I live five minutes’ walk from King Street. I drew this sitting in a cafe called Citrus. You can see the street view here and if you whirl it around you can even see where I was sitting. It’s an excellent cafe but it replaced a wonderful Greek cake shop many years ago. I was sorry to see it go, but Citrus has been a good replacement. Newtown is a quirky and edgy suburb, only 4km from the centre of Sydney.
The small building in the middle is a Thai restaurant and Newtown has many many thai restaurants. Flight Centre is there to the right, and beyond that is Vintage Cellars, my local bottle shop. On the left hand side is a nicky-nacky giftware shop, a cool hairdresser called ‘Dirty Girl’, and another restaurant.
Right near where I’m sitting is a pub with a big window at the front in the public bar. Opposite that window is an art deco building and a wonderful pink one. Look tempting, don’t they? Some time soon, perhaps in the winter, I’ll be sitting in that window with a glass of wine while I sketch from there.
I’ve started carrying a Blue-grey Derwent watercolour pencil and a yellow ochre one. Instead of doing my preliminary sketch with graphite pencil, this enables me to use my Lamy Safari pen as I don’t have graphite lines to rub out. That ink may be bullet-proof but it doesn’t dry particularly quickly & smears when you rub out within 10 minutes or so. The watercolour pencil lines don’t disappear, but they merge into the sketch a lot better as long as you use warm with warm and cool with cool.
I always enjoy visiting your blog and catching up on what I’ve missed. It makes me feel like I am visiting your city. Love the sketch of Newtown and so many others you’ve posted (especially the ones from the Maritime Museum). Lovely work!!!