I recently travelled to Brisbane (2 1/2 hours flight) to attend Brisbane Sketchfest 2019. It is the first Australia wide urban sketching gathering and welcomed sketchers from around Australia and New Zealand, Noumea and Asia to enjoy a four days of sketching workshops, walks and events.

From 10 to 12 October, 12 instructors from Australia and Asia delivered a diverse and fun program showcasing the Brisbane River, South Bank and Wickham Terrace plus Eat, Drink, Draw sessions at River Quay and King George Square. A ticket and registration included

• access to 3 workshops
• access to 2 sketch walks; and
• evening activities

It was just like a Urban Sketching Symposium, including the ‘goodie bag’ of sponsors gifts. I have been to the Annual International Urban Sketching Symposiums in Barcelona and Manchester and I felt that this was equal in the quality of workshops, the organisation of the registrations and the whole event. A BIG thank you to the organisers. The difference was the size – 175 participants instead of 500. However I still did not get to meet many of them. But I did get to say hello and sketch with urban sketchers I had been following online and I also met new sketchers – some from my own city of Melbourne.

Below are three workshops I attended

PAUL WANG – Beautiful Eyes – lets go window shopping

PAUL is a passionate art and design educator from Singapore. Inspired by his interior architecture and stage design training, his sketches are always bursting with dramatic colours. He is an Urban Sketchers’ correspondent for Singapore and also serving actively as an advisory board-member for the Urban Sketchers’ organisation. The title of PAUL WANG’S workshop is Beautiful Eyes – Lets go Window Shopping.
“We cannot help but look into the eyes of a stranger or a friend when we meet. Windows and doors like our eyes are openings to spaces and even secret stories beyond. They let light and air into the room. Zooming in and drawing these openings as strong focal points can help draw us into the sketch and hold the gaze of the viewer.“

This was outside of my comfort zone as I was using watercolours and had to learn how to use them.Paul generously provided us with the watercolours in a palette. We were not learning how to mix colours, thank goodness. (It was only 3 hours), My learning curve was on how much water to add to to the colour (or colour to add to the water). and to remember to clean my brush thoroughly between changing colours, It was great to learn how the wax resist pencil (goes on clear) to define window panes and iron lace. I currently use a white gel pen afterwards to add that effect.

We walked up to Spring Hill and were based initially in a lovely area to learn, before heading off to choose a building and window to paint. There was a bit of rain that had us headed for awnings but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

RICHARD BRIGGS HOW TO CAPTURE URBAN CHARACTER WITH LIMITED CONTENT

Richard is a practicing artist and British registered architect based in Sydney. His simple line drawings explore the hidden gems in our cities encouraging us to look at the streets in a different way. Workshop title: How to capture urban character with limited content. The aim of this workshop is to focus on the urban spaces in Brisbane’s CBD and look at how to capture the key characteristics by using a line based approach with limited content, and to not sketch everything that you see

In this workshop, the initial focus was on observing and thinking and writing down our reactions in words. This is a different approach to my travel sketching workshop , where it is all about capturing the moment in a short amount of time and making quick decisions. I loved the idea of looking deeply. We were in historic Burnett Lane in Brisbane (freezing cold and pouring rain at one stage) . It is a busy back lane providing access to the other street facing shops, and it shows the history of Brisbane through the old entrances, fading signs, stairs that lead nowhere and lots of functional pipes. There are now a few cafes and street art too.

This was the most challenging workshop, as I found it difficult to put the concept onto paper. I could understand it in my head, but put too many lines down as I fell back into my usual technique. This is where the Workshops are so important as they plant an idea in your head. It is hard to master a technique in three hours, (and that is why Symposiums and Sketchfests are so exhausting) but it may appear at a later.

ROBYN BAUER – TREES WITH TEXTURE & TONE

Robyn is a full time artist, who exhibits & teaches extensively, and was a co-founder of Urban Sketchers Brisbane in November 2016.
Her workshop is titled Trees with Texture & Tone. “Sketching opens our eyes to the world that surrounds us. It enables us to see and understand things more clearly. A city is made up of many components and creating sketches that celebrate this diversity can be very rewarding. This workshop is about seeing how trees fit into the mix and will focus on using various dilutions of black ink (tonal values) to render our discoveries.”

A wonderful learning experience with Robyn, I love to draw nature and trees, but had not used mixed media to represent them, I had fun experimenting with the diluted ink and layering with pen. Splattering with a stiff brush was fun too.

Brisbane Sketchfest 2019 was an amazing event and once again I would like to thank all of the volunteer organisers who put this event together. It was wonderful to meet and sketch with so many people from around the world in the beautiful city of Brisbane.