Today I was invited to Erin Hill Sketch Class to share my experiences from the Barcelona Urban Sketchers Symposium  and my travel journal sketchbooks from London (still scanning and uploading these) and Barcelona. I basically got to talk about what I love and enjoy to a group of people were really interested. Perfect. And I get to continue my “holiday high” even though I have been home three weeks now.

AND I am going back next Saturday to do it all again ! Fabulous . If you are in Sydney and would like to book into her class have a look at Erin’s website.

Using my new Moleskine watercolour accordion fold book.

I talked for half an hour (so much to say, so little time!) while the class had a look at my two travel sketchbooks. They asked questions about how I choose the workshops I did and what I learnt (which I hope I answered in the short time we had). I have a lot of full blog posts yet to come about these.

Although we officially then started Erin’s class (theme: floral) the discussion continued all morning and though lunch. We talked about formatting pages, where to start drawing, and writing on the page. Erin guided the students on colour, tone and formatting.

Erin had chosen a “floral” theme and we sketched two cacti arrangements that were on the tables (in 25 minutes) and then walked down the road to Rambling Rose:floral atelier to draw the inside or outside of the gorgeous shop. I was attracted to the black and white striped awning and the building, but also included some of my fellow sketchers on the page.

This little cacti had marks on it which made it look like a little Japanese figure. I found it hard to remember that it was a spiky plant!

I had also started my page and my day as if I was on holiday – the ferry ride, a map ,  scenes.

I also like to write comments on the page during the day. They can either be my reactions to places, sights, sounds or smells or just what I am thinking at the time. I think that it makes the whole page more personal and individual.

At lunch I got to show some of the class how I use my watercolour pencils and of course we  drew lunch.

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