This week’s blog post is the nature sketches that I completed in England on my recent holiday.

I have not finished my holiday sketching books yet. I plan to add more notes about the plant to each page.

I will not be adding any more detail to the sketch. I like to consider these to be capturing the moment when I sketched them. A journal rather than an illustration

Some of these were completed on location as I sat in the fields in the lovely England countryside.

I had to look most of them up online to see what I was sketching.

Others I took cuttings of and placed in a glass of water. I later sketched them at my own leisure in my lovely cottage.

I was familiar with some of the plants as we have them in Australia. Others I had to check on, and some I had not heard of at all.

I learned to take scissors out with me on my walk, as many of the plants were very spiky.

I hope that you can see how much I enjoyed discovering the plants of the English countryside,

On Saturday I presented at the Melbourne Athenaeum Library. This marked the end of my year long Artist in Residency, I last wrote about this in January, when it was just beginning.

My brief for the Artrist in Residence was “12 illustrations of various aspects of the Athenaeum Library and Archives”.

I gave a one-hour presentation and had lots of questions from the audience. I knew many, but not all, in the audience, either from The Athenaeum events, friends or my own classes. It was a very friendly, relaxed talk.

I explained the commission and my approach. I talked about how I use my watercolour pencils and then the objects I sketched. I then discussed my on-location sketching at events and how that translated to a final drawing.

There is currently a display of the commissioned pieces. On the day I also had my sketchbooks for people to look through.

I am holding two classes on watercolour pencil at the Library.

It was such a wonderful experience and I was honoured to be invited to interpret the collection and add to its history through my Residency.