The Pipes Book – a work in progress

Some time ago I began a book especially for sketches of pipes.  The book is here along with the sketches I did a year or so ago. I have moved away from my plan to do all the pipes grey except for where there was paintwork.  At Cockatoo Island on Easter Saturday I noticed that mostly the pipes were rusty, and though I don’t intend to always follow that, I have introduced that colour.

I layered some of the rusty pipes along behind the original ones to pull the whole thing together and carry the sketches from page to page in my concertina book. One pipe  below the yellowish one that hasn’t had colour yet. The concertina has ten pages, and this is five of them, so I am half-way there. The trick will be to leave the right amount of white space.

We just had time before catching the ferry back to Circular Quay to go into the Industrial Precinct and sketch another machine. This one reminded me of a sewing machine but I’m sure its not.

Cockatoo Island was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it before with people everywhere, and many many campers and more tents than I have ever seen before. Sadly, one of the campers never made it back to the mainland, after falling from a cliff overnight.

Cosmo, my new kitten – first sketch.

This is the new family member, Cosmo, asleep on the back of the lounge. He is not asleep now. He’s helping. ……hgffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff09vvy G -/uuuucxvcdddddddddddddddddddCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCW/////////// >

if you see what I mean. Helping with the typing also.

He’s a seal point ragdoll kitten aged thirteen weeks. I have had him for three weeks. He is very confident and independent. A toe-biter in the night for a while, but improving now. The first photo is the day he came – aged ten weeks. vvvvIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When he is asleep is the only time he stays still. The second photo is last week, making kitten stir-fry in my new little wok.

I sketched him with a dark brown and a white Prismacolour pencil on toned paper.

Out and about in Newtown

On Thursday I went out and about in Newtown with fellow Urban Sketcher Liz Steel. I was showing Liz some places around my local area where we might be able to have an Urban Sketchers event. King Street, the main shopping street in Newtown is too popular on the weekend with people lunching and brunching. Not much room for sketchers on the pavements and certainly not in the cafes.

I took Liz to my favourite building which has a little park opposite.  I’ve sketched this building before here and here. I could spend a lifetime drawing this building in sections and with different media. The blue of the paper was similar to the blue of the steel, so that is why I chose to sketch this section. The scan is not really true to the colour.

I particularly like this sort of  ‘industrial’ image on toned paper. Not working consecutively through the book is serving me well, but I will be glad when the book is fuller.

Here is the crazy building in all its glory. Liz sketched the whole building here.

Cockatoo Island in the rain.

Saturday was the ‘Crane Crawl’ at Cockatoo Island. The weather wasn’t promising but I wanted to go anyway. At Cockatoo Island the sky was dark, so rather than start to sketch and get rained on before I was finished, I went straight to the Industrial Precinct. I’ve only sketched inside there once before and was longing to do it again.

Even while I was doing my first sketch, the rain came down and was hammering on the tin roof. I love sketching these old machines. I wish I knew what they were for. The top one is a bit like the Beam Benders but not as big, and it has a wonky ‘bender,’ if that’s what it is.

For the next machine I chose a red background. I am jumping around in my book of toned paper. I chose a nice industrial brown for the first one, but then I wanted to keep the day’s sketches together as a group. What do you think this machine does? Maybe the wheel at the top lowers the head and it cuts metal between those two wheels. There is a bit of commonality between this and a sewing machine.

My last sketch of the day was this little grouping of a cupboard, some boxes and a thingy. I was running out of time, and chose something without a lot of ellipses.

We got soaked waiting to get on the ferry to go home (all those people disembarking at Cockatoo Island in the pouring rain!) But we had a great day sketching and I wouldn’t have missed it. Can’t wait to go back. All sketches with Lamy Safari pen, and Prismacolour pencil(s) on Canson paper.

Huskisson Day Two

On our second day at Huskisson, we were up early in the morning, picked up some coffee and breakfast from The Bakery, and were on the beach before 7.30. We went to a beautiful beach just around the corner, but it faced east and the (hot) sun was in our eyes. We ate breakfast and moved back around the corner.

The previous afternoon I’d prepared a page with an idea from a book with a lot of spattering. I thought it looked a bit fierce, so while it was half dry I sprayed the page and did a few brushstrokes to disperse the paint a little. This first sketch is with Lamy Safari and a little watercolour, with some white gouache for the edges of the waves. The background colour doesn’t show the beautiful day, but other than that I quite like the technique. Fantastic for a rainy day.

I did another quick sketch in absolute crash bang wallop mode. I wanted to sketch with the tip of a large round brush. I wished for a fine liner brush to do finer branches as well, but I worked with what I had. Again working on an underpainted background.  I like the way what was already on the page gives the impression of light on the water, but I think it looks like moonlight whereas it was like this.

And then it was lunchtime.

Huskisson sketching in the evening

Drinks before dinner at Huskisson RSL each evening with total waterfront views, comfortable leather lounges, and club prices. We took our sketchbooks and sat looking out the window from about 6pm, sketching, with a glass of wine in our hands. The view is total perfection and best seen on Huskisson RSL Facebook page.

In the afternoons at Huskisson, the wind comes up, so in the late afternoon of our first full day we went back to the hotel and had a browse through some art books. I wanted to do some experimentation, though I didn’t have a lot of art materials with me. I  decided to do some very free and loose underpainting.

The first sketch is with a Derwent Sketching pencil, dark wash. I think it was the least successful, because the watercolour was a bit strong to use pencil on top. The next two evenings we ate in the Bistro (seafood basket) which had the same view, so we were  there till well after dark and saw the light change on the water. The direction of the sea was a real challenge with this seascape because it was quite chaotic round that point.

Every afternoon, back in the room we would prep pages of our sketchbooks and try different things. The second sketch was done on our last night in Huskisson. It was also on underpainting – more about this method when I write about Day Two. This worked well. Lamy Safari pen. Very little colour needed to be added.