A weekend in Quebec City

We were in Québec City last weekend for a fantastic wedding (#romewedsfrance 🙌🏼) and I did a bunch of sketching while we were there. The weather was terrific and the city was relatively quiet (compared to the high season visits we’ve had in the past), which meant it was super easy to find quiet corners to perch and get some drawing done. It was delightful! While I’ve been pretty good about sketching daily for the past couple of months (#the10dayproject FTW), I’ve been looking forward to getting out into the wider world and literally road testing my sketch kit.

Real talk: when I’m home, it’s way too easy to sketch in my car when I’m out and about in town. I hate drawing attention to myself! Plus, there’s sort of an element of performance in drawing when you’re out in the world, right? At least that’s what I thought, but my urban sketching experience this weekend disabused me of that notion. It didn’t feel performative at all! And people mostly left me alone, only glancing over my shoulder a couple of times. I did notice that as long as you’re scribbling in a book with a pen, people leave you alone; as soon as you break out the watercolours, they feel somewhat more emboldened to try to get a look at what you’re doing. Either way, it was all good.

In my sketch kit on this trip: a small (5x8) sketchbook, a fountain pen, a waterbrush, and my watercolours. Minimal and perfect!