Atwater market

Determined to use the divider in spite of what Mother Nature might have in store, I went to Atwater market.
The first attempt was using the divider for the main lines, the rest I eyeballed. I wanted a building that holds together, not a photographic rendering. I am interested in the feel of the sketch than in the accuracy of every detail. I can take a picture for that purpose.

It took a while I must say... almost 1 hr. I realized that I will simply not have enough to sketch during my trip to Brazil if I take one hour for a not-very-complicated sketch. Not to mention the workshops at the symposium where the time is even more limited.

For the next attempt I used a caligraphy pen and no divider - I had to work fast and skip details.

I am not a big fan of sketching with instruments that produce a thick, heavy, black line, but I think it would be good to practice sketching with a thicker line - maybe charcoal, graphite sticks, crayons. Ideally, only the essence of the subject would make it on paper...

Perspective studies

I spent the day in Vieux Ste-Rose yesterday trying to get the hang of the proportional divider and other tricks to make perspective drawing more manageable. Some people are good at guesstimating angles, volumes etc. I am a spatial dyslexic. What I see and what is on paper sometimes have very little in common. Hence the use of tools. I had t he proportional divider for a while, but I obtained mixed results with it. I figured out why yesterday.

Before lunch we went outside for about an hour to practice measuring angles and distances. I chose to draw the Centre d'art.

It came out relatively ok - it holdes together. There was a lot of measuring and erasing that's for sure and I kept thinking about the popular advice of drawing everything directly in ink. Great advice for those who are not spatially challenged ...

After lunch we went behind the church to find a spot and draw the church itself. I used a view finder to draw a border on the page (9x12 schetchbook used for the dynamic drawing class). I also determined how much space there was between the building and the frame. I then took out the divider and started placing the vertical lines and determining the width of the building.

Somehow, my church did not fit on paper the same way it did when I looked through the viewfinder... hmmm...interesting ..... I finally clicked. I kept changing the position of the divider - sometimes it was vertical and sometimes horizontal. Ha!!! Once I figured that one out, the church fit better on the page.

It took a good two hours to come up with this:

of 

The great thing about it is that it holds and that is what I want. I am not interesting in photographic rendition of whatever it is I am drawing, but a building has to hold together. When it does not, it hurts to look at it, it is that bad.

I am in the middle of packing to move so time is becoming an issue. I hope to be able to draw at the Loyola campus before I move.  It has a variety of architectural styles to choose from.