Urban Sketching – Robertson Studios

Road Trip!

Last weekend I took a little trip south to visit my parents in Victoria and decided to make it into a sketching trip as well.

I was working in the new urban sketching Winsor and Newton sketchbook I started last weekend when I drew in Hall Village. I have decided to keep a theme throughout the book to lend it some overall coherence. I am adding a map where it makes sense, a couple of little photos and some journalling to add context to help me remember the day better when I look back through the book later.

My first stop was in Holbrook … Submarine town! I have sketched the submarine before, so I had a bit of a drive around and selected a couple of buildings that looked like they would be fun to get down on paper. I sketched the church first. The spot I chose was in the full midday sun on an unseasonally hot autumn day, and managed to get my arms sunburned in the hour that I was there. Yes, the bush was leaning over like that!

Next, I popped down the street a little way to sketch the Shire Hall and found a nice shady spot to sit under the awning of a pub that had seen better days. My unfortunate choice this time was to sit on the concrete pavement without moving much for the 45 minutes it took me to complete the sketch. My butt, legs and feet went to sleep! When I went to stand up, I very nearly fell over. Good thing there weren’t too many people around! So embarrassing!

My next stop was Benalla in northern Victoria. I did this spread over a couple of days because the weather was scorching, and I also wanted to balance sketching time with time spent with mum and dad. I was chuffed when dad asked to join me on my second outing to draw the art gallery. We sat, chatted, and said hello to the locals, who stopped to see what we were doing. Dad read his book while I was concentrating too hard to chat and sketch at the same time. We spent about an hour and a half by the lake enjoying the morning together. All of those angles and peaks were kind of tricky to get right, so I spent longer on the setup drawing than I normally do.

On the middle day of my visit, we drove to the nearby magnificent King Valley Wine Region and had lunch at the Gracebrook Vineyards. My folks were lovely enough to put up with me whipping out my sketchbook and paint to capture the landscape that spread out in front of us as we tucked into the delicious Mediterranean-style tasting plate full to over-flowing with local produce and sampled the wine. I had a spectacular sparkling Sangiovese/Shiraz that I loved so much that I bought some to bring home with me. Yum!

I struggle with landscape sketches and tend to put in too much detail for the scale of the sketch, so for this one, I deliberately worked at simplifying the shapes and stopping when I sensed that I was fiddling too much toward the end. Nevertheless, I was happy with the way this one came out.

I had so much fun … I’d love to go back on a day that’s not quite so hot, or even in winter, so that I can sketch the fabulous interior of the cellar door area.

20230319 - Gracebrook vineyards — Click to enlarge

Overall, a very relaxing weekend away with family and a productive one at that. I think I need to plan more sketch times when we get out of town!

A glorious morning in Hall Village

I have lived in Canberra for almost 40 years and never once had I ventured out to the little village sitting on the northern edge of the Australian Capital Territory. The area was home to the Ngunnawal people until European settlement in 1826 when George Palmer established a station of about 10,000 acres in what was called the Ginnindera District. The Ngunnawal people remained in the area and are a valued part of the Canberra community at large today.

Hall Village was established in 1882 and was named after a fellow by the name of Henry Hall who was the first resident landholder in the district. He lived there with his wife Mary and their ten children.

This was the location of this month’s Canberra Urban Sketchers meet-up. So many options for sketching!

Victoria Street – the main road through the middle of the village. Photo: mine

After a cloudy and drizzly start to the day over my side of town, the skies had cleared by the time I reached Hall and was greeted by this lovely avenue of plane trees. I must remember to head out there when the leaves start to turn, the yellows and oranges will be spectacular!

I decided ahead of time that I wanted to sketch the Anglican church, so after the initial meetup with my fellow sketchers I walked the couple of blocks to where it was located and found a somewhat shaded spot across the road. I was grateful to have packed my comfortable sketching chair for this one!

Me sketching in situ and starting to get some rough guidelines down in pencil. Photo by USk Canberra Admin Mandy

I struggled with the foliage behind the church … I struggle with trees at the best of times, but I was definitely a bit heavy-handed in this case. I am not unhappy with the result though, the dark frames the pale church building nicely I think. If you take a look at the photo above, you will see that I did some judicious editing to remove bushes and the fence to create a more pleasing composition.

The finished sketch of St Michaels and All Angels Anglican Church

While I sat and sketched there were lots of people walking past with their dogs. The dogs always wanted to come and have a sniff around, but the owners were more reticent about bringing their furry friends close enough for a pat. There were plenty of lycra-clad cyclists about too. It was a perfect day for a ride — no wind and not too hot! They went whirring and clicking by, depending on whether they were riding road bikes or mountain bikes, as they coasted down the hill into town in search of coffee and cake.

People started arriving at the church shortly before 1100h for their morning service, and they were very interested in what we were up to. I heard one lady offer one of the closer sketchers some morning tea. They all disappeared inside with a ring of the bell out the front.

As the sound of the bell faded I heard some ladies chatting as they did their gardening in the units behind me. They couldn’t seem to figure out what all these people were up to sitting around with books and paints, but they didn’t come close enough for a chat.

By the time I finished sketching the church I had 20 minutes left until we were to reconvene and have our show-and-tell session, so I wandered back down and found an old corrugated iron hall that was currently being used as a craft brewery. I did a quick pen drawing while I waited, which I thoroughly messed up. I had chosen a very awkward position to sketch from…won’t do that again! The picture above is what my spread looked like by the time we put our books out for everyone to take a look at.

When I got home I added some tone to the pen sketch to see if I could save it, at least a little. It’s still pretty wonky, but that’s ok. I then added my journalling and printed a couple of photos to give some context to the spread.

This is the finished spread, with my sketching locations marked on the map.

We had 28 happy sketchers out this month, which is more than we’ve had in a while. Must have been the lovely sunshine that did it!

Duck!

Duck! Cover! Run!

I obviously don’t say that because I have sketched a duck! You can see that I haven’t. What I did sketch is a magpie. My immediate reaction when I see them at certain times of year is to duck and cover my head if I can. They are vicious when protecting their nests in Spring! Don’t believe me? Watch this.

Lucky for me I wasn’t in a great deal of danger from the one I sketched.

For all of their periodic viciousness though, I love them. They sing a rich and melodic song that sounds for all the world like: dorgle dorgle dorgle! Which is why I call them dorgle birds instead of magpies, in much the same way as I call cockatoos jerk birds, because they are noisy, destructive jerks! (also, I can never tell if they are happy or cranky when they are making all that racket, especially when it starts to rain.)

It had been a while since I attended a Canberra Urban Sketchers meetup mostly because of the pandemic and partly because I seem to have become a hermit of late, but I could not resist jumping back in with this location at Garema Place. Lots of fresh air, lots of interesting people to watch and a broad selection of public artworks to check out. Thankfully there was also plenty of shade given the mid-Summer timing.

I chose to draw the big magpie sculpture called The Big Swoop, and framed it as a nature journal page, combining the two disciplines of urban sketching and nature journalling by adding some labels and information to the page.

I parked myself under a tree and leaned back against the smooth trunk while I eyeballed the big bird and thought about how to layout my page. As luck would have it there were some non-swoopy (wrong time of year) real life magpies around singing their hearts out as we sat and sketched. It was really really pleasant and relaxing. I found it easy to get into the flow.

I took a moment to look up who the artist was and some of the particulars of it’s size and weight and discovered that this was the second iteration of the sculpture since the first one had been destroyed by vandals. Why do they do that?? I am pleased the big fellow was given a second chance, and that he got a fresh chip to nibble. I popped these details around my page.

I have started using a non-photo blue pencil to scribble in my vague subject volumes, delineate the layout and to locate some details after watching John Muir Laws‘ nature journalling videos. There’s something less obtrusive about the pale blue lines over my usual graphite, and it does some weird magic to disappear when I take a photo of the page, though it still shows up when I scan the page, as you can see. I don’t mind that, it adds a bit of scrappiness and immediacy to the page that I like.

Other sketchers came and went around me as they moved to capture different angles, and we chatted as though it hadn’t been a couple of years since we saw each other last. Sketchers are such a friendly bunch!

I had a bit of time before we were due to come together again for the show and tell part of the sketchwalk, so I sketched two of my fellow artists that sat nearby and the magpie one more time for a little context since I was using my day to day sketchbook rather than my dedicated urban sketching one. I also captured the organisers setting up the end point for the protest march in support of the people imprisoned and in memory of those executed in Iran’s latest human rights atrocities. The main group of protesters moved noisily through the mall toward their destination with a hail of megaphone incitements and call-backs from the group just as we were taking our group photo by the big maggie. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to stick around and sketch the crowd, I would like to do some reportage sketching at some point.

Fingers crossed next month’s sketchwalk is in a similarly airy spot so that I feel comfortable being out amongst the germs again 🙂

Sketching at Tidbinbilla

Way back in September I took myself out for a sketching date out to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. The drive out there is a lot of fun, with lots of twists and turns that my sporty little mini leaned into like a champion! It was a wonderfully sunny day and still a little warm even in the late afternoon. My goal was to walk the wetlands S anctuary track, and try to sketch wildlife if I managed to see any. I took my A6 book and tiny art toolkit palette, a pen, pencil and waterbrush. I travelled very light!

Before the entry to the wetlands there is an abandoned cottage from the late 1800s called Rock Valley Homestead. I stopped in for a wander around and had a sit in a lovely sunny spot to enjoy the garden.

This is a little of what remains of the kitchen. The inside rooms are pretty bare, it is really just a shell of the building. Some of it had been burned in the big bushfires that came through in January 2003. But what is left is well preserved and tended.

The path around the Sanctuary is dotted with wonderful places to sit and watch the comings and goings of the birds, or to have a picnic, or just to listen to the froglets go off.

I was there a little late in the day to catch much of the wildlife, and too early for the platypii but I did manage to see a female black swan on her nest!

20220822 - moth4er swan at Tidbinbilla Homestead

She had just taken over nest duty from her partner and was settling in for the evening on her clutch of seven eggs. I was able to stand a couple of metres away and enjoy watching her snuggle and shift to get into the perfect position.

This was a quick watercolour sketch of one of the lagoons along the way … I really need to work on my landscapes! Can you recommend a good online course by any chance?

This creek was so lovely! The bubbling of the water over rocks and around branches was so relaxing. It was getting late by the time I got to this point, otherwise I would have loved to sit and sketch the branches and rocks and grass. I shall have to return!

At various points around the loop there were iron sculptures made from scrap metal.

They made me smile!

I haven’t made the time to get out of the house much in the last couple of years, and it was so good to get out. I will do it againe!~

A visit to Cotter Dam

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.

20220807 - Cotter dam in the rain — 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.

20220813 - Cotter Dam visit — 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!

Urban sketching at the AIS plus a new setup trial

I love getting out to draw on location at this time of year. The weather is warm but not too hot, and whilst it can be blowy, it wasn’t overly so this past weekend. I joined the Canberra Urban Sketchers for the monthly sketchwalk at the Australian Institute of Sport where there were a multitude of sculptures and odd shaped buildings to focus on for sketching. I chose the facade of the visitor centre because it presented a challenge due to the slope of the entry apron compared to the ground line and the way the building fit in with it all. I knew I would give my observation skills a good workout.

20190310 - AIS — *Click to see a larger version of the sketch*

I started by holding up a ruler at arm’s length to gauge where the natural ground line was, and transferred that to my page. I then compared each of the angles of the building to that horizontal line. You can see that line in the middle of my sketch where the seven white pillars are under the visitor’s sign. The rest of the sketch flowed from there. The colours of the scene were a little underwhelming, so I punched them up a little and made sure I got the shadows in to show the sunny day, and included a couple of my fellow sketchers to show scale. Looking at it on the screen, I can see that I could have gone darker on the shadow where the entry doors are! Next time!

It was a Sunday morning, so there were lots of families coming and going to swimming lessons at the pool that was to the left of the visitor centre. I was sitting close to a walkway, so I had lots of little people coming to take a look at what I was doing, asking questions and telling me how much they like to draw and paint. The oooohs and aaaaaaahs made me smile.

I tried out a new set up this week, using a photographic tripod and a piece of corflute attached to the head. Because I came up with the idea in the late hours of the previous evening, I had to bodgy up the arrangement and found some picture hanging velcro-type strips in my toolbox to attach the corflute to the tripod head. Two strips on the board and two strips on the tripod, then press together. Easy!

It worked…sort of…but there were a couple of moments where I leaned too heavily on the board, detached the lot, and sent my sketchbook sliding down to my feet. The hangers are brilliant for attaching things to walls, but not fabulous for something that has non-shearing forces applied. The concept is sound, but I need to find a more secure way of attaching the board to the tripod. The whole setup was light and fit in, or on, my backpack for easy transportation, so I’d like to explore a more durable solution. I could of course just buy an easel attachment, but where’s the fun in that? 🙂

Urban sketching at Ainslie shops

It was a lovely crispy winter morning at the Ainslie shops with the Canberra Urban Sketchers mob today. Had the wind stayed away it would have been very pleasant, as it was the cold bit hard and I was grateful that I had had the forethought to include some handwarmers in my kit. It was particularly rough on our new members from Malaysia and those of our number who have recently returned from Europe’s heatwave conditions. Nonetheless we persisted and enjoyed warm company and had fun sketching.

The Ainslie shopping precinct is one of the few around the place that hasn’t had a large-scale facelift. It has retained it’s original facade and has been perked up with a whole zoo of public art. The snails in the photo below made me smile! Whilst we normally visit the larger “tourist” and institution type buildings to sketch, we decided that it would be nice to capture some of the older parts of town before they get swallowed up in the Lego-like modernisation program that seems to be sweeping the city.

I focussed in on the bright yellow signage of the laundrette, all the while being entertained by a couple of older fellows who started out chatting about the lottery, but then moved on to talk about animated movies featuring ants… in the end I heard snippets of Ant Bully, Antz and a Bugs Life. At one stage there where character voices and a scene being acted out. It was all highly amusing! The highlight of my morning however was a young kiddo walking though where a bunch of us were spread out sketching and he was quite amazed… “Mum! There are sketchers eeeeeeverywheeerrreee! Can I go look?” Love the wonder of little people.

As always, click on the sketch to see a larger version.

Urban Sketching at Old Parliament House

What a difference two and a half years makes! The top sketch was done this morning in about 45 minutes flat. Mostly because I misread my watch and thought that I had been sitting there for an hour longer than I had been. This was not a big leap for my poor brain to make since it was 9 degrees C with an apparent temperature of about 2 degrees with the wind taken into account. The next sketch was done in the opposite conditions – a midsummer scorcher. I remember sitting there for almost the full two hours labouring over the proportions and perspective. It was, I think, my second ever Urban Sketchers meet up.

The two sketches are wildly different. I tried something different with today’s one, in that I focussed on a single part of the facade rather than trying to capture all of the rather long, low building. It is far looser and was completed quicker but the lines feel steadier even if the sketch is pretty wonky. I also left a lot of the page untouched with pigment.

The older sketch has far more tentative line work and I appear to have worked hard to cover the entire page with paint. It feels scratchy and wonky even though I was trying to be careful. The shadows are clumsy and I think I may have turned King George V into a little person. It is fascinating to be able to compare my growth as an urban sketcher using samples of my own work rather than looking at the giants in the field and winding up feeling defeated. I can see improvement in what I am producing, and that is encouraging.

At the end of the day I like both sketches, not just for the fact that I exited my hermitage to interact with other urban sketchers for a couple of hours, but for the life memories attached to them. Oddly I can remember what was happening in my life when I was trying to figure out how to render a bronze statue on a flat piece of paper. There’s something about drawing that sucks everything in and locks it into the image. I love it!

Dem Bones – Sketching at the National Museum

We’re in the midst of the coldest start to winter in 10 years here in Canberra, so I figured sketching inside at this week’s Canberra Urban Sketchers meet up was the thing to do. We met at the National Museum of Australia, and whilst there are LOTS fabulous things to draw, I have always wanted to draw a dinosaur skeleton, so I settled in the atrium and drew the muttaburrasaurus cast that was towering over everyone. The background ended up a bit of a smudgy mess because whilst I was aware that the ink was not waterproof, I failed to take into account that any moisture from my hands would also make it slide all over the place…or perhaps I was too impatient and didn’t let it dry long enough before resting my hand on the page. I will admit to rushing the background… it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the big pile of bones in front of me.

Dinosaurs that slide right off the page

Why is it that I never see that my sketches are are on an angle and look like they are going to slide right off the page until I get home and scan them?Â I thought I was being so careful to get by guidelines parallel to the bottom of the paper.Â How frustrating!Â Ugh! Perhaps I need to resort to using a ruler to set up the basics next time. Or just embrace the wonkiness of it all.

After a slow start in Canberra this year, the cold weather has hit with force in the past week, and for the first time this year I cracked out a beanie and my fingerless gloves to go drawing. I also had the presence of mind to bring plenty of bulldog clips to stop my bits and pieces from being blown away.

No matter the weather though, I always love getting out to sketch with like minded people, and it’s not every day you get to draw dinosaurs!

Funny comment of the day came from a young dad with a junior burger on his shoulders… “Look! This lady is painting! Watch how she looks up at the dinosaurs and then looks down and paints and remembers what she was looking at! Sometimes she even changes paint colours. Oooh … now she is washing her brush in the water jar. She is very good… daddy cannot draw stick figures” “Ok daddy. Can I go in the dinosaur mouth?”Â Hehehe. Made me smile.