it in pastels, but in a little while the sun will have gone down, so that may have to wait until tomorrow -- when who knows what the sun and sky will be doing?