Getting ready for Bali

I started off Every Day in May this year, but I knew I couldn’t keep it up. I have had tradesmen here and been camping in the spare bedroom. I had some medical appointments and even more important, I am going travelling.

First trip, starting in less than a month. I am going to Bali. I decided to sketch this frame as I wanted to get my hand in, sketching Balinese patterns and textures. this is a raw wooden frame, one of many I bought a lot of years ago. Most of them I have painted and then gilded.

I bravely went straight in with the pen, even knowing that the pattern should be reproduced on each side, and as for the perspective…. So my solution, after being comparatively satisfied with what I had done was just to swoosh watercolour onto the back corner. I think I have learnt a useful trick for when I’m actually in Bali.

First I am going to Kalibukbuk and the place I am staying has enough to sketch without leaving the garden, so I am looking forward to a nice relax (and the cooking course.)

Cockatoo Island Urban Sketchers Event

Saturday morning was another Urban Sketchers Event at Cockatoo Island. Remember we got rained out (well, rained in) last time, and I sketched the machines?

This time a cloudy day was forecast with strong winds. It can be cold there out on the island, and although the weather has been perfect, we are well on into the autumn. In the event, it was yet another perfect day and we were stripping off layers.

I wanted to sketch this hugely complicated crane that I haven’t tried before. It is always trickier than you think, sketching cranes. They are so very tall. You have to anchor them on the ground somehow, then you run out of page when you go upwards. This crane is just gorgeous where that rectangular thing is, and next time I shall attempt to draw a detail of that area. As it was I went off the page at the top, and across onto the other page once I got the rope-thing hanging down. So I continued to add more buildings coming closer to me, able only to fudge the perspective and the proportion because it was so unplanned. Nevertheless I quite like it.

Cockatoo Island with collage

Yesterday was Anzac Day, a public holiday in Australia and New Zealand. There is a huge parade through the city, but instead we went to Cockatoo Island again. Any opportunity……

These pages in my Stillman & Birn sketchbook have been pre-prepared with collage for ages. Even since I came back from Huskisson, and so long that I can’t quite remember if I used Matt Medium of Matt Gel Medium. I used a variety of torn pieces of Japanese papers. They were all cream or white, some with metallic bits through them, others plain or with various other bits through them. When I had stuck them down and they were dry, I threw some watercolour on them.

I was always planning to use them at Cockatoo Island, so I used the yellow ochre on them both, thinking of the sandstone there. One I used a dusky pink as well, and the other I mixed a grey blue from ultramarine and burnt umber.

It was a perfect autumn day. Chilly at 9:45 when I arrived, but by mid afternoon we were looking for a patch of shade. Another glorious day on Sydney Harbour.

Newtown Back Lanes again

Last week I went to sketch The Pink Building again on a dry day. However, even at 10am there was no light on it. I have been watching it for years and I know that for quite a lot of the year it is in shadow. Perhaps that time of year has come.Back along the lane I found this group of buildings with the sun coming from one side.

Tone is so important to me, and that is probably one of the reasons  I don’t work particularly fast, because I am refining the differences in the tones. So I had to find something to sketch with strong tonal differences.

When I got this one home I wasn’t particularly happy with the colour, so I actually got up in the night to alter it, because I couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking about it.  What did I do? I lightened the two sunny yellow areas using sfumato. I lifted off the colour of the front wall to a pale raw umber, as I thought it was muddy. In the morning I glazed very watery ultramarine over the front wall and the other shadow areas. Finished.

Now I am happy with it. If time permitted (which it won’t) I would quite like to do a 12″  square acrylic from it for the Pyrmont Art Prize.

Strangely enough I painted one from here for the Glebe Art Prize, though it sold before that and never made it to the exhibition.  It is from a totally different angle, but do you recognise with area it comes from? It’s called Up Up and Away, partly because of the repeating upward thrust of the roofline, but mainly because it was the rear of the Flight Centre building at the time.

Travelling sketchbooks for two trips

I’m going travelling with my friend BB who i have known since the 1970s when we worked together in Christchurch in New Zealand. Yes, the place where the earthquakes were.

At Easter I made a largish Coptic bound sketchbook for each of us, using my own paste paper for the covers, and Canaletto watercolour paper for the signatures. Then I made an ox plough book for BB from Fabriano Hot Press paper, using some Balinese fabric I had turned into book cloth. I had previously made a reverse piano hinge book from this book cloth and I found there was enough left to make a book for BB too.

We are going to Bali in June and I can’t wait. This will be my twelfth visit to Bali and I am looking forward to seeing my friends there. It will be a bit of an adventure though, because we are going to Lovina Beach, up on the north coast where I haven’t been since the1980s. We are staying at Rambutan Boutique Hotel. If you look at the photos on Tripadvisor, you will see that there is enough to sketch without leaving the gardens. It’s at Kalibukbuk. Don’t you love the name of the place?

After a few days there we go to Ubud, my second home, and because Ubud Village Hotel is full we are staying somewhere else. That will be a change for me. I have always stayed there since it opened but they are renovating right now.

Then in late August we are going for a longer trip to Europe. Starting in Switzerland, then spending most of the time in Italy and finishing in Barcelona.

Currently I am working on my Indonesian language skills, then after that trip I have to brush up my Italian. As far as getting in shape for sketching, I am planning to sketch some of the Balinese things around my house, starting now.

39th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Saturday was the 39th Worldwide Sketchcrawl.

I went to my first sketchcrawl, the 20th, in 2008. That was when I met Liz and Alissa, and we have been sketching together ever since. I have only missed two or three sketchcrawls because of sickness and a business commitment. I hate to miss the sketchcrawl.

We had decided to have an inside venue after being rained on at two recent Urban Sketchers events. As it was, the weather was perfect and we were stuck inside. In the Powerhouse Museum there is so much to sketch, and as usual I gravitate towards the machines.

One sketch down and we needed a coffee. We went to the new coffee shop by the entrance and had a look at our sketches in a good light. It’s dark in the museum.

Back inside, and being printmakers we wanted to sketch the printing press. Very complicated, looking up from below made it worse. Took a break in the middle of that sketch to catch up with all the sketchcrawl people and look at sketches. Probably the biggest sketchcrawl in Sydney yet….over 50 people. And we started with three of us in 2008.

Lunch in the courtyard cafe downstairs, talking about sketching and about Barcelona, then back to finish the press.

Rainbow Day in Sydney

Something exciting happened overnight in Sydney. Last month was the gay and a lesbian Mardi Gras, a major event. A rainbow pedestrian crossing was created at Taylor Square, the main road junction the parade passes through.This week in an act of stupidity, the state government went in at dead of night and at a cost of $30,000.00 removed it.

No, I’m not gay, but I’m for more happiness in the world, so I am for gay marriage and rainbow crossings.

Last night a guerrilla movement has sprung up all over the inner west of Sydney, and other places too, and people are chalking rainbow crossings everywhere. Their motto is ‘Dont get angry, get chalking’. They even have their own Facebook page. DIY Rainbow Crossings.

Port Macquarie (a few hours north of Sydney) is sold out of coloured chalks. There is a rainbow crossing in Ballarat in Victoria and even an international one in Phoenix Arizona.
Well, at risk of sounding like the lightbulb joke, I think it’s faaaaaabulous!