It is 68 days ’til Christmas. Normally I do not like to mention or think of Christmas until much later in the year. However, as the creator and producer of cards and gifts on my ETSY website, I know that now is the time to start advertising. It is especially important this year as the postal delivery times are taking longer than normal. Please take this into account and order early!
Now is the time to stock up. I have a range of Christmas cards, greeting cards that could be given as gifts, or the unique gift of a “drawn in” book.
I have drawn on a relevant page on a book that was about to be discarded, giving it a new life. There is a wide range of titles and images drawn available for purchase on my ETSY online store.
The postage rate is set for Australia Post in Australia. Please contact me for international postage or for East Melbourne hand delivery or if you have any questions,
I sketch daily in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks and sketch a wide variety of subjects: urban sketching, objects, and nature. Here are some of my nature sketches.
I usually like to include context in my pages. I am curious about what I am drawing I always make notes on the page. I follow a lot of artists on facebook, instagram and blogs and have realised that I am enjoying some of the journalling styles of the nature sketchers. I feel as though my nature sketches don’t have that extra narrative.
I recently discovered the facebook group The Nature Journal Club. “The Nature Journal Club is a diverse community of artists and naturalists, of all levels, who meet together to connect to nature through art. Founded by artist, educator, and author John Muir Laws, our group is centered in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it is open to anyone around the world with a passion for exploring nature with a journal”.
In “normal times” I take Nature Sketching with Watercolour Pencil Classes (Melbourne residents are in lockdown) . My classes are about using watercolour pencils (which I love) and observation of nature. I now want to move my observations and notetaking up a bit, but not move onto full-on natural history scientific illustration, AND I still want to be an urban sketcher and draw interesting objects. It has been interesting to see the diverse range nature journaling in the Natural Journal Club, and the realisation that I do not need to become too scientific.
I first discovered two Australians, Bethan Burton, https://www.journalingwithnature.com/podcast, who has interviewed nine nature journalers (including a sketching friend Jules Woolford https://www.drawnintonature.com/) and their wide variety of ages, places, and styles.
and then Amy Kirkbright https://www.amydiana.co/ is based in Melbourne and was running a online workshop (in lockdown Melbourne) which I signed up for .
Here are the results of the two-hour Workshop on Saturday. Amy spent time explaining her approach and concepts and things for us to think about. I took a page of Workshop notes. We then went outside our doors for 45 minutes and returned to our screens to share. That was interesting and fun. Here are my sketches and notes.
I now have a series of prompts to work with to add more information to the page. Sometimes these will be questions that may not have answers. Other questions I will look up online after the event.
I also recently discovered Open Trees.org ” the world’s largest database of municipal street and park trees, produced by harvesting open data from dozens of different sources”
Melbourne Urban Forest Visual The City of Melbourne maintains more than 70,000 trees. Individual tree data for City of Melbourne trees is presented on the map . Pan and Zoom into different areas of Melbourne, click on tree symbols to reveal details, and select between different locations and filters.
I spent my outdoor exercise and recreation time on Saturday and Sunday in the local Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne. It is the start of Spring, the weather was glorious, especially on Saturday.
I am remembering to take my sketchkit with me so that I have access to a large range of colours. During the time we could only exercise and not sit down under a tree, for example, I was only taking my sketchbook and one or two watercolour pencils, or just my ink pen.
On Saturday I went for a long walk and then stopped to sketch the following scene. I have sketched this tree though the seasons, but yesterday it felt important to capture the beginning of Spring and the people having picnics, and catching up in small groups.
Today (Sunday) I went for a very long walk around and around the paths of the Fitzroy Gardens. I stopped for four sketches.
The two birds were very quick. Only a few minutes.Standing up. I have sketched them both before, so have to think less about the shape and colours to choose.
I sat down to sketch these two slower sketches. I realised that both have the theme of bursting with life. The first is a tree (trying to find out what it is) that has little shoots bursting from the base and trunk of the tree. The second is a mushroom bursting through the mulch around the base of a tree. It caught my attention as I am always looking up or down as I walk through the Gardens.
I try and mix up my weekly art blog posts with a combination of practical posts about watercolour pencils and my sketchbook or projects from that week. Please let me know if you have any watercolour pencil questions. I am missing sharing my enthusiasm for these with my classes and interaction with people.
