I have arrived home from an amazing weekend at Clunes Booktown Festival.

We were all so lucky. It rained Friday and Monday (not great for the organisers setting up the marquees, food stalls, etc) but the Saturday and Sunday had clear skies and not much breeze. Perfect weather to throw on an extra layer and wander and explore the streets full of books and listen to author talks.

My stall was in Wesley College (the Old Bluestone building), a block from town. There were seven other stallholders in this building.

I had great plans to take a lot of photos of the interior of our building, full of people, but I forgot.

Louise my good friend, was my trusty helper (table stylist, luggage hauler) for the weekend.

I did not get onto the main street very often, but when I did it had a wonderful vibe.

I had so many interesting chats with stall visitors, including some Instagram followers who came to see me!!!!

There was a steady stream of people throughout the weekend. We talked to people about books (of course), art, watercolor pencils, travel, and sandwiches to name a few topics.

There were people who returned from last year to tell me they had bought one of my books last year! The Annual Booktown Festival attracts locals, from Melbourne, and interstate. Hello to my Queensland friends for their special trip down to visit and to the Adelaide visitors I spoke to.

It was fascinating to hear why someone was purchasing a specific book. The drawing sometime had a personal memory for the person of a time or place in their life. Some were to be given as gifts, framed.

My sketching opportunities were at the opening and closing events for the Stallholders and Volunteers. It was lovely to meet other people involved in the weekend. I sketched when the speeches were on. They were unknown times, so when the speeches ended, everyone moved!

We arrived on the train (two hours from Melbourne) with four large suitcases. We departed from Clunes with three suitcases, selling a quarter of my stock. Very happy.

The plan was to leave the empty suitcase behind, but we filled it with books (for me to draw in for next year) and other purchases from the lovely shops at Clunes.

All of my drawn in books that did not sell will be gradually added to my ETSY online store

This week’s blog includes my sketches and other art projects I have been doing this week. All involve putting pencils to paper and therefore makes me happy.

Tuesday

a quick sketch of sleeping commuters on the tram

Wednesday

I met with Brisbane Urban Sketcher Pat who is visiting Melbourne. We have met and sketched at this coffee shop before. Each time we have sat at this bench overlooking the street and the historic building across the road. Lots of chatting and sketching

Thursday

a commuter on the evening tram. He was eating and had such a strong profile that I really wanted to capture the back and head. He was much more scrunched forward than this.

Friday

Sketching on location at Friday night concert by the wonderful Inventi Ensemble at the Melbourne Athenaeum Library. As I wrote in my notes – books. music and sketching on a Friday night. The perfect start to a long weekend here in Melbourne.

Saturday

My Travel Sketching with Watercolour Pencil” class on Saturday morning involves explaining watercolour colours pencils and other equipment used, and then we go out for a walk. We had lovely weather and everyone had a great time. Booking details here.

All week

It is less than TWO weeks until Clunes Booktown Festival, where I have a stall for my “drawn in” books. The 1931 Pitman’s Commercial Typewriting book is my final book. I now have over 100 to take.

They are spread out over my loungeroom floor. The books are sorted into subjects of the drawings. which is how they will be displayed on the tables. I am also taking my book themed greeting cards. There are four large suitcases to be packed. Clunes is taken over by booklovers for the whole weekend ! It is made for me !

This past Saturday was my first Travel Sketching with Watercolour Pencil class since March 2020. I was excited but nervous leading up to the event. I decided to keep the same format as I had in the past, mainly for my own comfort.

I have listed four Saturday mornings for a two-hour class. I had two people at the first session and it was really like a lovely long chat. Christine and Sandra could ask questions along the way.

We meet in a room at East Melbourne Library and I explain the equipment.

The weather was sunny. so we next go for a walk a block away and stop for 15 minutes for the first sketch. Then walk a block for another 15-minute sketch, then move on to another before heading back to the Library for a final chat.

I have another class next with six people registered. I also offer a sketch kit for purchase. It is amazing how many people already have watercolour pencils at home and want to know how to use them. Hopefully, this class motivates and inspires.

Booking and details on Eventbrite

Thanks for your patience as I learn to use Eventbrite!

As promised, here is another timelapse video of me sketching with my watercolour pencils.

This one worked out better in theory and in the practice session than when I filmed it but it lets me explain some approaches I use.

It begins with what I use- a Pacific Black Duck feather, two small paintbrushes, Dark Sepia Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencil, Black FaberCastell Polychromos (coloured ) pencil, Staedler sharpener.

I will walk you through what I do. HINT – you can change the speed of viewing by clicking on the three dots. Change Playback speed from Normal to .025

1. For feather drawing only, I start with a Black coloured pencil. This is the only time I use a coloured pencil and not a watercolour pencil. I draw in the spine (rachis) of a feather. Once I have mark this on the page, I don’t want it to move, which is why I use the coloured pencil. Other watercolour pencil pigment is added and I will move the pigment around on the page, sometimes over this mark.
2. I block out the shape, notches and major area of the feather in the colour I am drawing in (ie not HB pencil ), which in this case is Dark Sepia. I just used one colour in this example in the hope it shows the basics. Blocking out the shape also makes sure it fits on the page.
3. I add more colour (ie more pigment) to the darker parts of the feather.
4. I use this pigment to sweep the colour across the feather. It will get lighter and paler.I use this to get a light colour close to that spine.
5. Colour and detail are built up on top of the colour that is on the page. It involves waiting for the page to dry before more can be added,
6. The fun bit is the plume at the end of the feather. You can go a bit wild here,
7. Usually, the final marks are to define individual fine barbs of the feather, the darkening of the darkest colour areas and the hard line of an edge.
8. I sharpen my pencil a lot when drawing feathers – lots of fine details.
9. You will notice I also take colour off the tip of the pencil. This is a way of picking up pigment to add to the page. The pencil tip will get soft this way, so allow time for it to harden and then sharpen again.
10. Controlling the amount of water on the page controls the spread of colour, All learnt through practice.

In this link have “work in progress” photos of drawing a feather from 2010.

I have a series of feather and nest drawings available on my ETSY website.

happy sketching. Let me know how you go.

After a busy week with an art commission, organising my upcoming Travel Sketching with Watercolour Pencil classes, and working full time, I had a long weekend away. It was a whole weekend of sketching with no distractions. After over three years I returned to the lovely Port Fairy. My original connection was through the annual Blarney Books and Art Biblio Art Prize, which I now enter each year. I visited a few times with Angela, a Melbourne sketcher with local connections, and have had an exhibition there.

Port Fairy is four hours by train/bus from Melbourne, so it is more than a weekend visit, which is great because I have to have a long weekend!

I visited Port Fairy to sketch and it kickstarted an idea that Jo at Blarney had been mulling on. And so with three days’ notice, the Port Fairy Sketch Club began and nine people turned up to sketch with me on Saturday. Hopefully the start of regular sketching sessions for locals. It is such a creative community. It was a great opportunity to put sketching in the diary, talk art and just relax. I will join in when I visit, maybe a few times a year.

We only walked one block before finding a suitable subject. Our group spread out over the four corners of the street and the traffic island. Port Fairy is very historic and very sketchable.

I also spent much of my time sketching on and wandering along the different beaches of Port Fairy. Below are some of my on-location sketches. I also collected and drew (on the spot) things found on the beach. I have about six pages of these studies, which are probably a blog of their own.

I have to sketch the lighthouse when I visit.

After a long morning in the sun walking and sketching out to the lighthouse, I spent the afternoon inside Blarney Books and Art. I sat on a comfy couch and sketch the shelves., listening to the bookshop murmuring and saying hello to friendly dogs This is still a work in progress as I add more colour to the books.

My next visit will be in the second half of the year, as there is a lot coming up on the calendar.

I am so happy to announce that my Watercolour Pencil Sketching classes are back after three years. In person in Melbourne!

Book here on Eventbrite

That is my news for this week. It is a big step forward for me. I am looking forward to sharing my passion and knowledge of travel sketching and watercolour pencils.

Some of my blog posts are practical and some are about specific projects. Others, like this one, are just my sketches of the week. Each one tells a story of a time and place. I can look back in my sketchbook and recall them.

The furniture polish was purchased at an antique barn. I had a catch-up and a whole day there with friends, It was not the time or place to bring out my sketchbook. But I now have a memory of the day.

Bananas – too ripe for me and ready to go out. I can smell them and feel their squishyness just by looking at this page. I had plenty of suggestions for banana bread and freezing when I posted this on Instagram.

My local cormorant in the park. I sketch it often.

Purchase of a BIG stack of second-hand books for an art project. I always need to sketch stacks of books in pencil first and make many changes. I have great problems with the perspective, but I am happy with this, for a sketch. I will leave it that. More to come on the art project soon.

Last week I met Patricia, a Brisbane Urban Sketcher who was visiting Melbourne. We met up over two lunch hours at the safe cafe and sketched the view, continuing on the second day.

and that was my week.

Happy sketching.

I have spent a lot of time this week preparing for an upcoming display of my sketchbooks at the local East Melbourne Library. I have had four displays of my sketchbooks there previously, but nothing since 2020, when we went into a long lockdown in Melbourne. Now that life is back to the new normal, I was invited to install a display in February.

Firstly, I needed to decide on the theme. I chose “my East Melbourne sketches”.

I habve lived in East Melbourne since 2014 and sketch daily everywhere I go. I decided to feature East Melbourne scenes that local residents will be familiar with.

I looked through my sketchbooks for East Melbourne pages and while doing this I formed the themes of the pages to have open in the four cabinets (each has four glass shelves). Decisions have to be made as only one page can be opened at a time in one book. You can see my dilemma. While every page is a sketch and journal page, not all of them are visually interesting enough to been understood through a glass caninet in a display.

I have learned from my previous displays about what I can fit in these cabinets. I know that viewing the sketchbooks on the bottom shelf is obscured by the sketchbooks on the other shelves. No matter how much planning I do in advance, there will always be tweaks on the day.

I PLAN to set up the display on January 31 and it will be in place through February.

Please drop by if you are a local or a visitor. While you are there explore our wonderful local library while you are there. It is a great place and they are very involved in the local community. I am fortunate to be able to connect with the community by having my sketchbooks on display there. In the past, I have used the rooms for my travel sketching classes and may do it again.

See you there!

my breakfast in timelapse. In real-time it took 36 minutes.

I have previously filmed sketching coffee, sketching toast, and sketching fruit. You can see a pattern here – food and drink. Today is another food-based sketch. I will go further afield object-wise and physically in the next video post.

This time it is my breakfast – Weetbix, banana and milk. On this page, I will write commentary which I would speak out loud if I was describing it as I went, or what is going through my head.

In advance I chose the watercolour pencils I will use, put them aside and sharpened them. I know my pencils and what colours they produce on the page and also what happens when I add water to them, as this can change the colour. It’s great to know your tools! Most pencils I have used are from my everyday sketch kit of FaberCastell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils. It is sketched on the first page of my 116th Moleskine watercolour sketchbook (13cm x 19cm) since December 2008. I sketch everyday. They are:

• Ivory
• Cream
• Burnt Umbre
• Brown Ochre
• Black
• Cool Grey III
• Paynes Grey

In my mind, I decide what I want to include on the page and how big I want it to be. Do I include the bowl and any background? How close up? and what do I feature?

I decide what to include and exclude, It is my page. I have decided, like many of my pages, is going to have the unfinished look. This means I don’t have to sketch all of the bowl outline. As a viewer, your mind fills in what you don’t see. It also means I do not have to worry about having a perfect line for the ellipsis of the bowl outline.

I start with the main content and block out the basic shapes – weetbix, banana slices, spoon and bowl. I did not “sketch” the milk, but left the page blank. I sketch the objects in the colour that they are. I do not sketch with a graphite (HB or 2B) pencil first. This approach comes from my travel sketching experiences, where you have to get lines and colour down quickly as you may not have much time. It also stops using an eraser to make the” perfect” sketch.

and a slower version

You will see that I move all over the place and often swap pencils. This allows one area to dry while I work on another. I can “step back” every now and again to look at the page and decide where to add more colour or detail. I use watercolour pencils to build up area, colour and detail. It is not just “colouring in “the page. Once an area has dried I can add more of the same colour to intensify the colour.

Note: individual Weetbix are all different. I enjoy adding the the finer details. Also there is no “right or wrong” Weetbix or banana.

I added a bit to the bowl after the filming as I noticed it was slightly lopsided. I did this by turning the page upside down to “see” how to makes both sides of the page the same curve. Does that make sense?

I hope you have enjoyed this page. Let me know if you have any watercolour pencil questions. Next time it will be a different sort of object. To film outside will require a higher level of technical ability.

Have a happy, safe and creative week.

I write a blog post at this time each year looking back at what I have done during the previous year with my art.  I have found this is a very useful way of realising how much I have accomplished in a year, as I usually forget about some events or do not realise how productive I have been. It is a good reality check for me.

This past year of course was different, as with everyone. 2022 did not quite roll out as we all thought. The return to normal was not quite normal. This new way of life did not stop me from sketching and achieving other art-related goals. I have listed them below and put links to separate blog posts if there is one about the event.

• Daily sketching. This year again I filled ten Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks (13 x19 cm) of everyday sketching. I sketch everyday and carry my sketchkit which includes watercolour pencils and sketchbook with me everywhere. I scan every page of my sketchbook and put them all on Flickr (an image-sharing website) Some go onto Facebook at Alissa Duke Art . I post daily on Instagram alissaduke1

• I have maintained this, my weekly art blog. Thank you to the 192 followers of this weekly art blog. I hope that you find it enjoyable and interesting to read and full of information. Sometimes I write about hints and tips when using watercolour pencils, other times the blog will be about art events I am involved in and the rest are usually my sketches from the previous week. I hope that I am able to share a bit of my passion for drawing and watercolour pencils. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like me to explain anything I do. If you would like to receive a weekly email you can Subscribe here.

• purchase of Uniqu lighting set I produced three videos captured on my in time-lapse on my camera with this new set-up. I have been wanting to do this for a few years and am very proud to have mastered the technology. If you would like to see me “in action” you can view these three. sketching toast sketching a coffee cup, sketching Christmas food.

• Etsy – Etsy Sales – I have an Etsy online store selling my Greeting cards and ‘drawn in books’. This year was very quiet for card and book sales.
• Newsletter Newsletter. I sent two newsletters this year to the 136 people who subscribe to my newsletter, in April and October. The newsletter is for people who are interested in my art and would like to know when major events happen – new card designs, markets, exhibitions, and classes. They may not necessarily be interested in my Weekly Art Blog, but still want to be updated. Obviously a little quiet this year. This will be one of the places I announce any classes when they begin

• Instagram. I now have 1713 followers on Instagram alissaduke1. I post a sketch daily on Instagram. They are examples of my art and often are my “everyday” sketching hopefully this inspire some sketchers that anything is sketchable and you don’t have to ‘finish’ a sketch. Every now and and then i feature some of my ETSY art.

2022– Below are my art projects and commercial activities in 2022. (paying for my pencils) This year once again was a little different. I had no classes. I did have a few very special one-off art events.

• Clunes Booktown Festival was held in May. I had a stall there and it was truly a highlight as my love of books and drawing on old books came together in one place. I felt like it was made for me. I had forgotten that was only in this past year.http://alissaduke.com/2022/05/clunes-booktown-festival-2.html

• Blarney Books & Art Biblio Art Prize. This annual Port Fairy (Victoria, Australia) event was held. When you enter the competition you get given a book title to interpret artistically. This year the books were by recently published Australian Authors. I entered and was given The creativity and skill of the other entries were amazing and it is worth spending time looking through them on the website. Here is my blogpost about my entry. There were over 200 entries (you can view online) and 100 were chosen for display at the exhibition. I later found out that it was shortlisted in the Top eight! (see the presentation video .

• Melbourne Rare Book Week has been postponed for the past few years. I usually sketch on location at the talks and events. However, we were so very fortunate the Melbourne Rare Book Fair went ahead. This is where the rare book traders have stands for the purchase of books. I was invited to sketch there this year, It felt so good to see familiar faces and I could see that everyone else was enjoying the in-person interactions again.

• East Melbourne Community day and Christmas picnic stalls. These were two lovely local events where I was invited to have a stall to sell my greeting cards. It was a wonderful time to catch up with local friends and meet new ones. People know me as ‘you’re the one who sketches’ or ‘I bought your cards last year and will have to get some more”

• one private commission. It was a beautiful old stone building, so I was very happy.

2023 – I wonder what will happen

• Attending the International Urban Sketching Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand in April. Hundreds of people register to attend workshops ( I am excited to have got into three I really wanted to), absorb techniques by viewing demos, and hear about different concepts, from a range of experienced presenters. It is also a great opportunity to connect with Sketchers from around the world. Meet old friends and make new ones. I am excited!

• I have a commission for another old building due in March
• I have just been asked if I would like to put my sketchbooks in the local library. I have done this in the past and have received very positive feedback. I just have to think of a theme.
• a potential BIG event – watch this space
• I would love to return to giving classes on Saturdays. Before Covid, I gave one-off Saturday morning classes on “Travel Sketching with Watercolour pencils” . I really enjoy sharing my knowledge and passion for watercolour pencils and have missed this.
• Of course, I will continue to sketch everyday.

Wishing you a creative 2023. Happy sketching!