I am looking forward to next Saturday’s local East Melbourne Library Community BBQ. This event has become a wondeful part of the local community calendar. I have a stall, where people can purchase my cards, including Christmas cards and ‘drawn in’ books.

It is great time to catchup with locals. and meet new ones. I have a group of regulars who purchase their cards from me here. All of my cards and ‘drawn in’ books at available on my ETSY store.

East Melbourne Community Group will have the barbecue sizzling! While that’s happening, you’ll listen to the lovely voices of the East Melbourne Community Choir, join in the Christmas Carols Singalong, enjoy festive treats, and visit a variety of pop-up stores and children’s Christmas activities (including a visit by a special someone in a red suit).

City of Melbourne

A few weeks ago I talked with Linda, the Librarian, about holding a sketching session in the Library. We have decided on a free one-hour session after the BBQ. It will be inside the library, sketching the Christmas decorations. Any locals can attend – no art experience required – just enthusiasm. Watercolour pencils, waterbrush and paper (Art Spectrum A5 210 Smooth) provided.

I spent three hours yesterday in the LIbrary sketching some of the decorations. The decorations are very impressive as they come from the City of Melbourne collection. I will have these sketches on the table to give people ideas of what they can sketch. I will also have some of my previous sketchbooks from my previous Christmas’ to show what I have sketched and provide more ideas.

It is pouring rain and cold at the moment in Melbourne, although tomorrow is the start of Summer. The weather has been inconsistent and we all have our fingers crossed for next Saturday. There is a Plan B for the stalls to be inside, with the BBQ under a marquee.

I have been travelling interstate over the past few weeks, catching up with friends, family and sketchers. I had not seen some of these people for a year or more. Some visits were two days and others five days. On the longer visits, I was able to be a tourist in Brisbane and Sydney. I have filled many pages of my sketchbook and am now slowly catching up with scanning them.

This blog post has a skyline sketch of Brisbane and Sydney, as well as sketches which I completed while travelling on their ferries.

Brisbane

Some sketches were completed on the City Cat ferry ride.

Others were while the ferry was moving or when it stopped to drop off and collect passengers.

This is a combination of both.

Sydney

A combination of sketches on the ferry and at the wharf.

Sketch from the Sydney ferry while it stopped to drop off and picked up passengers. It was probably about three minutes.

I have many more pages of sketches from these two visits. Some of these on location sketches are very quick, while others were a bit more relaxed and leisurely. I usually do not add any more colour or detail at home.

Travel sketching with Watercolour Pencil classes coming soon

I am very excited to be planning dates for Travel Sketching with Watercolour Pencil classes for early next year. They will be on a Saturday morning in East Melbourne. I am also planning a display of some of my sketchbooks at my local East Melbourne library in the new year to coincide with the classes. I have not run a travel sketching class in a long time. The basic concepts are the name for my Royal Botanic Garden Victoria and The Johnston Collection watercolour pencil classes, but the focus is all on travel!

I will add the dates and links to the Classes tab on my website when the dates are locked-in. see you then !

On Saturday, I held a Watercolour Pencil sketching class at The Johnston Collection, a Melbourne Georgian house museum. A lovely group of eight joined me to learn all about watercolour pencils and then put them to use.

We explored the ground floor rooms of The Johnston Collection’s historic exhibition house, Fairhall (1860), a double-fronted Georgian-style townhouse. Everyone selected objects and interior features to record in their sketchbook, and record their impressions with guidance from me.
The class is all about capturing the moment and we spend 15 minutes in three rooms.

We were fortunate to be inside this lovely space while the temperature dropped and rain fell down on this Spring day.

The example below shows exploring one Faber Castell Watercolour Pencil. Indanthrene Blue. I showed the quick marks and shapes that could be made on the page and how the colour is enhanced when water is added to the page with a waterbrush. The long patch of blue on the right shows the range of colour you can get from the one pencil.

The house is currently presented with the theme Home Comforts. Each room of Fairhall has been re-imagined, revealing new stories about the meaning of ‘home’ in the 1700s and 1800s.

The exhibition focusses on how families lived in the long eighteenth century: a merchant’s dining room; a nursery with dolls house and cradle; a breakfast room to enjoy exotic luxuries such as tea, coffee, chocolate and spices; the commercial world of a gentlemen’s study; an elegant drawing room for a musical soiree; and the work of staff in the kitchen.

Home Comforts features historical quilts, which are integrated into the Collection objects on display. The beautifully preserved quilts have been generously loaned from the private collection of Melbourne-based textile researcher and historian, Janet O’Dell.

If you are interested in joining a class in the future, keep an eye on The Johnston Collection Events page. We are planning our 2026 dates.

The ticket includes a welcome tea or coffee, watercolour pencil class, an on-location sketching experience in Fairhall, and a sketch kit to take home (comprising: sketchbook, 12 Faber-Castell watercolour pencils, and a waterbrush).

No equipment or previous experience is required – just bring your enthusiasm.