Sketchbooks_summer_2010_quebec_0019, originally uploaded by Brin d’Acier.
Sketchbooks_summer_2010_quebec_0020, originally uploaded by Brin d’Acier.
A small island in the St-Lawrence river that you can only reach during high tide. Around forty inhabitants and passing whales. This is the south coast, green and muddy. The north coast is colder and rocky.
I think I love mountains so much because I grew up by the sea, in a very flat country.
Another great jazz festival in Montréal, with plenty of excellent free concerts. I managed to sketch some of the performers.
Downtown Montréal.
Black Joe Lewis
Trombone Shorty
Allen Toussaint
After a while routines started to settle, and I drew less and less of my everyday surroundings.
Just as people normally don’t snap hundreds of photos on their way to work, but photograph everything they see when on holiday, my sketchbooks became synonymous with travel journals.
When on holiday, I drew on everything at hand, including my Filofax.
Hakone – Lake Ashi and Mt Fuji. After three days of waiting in the mist, suddenly the clouds parted in the morning.
The hotel’s room service menu included the following item: Watercolor kit so you can paint your own views of Mt. Fuji.
I found the idea of ordering painting supplies from room service great I had to do it. The kit proved to be as good as their breakfasts.
We still have the waterbrush that came with it.
I started taking my sketchbook to museums, and drawing what I saw. I noticed that this helped me to focus on the exhibits better than just walking around and reading the plaques.
I started drawing on the subway, as it provided me with static models and filled my commute time.
I started my first regular sketchbook in 1985, inspired by one kept by my art teacher at the University of Toronto. His was full of elaborate anatomy drawings and gouache that ran over the sides. Mine was much more modest, furtive drawings of people around me, all in pencil.
Sketchbook_Toronto_1982_003, originally uploaded by Brin d’Acier.
As a child, all my drawings were done on loose-leaf paper or rolls of butcher paper. I don’t know why I started using sketchbooks, but I do know that the first one I bought in 1981/82 had perforated pages so I could rip them out as I finished them.
I had drawn self-portraits since my childhood, but his is probably the first one I did with a mirror.
Note the luxuriant curls of hair – did I have a premonition of future baldness?
Mille Croquis 