Sunday, January 27, 2013

MFA outing

Today Montreal urban sketchers went to the Museum of Fine Arts. At the beginning I was lost - both figuratively and literally. I couldn't find myself a thing to do, a subject to draw. It looked like all the art has already been done.

First I wandered into the room with the Greco-Roman collection, but to sketch there was way too depressing for an Art School graduate. I mean, I don't know what YOUR childhood nightmares looked like, but mine were pretty much exactly like this:




So I ran away and ended up on the fourth floor, where I got quite literally lost between some El Greco and a very nice Rembrandt, which successfully destroyed that last bit of self-esteem I still had. I tried to paint a view from the big window, but it was too overwhelming and watercolors just didn't want to cooperate. Lunch break was so welcome.


We met with other sketchers at the cafe, and as usual, hot soup and a good conversation with nice people returned me back to life. I decided to stop pushing myself into the genre that just doesn't do it for me and started drawing people. People, buying tickets in the lobby:


People, cautiously admiring an interesting piece of contemporary art at the ground floor:


And generally some museum patrons, wondering, browsing, enjoying art, nursing babies...



I did a couple of nice portrait of people from our party.



 I found Helmut, drawing a sculpture:



Found Shari, painting a view at the window:


and here is that exact view (she did it oh so much better than me):


And for the big finale I climbed to the fourth level balcony and drew an overweight pigeon's eye view of the museum's lobby and of my own hand, drawing that same picture:


Wow just noticed that I marked all my sketches Jan.29. Nice, Julie!

6 comments:

  1. Great recount of the days events! Or rather, the future's events!?!

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  2. Great sketches Julia. Especially love the people seen from above. That seems so hard to do. It was a great day!!

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  3. some of those portraits are bang on!

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