Although the Protex only goes at 6 knots, drawing on the move is always challenging. On previous boat trips I’ve drawn with pencil then added the colour at home.  As I’m currently experimenting with materials,this time I took coloured pencils and they proved to be perfect for on the water. When I drew the river scenes, I started by drawing a buoy, then I picked out features of the riverbank and scribbled them in then drew the water last. Then out with the waterbrush and I’m finished.

I used a Derwent Blue Grey watercolour pencil. It was recommended by Cathy (Kate) Johnson, and it is the most useful colour.  The crane is drawn in only that colour. I used to draw more complicated things in pencil before inking them in. Silly me. Now I take by Derwent Blue Grey watercolour and a Yellow Ochre or Raw Sienna. I use the blue grey for cool drawings and the ochre for warm drawings. In this drawing  I used both.

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.

In fact it was a nice day to be outside. We saw some wonderful things to draw if only we’d had stools or chairs with us. Nevertheless this old building, which is an Indian restaurant downstairs, was diagonally opposite a cafe where we had our morning coffee. I am embarking on experimentation with different colour pens. This one is a Pigma Micron brown 0.1 and I have since retired it. It is too fine and that makes it too indistinct. The drawing has to rely totally on the colour & that is not my aim.

We then wandered further up Glebe Point Road on the shady side, interviewing cafes solely  on the basis of what was opposite. I really liked these three chimneys. The cafe was a great choice. I have to go back to find out the name. We both had ‘spicy fish salad’. It was so yummy – almost like a spicy fish slice. I have to have it again. I had an ‘aloe’drink with a flavour of ‘pink lemonade’. It was a bit too sweet, but as I got to the bottom it had so much lemon in it. I’ve never had a bottled drink with so much fruit. I have to try some of the other flavours.

After lunch we walked back down on the other side of the road and went into the little park there. It had wonderful old trees with contorted trunks. We just sat on a seat there and drew the nearest one.  I used my Lamy pen with grey Noodlers ink for the tree.

Most times I use one of my Derwent Sketching Pencils, and this time I used the Dark Wash. I have the Light Wash also, and have used that one many times too.

So, what are these pencils? They look just like a graphite pencil (an ordinary old pencil pencil) but they work like a watercolour pencil, except that the colour wash is graphite. So with the one pencil and a waterbrush you can get all your tones and textures. Great for sketching in bed, or anywhere else you don’t want a whole lot of messy stuff.

Right after that I came back to Newtown to meet Alissa for lunch. We found a coffee shop (Cafe C with the red chairs) and sat looking at the Post Office opposite. We ate hamburgers. Mine was lamb – very yummy.Then we set to drawing this very complicated old building. I planned to draw an even smaller area of it but somehow it grew.

This is my local post office. If I send you anything, this is where it will go from. The entrance is on the left there, under a carved stone border including a crown.

Oh and then I had a berry frappe. It was amazing. I didn’t draw it. It was too delicious. But I can have another one one day.

I have been experimenting with spiral pop-ups. They look great and there is an infinite variety of what you can do with them according to how you place them, so I have to experiment some more. I haven’t decided yet whether to use bright Mi-teintes paper (or similar) or whether to paint two-sided paper so that you get the two colours as it spirals. And will I write words on the page, or on the spiral? All this needs a test run.