Chinese garden at Chinese New Year

I missed the Sydney Sketch Group Meetup at the Chinese Gardens, and I’ve been thinking about going there ever since. Right through the Chinese New Year festival it was hot, hot, hot, and because of that  I didn’t go to any of the things I meant to go to, and one Monday, though it was hot and the middle of the day,  I took off for the Chinese Gardens. Hoping to find an ice kachang in Chinatown was a big attraction too.  I was hoping there would be some lovely red & gold things to sketch around Chinatown, but no. In the Chinese Gardens there is so much to sketch and plenty of shady places to sit, so here is what I drew. And yes, I did find an ice kachang in the food hall at Market City. Yum!

Sketching at the Fish Market

This sketch goes back two or three weeks to a Sunday at the Fish Markets with the Sydney Sketch Meetup Group – the previous day had been 41.7 (107.6) degrees in Sydney and I still felt brain-fried. I only did this one drawing across a double-page spread. I left to go home before 2pm when it was starting to get hot again.

The waratah at the top of the page was there already. It was a test of Sheer Heaven transfer, from a photo I took. I like to set these little traps for myself by prepping pages or attaching stuff. The waratah is our state flower.

I have been feeling totally preoccupied with the Victorian bushfires this last week. I think we all feel the same. In Sydney it has been cold for the past 6 days and last night I wore warm undies & put the electric blanket on when I got home. Weird! It’s pouring with rain. If only it was pouring in Victoria.

Danny’s Gregory’s Books

I got Danny Gregory’s new book recently. If you follow that link, you can see a movie of it. That made ME buy it.  It is  amaaaaaaa-a-a-zing. I’m a great fan of Danny’s book. Creative License, The: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are I lent that book to a friend overnight on the 19th October. She asked for an extension. I just got it back around Christmas, and of course by that time her copy has arrived from Amazon.

Recently I have been taking ‘The Creative License’ to my ‘Painting in Acrylics class to show the students. One and all they love it.  Danny’s sense of humour seems to fit with the Australian sensibility. And you can’t buy it here! That’s crazy. Still, many of them have been ordering it on line from amazon.com. Nevertheless, if I had a great bunch of them, I bet I would sell them(they would sell themselves).

I called ‘The Art Scene’, a large art shop and wholesaler to ask if they could get it in. I also recommend Mary Todd Beam’s book, Celebrate Your Creative Self because that’s a great one for acrylic techniques. You’d need many lifetimes to try all those techniques. Last time I was in The Art Scene they had a huge pile of them, so I called them & explained I was the one sending people to buy it, and could they get Danny’s book in please. They told me that they can’t. This seems a dreadful shame. That books makes all other drawing books seem like text-books. Maybe Danny will see this post and talk to his publisher.

Watch this space soon for a review of the new book – An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers If you draw, you need it.

Yinka Shonibare at the MCA

After the Dr Sketchy’s evening at the MCA, we thought we’d better get to the Yinka Shonibare exhibition before it closed.

We’re having hot weather, bad for blogging. We decided to meet at the MCA at 9am to get in an hour’s sketching before the gallery opened and before it got too hot. We found a patch of shade under a big tree, and I drew the Opera House again, from the side this time.

The Yinka Shonibare exhibition was marvellous. I guess you’d call him an installation artist. That’s not normally an art form I’m very fond of, but I love this work. I guess it’s the colour. He’s an amazing colourist. The photographs on his website certainly don’t do justice to the colours. He dresses headless mannequins in period clothing made from the African fabrics that are actully Dutch – batiks rejected by the Indonesians.  You can see a video about it here. One whole room of the exhibition was very naughty indeed. But you’re not forced to follow the link. I thought they were really humorous.  I particularly liked the lady with the parasol. There are also photographs – the Dorian Gray series, paintings and there were two wonderful films. One was a mirror image ballerina – one white dancer, one coloured. The other was a masked ball with clothing in wonderful reds & greens, oranges & blues.

After that exhibition my two friends went to see another exhibition on the ground floor, but I wanted to retain the colours of Shonibare in my mind, so I sat in the lobby of the MCA and drew the reception desk.