In solidarity with Urban Sketchers Milano, where the city is in lockdown from COVID19, Urban Sketchers around the world have been invited to sketch what we see from our window on March 14.
Urban Sketchers is an international nonprofit dedicated to fostering a global community of artists who practice on-location drawing. Urban Sketching is usually outside in groups, but times are changing, All organised Meetups have been cancelled and the Melbourne USK Workshops (including one that I was running) have also been cancelled
This is the view from my window in a modern apartment with one big window, I live in a suburb with lots of lovely beautiful old buildings, but this is not one of them, Yes, that is a pool, but the temperature is 17 degrees, feels like 13 . Brrr #UsKAtHome
On Saturday I spent some of the day with three sketching friends, planning a future event (watch this space) and sketching in Melbourne city.
We were looking at what we could sketch in different time frames. The first sketch was 30 minutes. We spent an initial time, choosing what to sketch, We sat near each other (on the footpath and in the gutter) in a funky laneway in inner city Melbourne. Have a look at this blog about it So instead of choosing an iconic grand building, we ended up in the backstreets.
Once I decided what to focus on – the brick wall and older sections, I put some basic lines down. I then focussed on the bricks – the wash of colour and then the details of some bricks. And the graffiti. I started to get distracted by the old wooden boards on the side of the building until I realised we only had 5 minutes left, so I went back into adding more to the bricks. I am very pleased with this.
Four sketchers, four topics, four styles ! Al in 30 minutes . Alissa Duke, Jodi Wiley, Helen Wilding and Angela Williams
Our next stop was Pellegrinis, the iconic Melbourne Cafe for a delicious and filling lunch. I did not sketch my lunch, which will be a surprise to some people, but we stayed on to sketch the scene from Sisto’s footpath table. This was my first time eating at Pellegrinis. Wonderful.
I started with the architectural feature and worked to the left. I realised I wanted to include the whole of the Pellegrinis Bar sign and worked backwards to the left.
Sketching with friends is such fun, We talked a bit more in this second sketch, which took an hour,
