Merry Christmas to everyone. I wish you all a festive, peaceful, and safe holiday season,
I have made a little time-lapse video for you. I am still getting used to using this technology. I hope to do more in the new year. This one is just for fun.
These colourful fruits will be on my dining table on Christmas Day. Blueberries, strawberries. mandarins and blackberries.
These are the Faber Castell watercolour pencils I used. I had chosen them in advance and had them sharpened and ready to go at my side.
This is an early/late weekly post. Over this week I have drawn my Christmas tree decorations. I started the week sketching my Christmas tree. It is the first live Christmas tree I have had. It is 4 feet high and very wide.
I then decided to draw a few of my Christmas decorations.
Each has its own history. They are all my own purchases or gifts to me. By drawing them it brought back some memories of when and where they came from.
They are, of course all drawn with my wonderful Faber Castell watercolour pencils.
All of my very best wishes to everyone over the festive season. happy sketching !
On Saturday, Melbourne Urban Sketches met in Geelong for a full-day event. We had THE BEST weather, especially as we were sketching along the waterfront. There were about 30 of us.
I have been very busy adding to my ETSY online store.
As well as greeting cards (koala Christmas cards are the most popular this year), I also have ‘drawn in books’ available for purchase.
These are books that were about to be discarded. By drawing in the book, I am giving it a new life, introducing it to a new audience to appreciate. The drawing is an interpretation of the words on the page. I draw in watercolour pencil, and each book’s paper is different, some taking more colour or water than others. This means I can sometimes add more detail.
The book could be framed as a book, or the pages removed and framed. The book could be displayed open on a shelf, or shelved for future reading with a surprise drawing for the reader to discover on one of its pages.
I have also been accepted to have a stall for the 2023 Clunes Book Town Festival in March 2023. I have shelves of unwanted books ready to draw in. A weeks holiday at Christmas will keep me entertained
People purchase a book because they have a connection with the actual book, or with the image that I have drawn on the page.
I think overseaas mail outside Australia is closing soon. I have even had notofcation delays for internal Australian delvery til mid – December. Get in early before the delays begin !
I have been on holidays for a week in Queensland (two hours flight north).
In the past week, I have sketched with three Urban Sketching groups, Brisbane, Gold Coast, and then back home in Melbourne. Urban Sketchers is a global community of sketchers dedicated to the practice of on-location drawing. There are local chapters in over 60 Countries, in 374 Cities, with over 120,000 sketchers.
Not all of my sketches that you see in my blog, on instagram oiare urban sketches, many are objects, food, and people and I share these on other social media pages. The difference is:
This is the Urban Sketchers manifesto we follow:
• We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.
• Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.
• Our drawings are a record of time and place.
• We are truthful to the scenes we witness.
• We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.
• We show the world, one drawing at a time.
• We share our drawings online.
• We support each other and draw together.
The groups have Administrators who name a location and time to meet. The sketchers turn up and sketch in the area, either in groups, or on their own. They then usually have a meetup time (sometimes a lunchtime). In these groups there is a ‘throwdown’ where people display their sketchpage. This way you can see all of the different interpretations, mediums, and styles and what everyone has sketched. There is a group photo and some people continue to sketch.
My catchups were not organised events. I posted a message on their various Facebook groups and let them know I would be in town on certain dates. Whoever was available turned up. It was great !
see below
Gold Coast Urban Sketchers
Melbourne Urban Sketchers
Brisbane Urban Sketchers
It is great to know that when you travel you can contact a group and sketch with them.
I am on a week’s holiday interstate in Queensland, catching up with friends at the Gold Coast and Brisbane. I immediately started to sketch and relaxed straight away moved into holiday mode.
I always start with a sketch on the Skybus from Melbourne city to the airport and then at the airport, and on the plane. Each journey is different and offers different opportunities.
And then once on the ground, I journal my adventures.
Some were new and different, like a leisurely sketch over lunch while gin tasting… and then a quick sketch while being driven through the sugar cane fields in the Gold Coast hinterland.
On my first walk along the beach, I collected interesting fragments of shells on the beach. they are either interesting in colour, texture, or shape. I brought these back to where I am staying and started drawing them slowly. I will continue to add to the page over the next few days. I will return the shells to the beach and have this as my page of memories.
I hope that today’s blog brings a smile to your face, and inspires you to be creative and maybe put pencil to paper.
I enjoy many types of sketching on location, urban sketching, travel journaling, food sketching.
Last week I sketched at three different live events. Here is a summary of the known and unknown elements of each event.
Zoom life drawing online –
known – length of times poses. – there is a standard format. I control my surroundings – at home, so they are controlled, lighting. sound, food. drink.
unknown – poses
These are two of seven sketches from Top Secret Life Drawing online. Theme, the movie Leon: The Professional, a 1994 cult movie
Melbourne Zoo
known – been there before,
unknown – what animals I will see, how long they will stay still – see my zoo blog post
Victorian Historic car racing
Everything was unknown – as a first-time attendee to Victorian Historic Racing at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne.
At this race meeting you could walk (and sketch) just about anywhere
I walked around and got ‘the lay of the land.” I figured out very early that I could not sketch the cars racing on the track – they zoom by too fast! So I stood and watched and enjoyed that. However, I could sketch:
People
standing, watching, chatting. But like all urban sketching, they will move,
watching a race they will probably stay in the same place for a certain amount of time
Cars
There were lots of opportunities off the track.
in the pits as they worked on their cars, before or after a race,
cars clubs on display
lining up to go on the track for the next race. – my favourite place to sketch them
I was there from 9:00am to 1:00pm, on a very warm day in Melbourne. After a few hours, I needed to seek shade to stand and sketch. There is a time to listen to your body. I then decided to leave at 1:00pm. The morning was practice laps for the different car types, The afternoon (and the next day) was the racing.
I completed nine pages of sketches and am still completing them now at home. I need to add notes about cars and the races they were in. I want to add colour to some of the pencil sketches. Some of the cars were some very strange paint colours that I could not make up on the day with my watercolour pencils.
I have submitted my entry in for the Blarney Books and Art Biblo Prize.
I enter each year, not to win, but to be involved and support Jo at Blarney Books in Art, which is in Port Fairy, a few hours from Melbourne, This is its 14th year, staying the same but changing slightly over the years. This year you pay the entry fee and receive a random book title of an Australian book published recently. You then creatively interpret the book in any format.
I first read my allocated book “The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen: Travels with my grandmother’s ashes” – looking for inspiration along the way. I always have in mind to draw in a book, because that is what I do, draw in books. However, initially I was going to draw these on separate watercolour sheets but went back to my comfort zone of drawing in the book. I don’t have to worry about leaving margins, matt board, framing, and D-rings. Every entry goes on the online exhibition and 100 get chosen to be an onsite exhibition, and there are winning categories, However as I mentioned I enter to be involved, not to win a prize.
Here are my initial steps.
“The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen: Travels with my grandmother’s ashes” is about Krissy Kneen’s search for herself. When her grandmother dies, Krissy sets out with a box containing her grandmother’s ashes, intending to trace her life and perhaps locate some remnants of her family. The book is about identity, belonging, love, family, the search for truth. It is a mixture of memoir, travelogue, fable, myth and recipes.
I was inspired by the recipes of Jota and Medames of Slovenia and Egypt in the books and also the place of food in the finding of family. The author’s relationship is that “food is beautiful. Food Is art and for me, as for my grandmother, food is the primary way to express love.”
I drew on pages of the book that have the recipes, with watercolour pencil. The description of the individual ingredients to make a recipe are drawn and these are the parts that make up a whole.
Jota in Slovenia
I quickly discovered how much water the paper would take with my watercolour pencils. I draw, add colour and then add water to the page. I had to add the colour, (not with layers I usually use with watercolour paper), and a bit of water to move it around and increase intensity of colour in small areas. I could then go in and add details such as a hard line. But looking at the back of the page I can see it is buckled with water.
I could not add any more colour or water to the page.
Medames in Egypt
I forgot to take photos, so this is the finished page.
Sketching at the Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne was organised by Amy Diana of Nature Journal Club. It had been a night and morning of intense rain, which cleared up in the city by the time we met. It may have kept some sketchers at home, but also marketgoers. That meant that it was relatively quiet. Lthere were lots of locals doing their shopping and tourists too.
The idea was to look at the fruit and vegetable stands in one section and choose a few items to bring back to a shared table to sketch. We made our selections in 30 minutes and then 2 hours sketching, chatting, and drinking coffee. You can see our table layout above (thanks Amy for taking the great photo). Raw vegetables are a great nature sketch subject. They stay still and you can observe closely, move them around, or cut them open ti investigate further.
These were all sketched on location, except for the peas.
All in watercolour pencil of course. I had planned to complete them at home, or add a bit more, but ran out of time and focus. I have moved on to other projects.
However I did purchase some quail eggs to sketch later and keep the eggs once used.
I was prompted to film another live sketch, after my sketching a coffee cup two weeks ago.
The aim is to show you how I sketch with watercolour pencils, rather than explaining in words on the page.
This time, my second filming attempt was a bit more organised, but I have a steep learning curve to go. I figured out how to rotate the video this time. The phone sits in the bracket at the top, face up. I pressed Camera and then Time-lapse, and then started sketching.
I had chosen my subject – one I have sketched many times before – vegemite on toast. Yes, I lather it on! I waited for the toast to cool, so that the butter would not melt. I chose the watercolour pencil colours that I knew I would use and sharpened them all. These are all Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils:
Black
Burnt Umber
Walnut
Payne’s Grey
Brown Ochre
Burnt ochre
Light Cadmium Yellow
Ivory
it is a Staedler sharpener
The brushes are my tiny brush and my medium brush. I have no idea of the sizes. I have a larger brush and a bigger brush (a 6 ??? ) that I use at home. Out and about I would use my Medium tip Kuretake Waterbrush.
Filming this time, I felt very self-conscious as to my hand movements: of how many times I changed pencil colour, my hand movements across the page. I was questioning myself whether this is what I would do if I was not filming? The answer, maybe not quite, but close to. I filmed the first video and realised that my hand dominated most of the page, and added the second piece of toast.
I hope that this gives you an insight as to my approach and method of using watercolour pencils
Things you may note
Mixing the colours –
– for the Vegemite I sketched on the page with Black and Walnut on the page before adding the water. Knowing your colours and what they will do when water is added and how they mix is great.
– mixing off the tip of the pencils – Black and Walnut – a method to add colour to the when the page was already wet. If I had drawn on the page it would not have gone on smoothly, clumping and not spreading
adding from the tip of the brush
using the brush on the page
-dragging on the page to pull the colour across and spread it. It will get lighter as it spreads and you run out of pigment to
-stippling on the page – not dragging, but just adding a little water can intensify a colour and you can move it around a little.
I hope this gives you some ideas. This is just how I use watercolour pencils. Let me know if you have any questions. I would love to know any new things that you learnt from this.
One day I will film and use this out and about Urban Sketching so that you can look over my should there too.
