...a couple more sketches for Montréal project

The past couple of weeks have been busy, busy, busy...have started a new (day) job whilst still employed at the old one; seems pleasant enough so far but am suffering a bit of mental overload due to lack of time available to devote to illustration projects, i.e. my REAL work. Nonetheless, I am finally posting another couple of sketches that I managed to execute:

 This is the old Orange Crush factory on avenue du Parc, between Van Horne and Bernard. This is the kind of detail that I love the most- this was a factory, a no-nonsense building with a purpose and no practical need for ornament- and yet here it is. Beautiful. I'm definitely going to include this.

 This one is an okay sketch but an unsatisfactory scan- apologies! But I'll describe what is lacking- the sky actually extends quite a bit (vertically) beyond my scanner's capability, shading into a deep blue. Not sure about this one yet. We shall see. Tomorrow will be the last day of a ten-day stretch of working at the day jobs; Thursday, finally, I will be able to get back to some serious work. I want to complete a project that I'm working on for a friend for the 31st (I'm planning to enter it into a contest; the deadline is the 31st), so that will be a priority. After that, it will be all Montréal images for August- to be completed in time to order prints and cards for an art fair at the end of September. Must confirm turnaround times, too, of course... much to do! Bed now, though.

Montréal cards project, progress so far...

Hi all!  It's been a hectic couple of weeks, what with moving preparations.  Happily, our stuff is now in our new (brighter!) apartment, but we've had to vacate for a few more days while our floors are sanded and varnished.  So work has been on some kind of hold for a bit...still, I did manage to make a few sketches for my "Montréal card' project...

This is just a quick one of the warehouse water tower at the Van Horne underpass.... but I still want to fiddle with it a bit...I want the water tower featured prominently, but also the 'La Maison de l'Aspirateur' sign which is one of my favourite signs in the city...

...more like this, though this is even sketchier, complete with notes and sketch-within-a-sketch etc... I think that I'll wind up placing the water tower farther over to the left and making it smaller, leaving a larger sky area (which I'll pattern somehow interestingly).

This one is a winner- I think that I'll do this, the 'minaret'/bell tower of St. Michel's church, almost exactly this way.   I'll position it so that there is more sky area- and again, sky patterned interestingly.  I did another sketch of this church, from the other side...I like this version more (more interesting, unusual vantage point) but I'll show the other because I used it to work out a possible leaf/ivy pattern that I will likely use on this one:

... a few more ivy and leaf sketches...:

And another that I like, but will adjust somewhat-  an example of the beautiful  cornices that are to be seen in great variety  throughout Montréal:

I think that this one could be adjusted to be more compositionally interesting... again, I'd like to increase the 'sky' area- perhaps reduce the scale of the cornice so as to include a greater length.
I have several more ideas that I will pursue as soon as I return to Montréal!  I want to complete this project within the next few weeks.  My aim is to produce scenes of some of the features of  Montréal that I know and appreciate, unusual sights and details, not the tourist-postcard images.  This is why I'm depicting St-Michel's as the tower from the north side of St-Urbain rather than an image of the facade (much as I love the facade!), for example.  More to come!