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.

38th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Saturday was the sketchcrawl, luckily on a cool day, after the previous day was 46.4C at the airport. That’s 115 and at the closest weather station to my house. Due to the hot day, the colour of the Gardens was looking a little more ochre than usual. That made my decision for me, as to whether to work consecutively in my new book of toned papers, or whether to choose the background for the sketch. Well, it seemed a little silly to go consecutive, just because I always do, when I’ve specially put some watercolour paper in there for when I need it.

In choosing the papers for my book, I used the lightest colours at the front and worked though to darker colours at the back. This was so, when I opened a page where two colours of paper created the spread, they wouldn’t be tonally very different. This is one of those spreads.

My first stop was the succulent garden, because usually you get baked in there on the concrete, and it was cool enough to tolerate it even though after 10a.m. Next stop was the statue so that I could draw something hard edged. Finally we found a stand of bamboo with shade as it was hotter by then. I like to draw bamboo from time to time, and I knew it would fit in to finish my spread quite well. I want to draw the black bamboo next. At this time of year its a matter of finding a place in the shade.

Sketchcrawl in the QVB

The Queen Victoria Building is a huge renovated Victorian  building right in the middle of Sydney with three levels of shopping. That was the venue for the 36th Worldwide Sketchcrawl on Saturday. It was a beautiful day again. I love the sun. I wasn’t able to take part in the whole sketchcrawl but I also couldn’t bear the idea of bypassing it completely.

I sat in a cafe in the QVB to draw something I could see from there. I chose this old-fashioned lamp. I was killing two birds with one stone and doing Day 6 of the 75 day sketch challenge, so it was pen only.  I DO think this 75 day challenge is so worthwhile, because I’m just as happy with this lamp and its ellipses as if I’d done it in pencil first.

For my giveaway, we’re getting down into the smaller numbers now. Today – I think I’d better pay my bills, so I might not get time to sketch. We’ll see.

EDiM29 – Somewhere I hadn’t been

King Street Newtown is an extremely long shopping street and full of cafes and restaurants. The day I drew this, I’d hurt my back and had to have some treatment at the physio. I’ve been in most of the cafes, but as I walked back down the road I felt sure that eventually I’d find a cafe I had not been in before. Eventually I found Fringe Cafe. I think it hasn’t been there long – these places keep changing. I sketched out a bit of an interior view, but then decided it was too time consuming and I didn’t feel up to it. All along the window ledges were these very small buckets with herbs. I liked the way the light fell on them, and how the plant was lit from behind, so I rubbed out my previous pencil lines and did this instead.

This is my 2nd last EDiM. (I didn’t do 31st as the subject didn’t inspire me and I was already running a day late).

Yesterday for the 2nd day in a row, it bucketed with rain. I haven’t poked my nose outside the door for two days now. The time was well spent, because I cut the cover boards for two books, and the cover paper. The covers for my giveaway book are completely finished, so there’s only the punching of the holes and the stitching to do. It has paste paper covers (pulled style) of golden yellow with a little olive green.

35th Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Oh yes, Cockatoo Island for the fourth time in 3 weeks. It was the 35th Worldwide Sketchcrawl and guess who nagged to go to Cockatoo Island. Every time I go there I see more things to sketch. Winter will soon be here and it will be a bit cold out there.

About a year ago I made a little sketchbook especially to draw pipes. There are amazing ones at Cockatoo Island and also at the Powerhouse Museum. The book stayed empty till Saturday but now I’ve started to fill it. I got the idea from a page in Keys to Drawing with Imagination: Strategies and Exercises for Gaining Confidence and Enhancing Your Creativity where the author adds to a pipe drawing on three occasions. You can see my review of the book when I first bought it here.

My plan is more to overlap and really fill the book in the way I have done with this drawing of cranes.    For consistency, I’m drawing all the pipes as grey, except for where they are painted. There are some amazing almost new ones in bright colours outside the pool where I go to swim, but I need to get there very early to get a particular car spot to be positioned to draw them. These pipes were very rusted in actual fact. I don’t plan to put in a background – just maybe more pipes.

It was a foggy morning when we started out. The airport was closed and I did wonder about the ferries. However it turned out very warm and clear. I sat in the shade to draw all of these, and often out there in the middle of the harbour it can be chilly with a breeze blowing.  Not on Saturday, when 30 sketchcrawlers roamed the island.

So this is my book. It’s a concertina, made from Fabriano Hot Press paper and the cover is metallic paper with laser cut cogs stuck on.

34th Worldwide sketchcrawl

Last Saturday was the 34th worldwide sketchcrawl and we ended up at the Australian Museum. The original plan was to go to Hyde Park. We met there and by that time it was already sprinkling with rain. We hoped it would stop, but as we waited for latecomers, down came the rain.  We had to put our wet weather plan into action right way because it was bucketing down. We only had to cross the road, but it was like wading through a creek. We were wet through. They put all our wet things into a room for us and we dispersed throughout the museum till lunchtime.

There is a reason I chose to sketch these two.  I live 4km from the very centre of Sydney. Nearby there is a park and an old church. In the churchyard there are possums. Less than 5 times in the more than 25 years I’ve lived here, as I’ve walked along beside the churchyard,  possums come to the fence, or low down on a tree. Just before Christmas a possum started coming to my courtyard. Then he’d go from my tree to the roof, and end up in a tree out the front. (Possum poo on the roof of the car.) At the beginning of January, one night I was sitting in my kitchen with a friend, quite late, having a glass of wine. Arabella, my cat, came near the screen door and started to hiss and hiss. I turned the outside light on, and here was a possum with its pink nose sniffing along the screen door. I put some rejected cat food in an old plate out on the table just outside the window. The possum retreated to the bottom of the tree while I was out there, but as soon as I was safely back inside, it climbed up on the table and had a leisurely meal for 10 minutes or so, with the two of us just sitting the other side of the glass, watching.

The plover is another story. I went to Cockatoo Island with a friend in the spring. As we walked along one particular path, a plover started to divebomb us. At first we ignored it. They’re bigger than, say, a pigeon, but not a huge bird. Obviously we were getting nearer its nest though, because it has quite a wingspread, and it got very scary. We retreated with our arms wrapped round our heads.

The second drawing is one started in Hyde Park as the rain was starting. I used a sanguine Pitt Pen, size M. I noticed the white reflections of the flagpoles on the wet ground as we ran off to seek shelter. The background was drawn in with watercolour pencils.