One of the lovely things about living in Canberra is having access to some amazing venues for sketching. This month, our local Urban Sketchers group trekked to the deep south of the Canberra ‘burbs to Lanyon Homestead. Canberra is such a spread-out city that even though there was little to no traffic, it took half an hour to get out there, and I live on the south side already. I cannot imagine how long it took the northsiders to get there! But it was well worth the drive.
The early clouds cleared to reveal a spectacular morning. Sunny weather is excellent for sketching buildings since it casts dramatic shadows and allows for a little more drama in your sketch. The photo above is what I did on location — with the exception of the map and heading, which I had prepared the night before.
This is the final spread with a couple of added photos to help me remember the day and some journalling. The gardens were spectacular, with a stunning display of dahlias on the forecourt. I took lots of photos to use as reference for some botanical painting at some stage.
I took a leaf out of Nishant Jain, the Sneaky Artist’s book, and created a quick watercolour sketch to abandon on site as a gift to whichever stranger finds it. It’s a way to give someone a smile and to give an outward focus when I am out sketching, and it pushes me to do something a little different in a short time frame too. With the economic climate the way it is, not many people are spending on arty stuff, but art has a way of speaking to people and lifting spirits … so why not make a little bit of it accessible 🙂 I pop my details on the back in case anyone wants to let me know they found it, and maybe I will get to hear their story as well. Win win! I plan to do this a lot more.
Food sketching with Sally
I am on leave from work at the moment, so I took the opportunity to catch up with my friend, the very talented Sally Black, for brunch and some food sketching. Food sketching is one of her many artistic passions, and she is very good at it … you can see her sketch on her Instagram feed.
There’s something wonderful about sitting and sketching without rushing — chatting about art and life and comparing notes. She is also kind enough to let me practise my in-person portraits on her. Patient and gracious lady! The only downside of food sketching like this is that the food is cold by the time you get to eat it, but it’s a small price to pay! Needless to say, the coffee is sketched first and consumed hot.
Here’s my finished spread.
If you are in Canberra, I can highly recommend Tinker Tailor in Jameson. Excellent coffee and food that tastes as fabulous as it looks.
Last weekend, I packed myself up and headed out to meet with my local urban sketching colleagues for a morning of chatting and art. I was at the designated meeting spot a little early, having wandered around the park a little to scout out the best spot to capture the scene I had in mind. The appointed time passed and I was still the only sketcher I could see. Hrmmm. I ended up messaging one of the group admins, only to be told I was a little over-eager and there a week early. Oooops! Oh well! Not one to let an opportunity to sketch pass me by, I set up my easel and got down to business.
This time, I decided to forego a pen sketch and dive straight in with paint after scribbling a few light pencil guidelines to situate the rotunda and the trees. You will notice that I edited out some of the trees in the mid-ground, and opted for a dreamy quality to the scene. I didn’t get to talk to passersby this time, even though I saw lots of families out for a stroll. I was serenaded by the resident kookaburras and a raft of smaller birds that I wasn’t able to see. A pair of cormorants hung out on the rocks in the pond for a while too.
Click to view larger versions
I used to work in a building over the road from the park and spent a lot of time walking around the paths and sitting in the greenspace to clear my head, particularly on stressful days. I have a lot of lovely memories from this place and I reminisced quite a lot while I painted.
As always I completed the sketch on location and then finalised the spread when I got home, adding a couple of photos and some journalling to capture my thoughts. You may also have noticed that I have started capturing some metadata on my location sketches. On this spread, it’s down in the bottom right. I capture the date, location, time, coordinates and altitude, and the weather. Up until now, I have been doing it freeform in my urban sketches and with a hand-carved rubber stamp in my nature journal, but I had a brainwave while I was out and had a professional rubber stamp made to make things a little neater. It arrived during the week and I am silly excited to use it. I looooove stationery and art supplies!
One last little jewel to share with you. I enjoyed this documentary about King Charles’ watercolour sketches and paintings. He speaks at length about the satisfaction he gets from sketching on location as preparation for paintings he does at home, and I was surprised to learn that he was taught to paint by his father. There are also peeks at art done by many of his forebears. I hope you enjoy it too.
Materials: Windsor and Newton A4 watercolour sketchbook Daniel Smith watercolours Schminke gouache Uniball gel pen – for journalling photos printed on HP Sprocket hand-carved M signature stamp
It doesn’t seem long ago that I was looking back at 2022, and yet here I am, trawling through my work from 2023. I have completed more sketchbook pages and standalone pieces this year than in previous years, and I have explored new areas of art in the process. It is gratifying to look back and see that I have grown and developed as an artist this year. May it be so in the coming one!
The image below shows my top nine Instagram posts for the year. It‘s always really interesting to see what made it through the algorithm and caught peoples’ eye. It‘s never the ones that I think or, dare I say, hope people will like. At the end of the day, I create for myself, so it’s not a big deal, but it IS interesting.
Here are some of my favourite pieces from this year. As always, click to see a larger version of hte pic.
One of my first attempts at using a combination of watercolour and gouache in a painting.
Completed over a couple of months in tiny slices during work meetings. Super simple, Bic pen in Moleskine journal
I continued to use mixed media and collage to explore my inner world and de-fang old ways of thinking. I find this format really freeing…there are no rules and I can make my images as strange as my mind.
This year, I delved into the world of nature journalling and fell in love. I can see myself doing a lot more of this kind of work, and I now have a dedicated sketchbook for these explorations. Who knew grey toned paper could be so fun?
I was particularly pleased with the way these bats came out! Nature journalling has helped me slow down and notice what is happening in my own very tiny back yard, as well as further afield.
I played with a curvilinear perspective in my urban sketching practice and enjoyed the challenge. It really made me stop and think. I will definitely be doing more of this type of thing where it fits what I want to capture!
Another challenge has been to add more people to my sketches. I can do passable likenesses of people if I go SUPER slow, but capturing humans in my quicker sketches has been difficult. More practise required on this front, but I am seeing progress. I have added more people to my urban sketches as well.
Remembrance Day is always loaded for me, and I try to use art each year to help process what is going on in my mind. This year I employed mixed media, including collage and gelli prints of old family photographs, and was proud of the outcome
This year, I also finally finished an urban sketching project that I have been working on for a while now to capture the redevelopment of my local shops and playground. I will develop the pictures and stories as a series of illustrated essays in my newsletter in the new year. It‘s free to sign up, so please head on over and subscribe if you would like to see that. They will be posted here on the blog later in the year if you wish to wait 🙂
My plan for the new year is to start out with a location sketch somewhere tomorrow to celebrat ehte new year and then follow my nose as to how I continue to develop as the year progresses. The things I DO know are that there will be more urban sketches and more nature journalling. What happens between those two is anyone‘s guess! But it will be fun!
Thank you again for reading and for walking beside me this year. It means a lot to be able to share my ramblings and scribbles with you.
Each December Instagram is a-flurry with people posting their top nine posts as defined by the number of “likes”, the image below shows mine. Predictably the top left image with the most likes was a Reel (a short video), which get pushed out by the algorithm. People seem to like them. It always amuses me that the pictures or posts most appreciated by others are never the ones that I like the most. So I figured I share both. If you click the picture it will take you to my Instagram feed and you can see them at full size, or watch the videos. My favourites for 2022 follow.
Shoe bill storks are the funniest looking birds I have ever seen. I saw the photo that I drew this one from on Twitter and just had to have him in my sketchbook. I love drawing birds! I can imagine this guys saying “Seriously??” He made me laugh.
Last year was another year of virtual travel for me. I would love to have been out in the world sketching on location, but there are so many fabulous places that even if I was able to travel I’d never get to them all. This little tower caught my eye and made me wonder what it might be like to live in a place like this. Cold most likely. But a warm bed up in the attic would be a wonderful place to hide away and read for a while!
I try to capture our cats as often as I can, but tend to default to a cartoon style to capture their antics. This is one of the few times I caught them as is. I love this spread simply because it has the cats on it!
This year I played some more with collage and messing about with altering whole pages from magazines. It is so relaxing to fiddle around with scissors and glue.
I was disappointed that I didn’t really capture the Borg queen very well, but this was I think the first time that I had used a stencil with some acrylic paint alongside the watercolours in a way that I liked.
I LOVE drawing machinery! The local shops are having a landscaping overhaul and this guy was parked up for the weekend.
Mixed media is fast becoming my favourite art therapy outlet. This on in particular let me process some really difficult stuff. As much as I love the aesthetic of the spread, it is one of my favourites more for what it achieved for me.
Recording every day life in the pages of my sketchbook is what it’s all about for me. I get to capture moments in time and embed the memories for years to come. I love watching my sons interact in the kitchen. I hope to see it many more times yet, but if I don’t this will keep it alive for me.
What can I say … BIRDS! And my favourite bird at that. We have a male superb wren and his harem of about four females that live out the back. This isn’t him, but I couldn’t go past one of these little guys for my Australian Christmas greeting.
To cap it all off, this mixed media piece is my very first artwork on canvas, and I am so pleased with how it came out! It was a steep learning curve with the many layers and media and techniques. I hope to do more of this type of thing in the future.
Once again, thank you for supporting me and my art in 2022. Here’s to an inspired and motivated year ahead!
I am launching a monthly newsletter at the end of January; I’d love it if you would consider signing up! It’s completely free with an option to support my work on a voluntary basis if you so desire, but there’s absolutely no pressure.
A week or so ago I signed up for Wendy MacNaughton’s paid newsletter and was overjoyed to see that she is expanding her kids’ online art show/class/club to include some fun stuff for adults as well.. she calls it the grown-ups table… or GUT for short. Which amuses me no end. This week’s exercise involved sketching something each day that delighted us, flowing out of a book she recommended by poet Ross Gay called The Book of Delights. I have ordered the book, and cannot wait to dive in after the fun that I have had this week. I have found it so easy to drown in the sad and the hard things in life, or even just drift by the delightful things as I focus on making it to the end of another week. This week of noticing and sketching has been just what I needed to kick me out of that loop.
Here are the seven little sketches I produced and the things I wrote about each when I posted them to Instagram each day
Monday
CAT FUR – it is just so very soft that it almost defies belief that this purry being – that has five end points, all of which are sharp and dangerous – could be so soft and comforting and sigh-inducing.
Tuesday
SILVER-EYES – This morning a flock of tiny little birds visited my garden looking for bugs and fluff. I always leave tufts of cat fur pegged to the tree for their nests! Tiny little things they are! About 11cm long and weighing 10gm. I love them.
Wednesday
FRESH COFFEE – The new drip coffee maker we bought has a timer function, so we have set it to start making the coffee 15 minutes before our normal wake up time. It is the height of luxury to wake up to the smell of fresh coffee!
Thursday
SURPRISE SWEETS – My latest order of contact lenses arrived this morning with special surprise – a little bag of Gummy Bears! I never buy these things for myself, so this was a wonderful treat. I savoured them slowly. I had to draw the packet because I was too busy enjoying the lollies to think of sketching one!
Friday
DANCING FAIRIES – After the rain showers this morning a couple of female Fairy Wrens came down to snap up the bugs. They were bouncing up and down and fluttering their wings like little dancers. Tiny little puffballs of joy!
Saturday
HAPPY SMILING FACES – I was greeted by my new bed of smiley pansies as I returned from shopping this afternoon. All shades and combinations of whites of purples nodding at me as they were ruffled by the late winter breeze. I could not help but smile back at them.
Sunday
MUMMA SWAN – Today I had the privilege of sketching this female swan sitting on her clutch of seven eggs. She was in a big straw nest at the edge of the wetland, and had just taken over after dad’s afternoon shift and was settled in for the evening. I could hear the froglets ramping up their chorus as the sun went behind the mountains.
The whole spread
I am really pleased with how the spread pulled together in the end … a little niggle with the colour of the swan’s nest, but over all, the seven spots of encapsulated delight gives me a good reminder of what the week was like.
Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook, Carbon ink, Daniel Smith watercolours
A couple of weekends ago I decided that it was time to stop being a hermit and to get out and take a walk and perhaps sketch. My destination of choice was Cotter Dam, which is a 25 minute drive from my place. I have taken up Nordic walking, so I packed my poles and grabbed my tiny sketch kit and off I went. What I hadn’t thought through too well was the fact that we had had a LOT of rain a couple of days earlier. Like 100mm of it in a day. When I got there i could hear the roar of the water spilling over the dam before I even got out of the car. The river below the dam was full to overflowing, though from the look of the debris, the water had been much higher the day before.
Much of the low lying walking track was underwater, but I was still able to head up the raised walkways to the viewing platforms to take in the view. Off I strode, arms and poles swinging and huffing and puffing like an old steam train. I got some amused looks, but I am happy to say I ran into a couple who were also striding about with poles. A head nod and a smile as we passed was lovely! I tried to explore a little further along the river after the viewing walk, but had to turn back because I couldn’t get to the other side of the river where I had parked my car from that end of the trail. Oops.
When I got back to the car park I sat to catch my breath and decided that it would be a good time to whip out my sketchbook and grab a quick sketch in the mist before the rain set in again. The result is the sketch below, which took about ten minutes. It was tricky because the paints were not drying in the cold and drizzle.
Sketchbook: Seawhite Brighton 3×5, Daniel Smith watercolours, Uniball pen
I wasn’t hugely happy with the quick sketch so I snapped some photos to do a sketch from at home.
Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook, Daniel Smith watercolours, Carbon Platinum ink
This one took a couple of hours all up and I decided to include a sketch of a young woman standing on top of the FLOW sculpture that sits just at the end of the carpark in front of the dam. If I were younger and somewhat more nimble than I am at present, I would love to hop up there 🙂 I love climbing on things!
And so…. I have filled yet another sketchbook and have not blogged in the meantime. Pretty slack huh? Swings … roundabouts… sometimes I sketch a lot, sometimes I write a lot, sometimes life has a way of taking over.
I hope you enjoy this sketchbook as much as I did filling it
I have been putting off filming this sketchbook tour for months now. I wanted to do one with commentary so that I could explain to you what I was thinking when I was creating particular spreads. This week I bit the bullet and did it anyway. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we all have to start somewhere, right?
I hope you enjoy taking a stroll through my sketchbook and listening to me prattle on about it! Let me know what you think on the post here or on YouTube!
Pentel ink brush and watercolour in Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook
Keep staring at the centre of the spiral. Round and round and round. Are you sleepy yet? Or just confused?
Lifted-type collage
It’s an interesting thought … nature knows what it’s doing … it’s us that get things all twisted up when we try to untangle it. Collage is a great way to create and unravel my mind when it becomes over-stimulated.
I thought I’d share a few of my favourite sketch book pages from 2021 as a way to close the book on what has been (for everyone) another stressful one. I am so grateful to have this creative outlet to help me focus on beauty or to process that which I don’t quite know how to deal with!
I catalogued various things around the house, including my view from the rowing machine in the garage
I played a lot with repetitive patterns as a way to soothe and think.
Our new cats started to feature a lot.
I travelled the world via the internet and my sketchbooks and visited a diverse range of cities around the globe.
I drew things that I treated myself with from time to time!
And I squeezed in a little urban sketching toward the end of the year when I was able to venture out more.
You can view all of my sketches for 2021 in an album on my Flickr account HERE – you can watch it as a slideshow if you choose the “slideshow” button in the top right.
I also got around to filming a flipthrough of the sketchbook that I finished mid-September, so you can see how the feel as a set of sketches within the physical book. I didn’t record a commentary on this one … perhaps next time!
Here’s to a creative year ahead both for me and for you, in whatever form the muse takes for you!
