I sketch when in doctors waiting rooms. It is a wonderful way to fill in time and to take my mind away from being there. I sketch other people waiting, the reception desk. etc, but today I am featuring my shoes – There is always something to sketch !!! I have a lot of annual doctor check-ups due to a little medical adventure in 2011. This week I had some more and a friend’s first comment was – did you draw your shoes? That prompted this week’s blog post
Some are in watercolour pencil ( with or without water added to the page) and others in ink pen.
I write a blog post at this time each year looking back at what I have done during the year. This is quite a long blog with a few photos. Once again, I realised that I had a very busy year! ( I have done this in 2018, 2017 as well as 20142015 & 2016 )
Daily sketching. I filled eight Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks 13 x19 cm of everyday sketching. 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 , some on Instagram alissaduke1. I have fewer daily sketchbooks than previous years as I have spent more of my “everyday sketching time” on private commissions.
I have maintained my weekly art blog. Thank you to everyone who follows my weekly art blog. I hope that you find it enjoyable and interesting to read and full of information. 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. I still hope to be able to produce a video one day, (but that is in the too hard basket again) You can subscribe to my blog to receive it via email.
Etsy Sales – I have an Etsy online store selling my Greeting cards. This year was quieter as I focused on promoting other areas of my art. Once again, as I promised myself last year, I need to learn more about marketing in the new year, and making people and organisations aware of my art.
Newsletter. I sent three newsletters this year to the 112 people who subscribe to my newsletter, in January, March and September. 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.
Instagram. I now have over 1300 followers on Instagram alissaduke1. I post an image daily to Instagram, so they are examples of sketching every day, and hopefully inspire some sketchers.
2019 month by month – my projects and commercial activities. (paying for my pencils)
I have written about them below, with a link to the blog post about the event, if I wrote one.
Watercolour pencil sketching classes. I shared my joy of sketching and my passion for watercolour pencils by running classes locally in and out of Melbourne, I held four at Dromkeen homestead, just outside of Melbourne.
Dromkeen Children’s LitFest Riddells Creek, just outside of Melbourne. Saturday 30 March. I was honoured once again to be invited to sketch at Dromkeen LitFest 2019: Stories connect us to the past, the present & the future’. It was a day of celebrating Australian Children’s Literature http://alissaduke.com/2019/03/dromkeen-litfest-2019.html
April
Commission I drew a family home that is being sold. As part of the same commission, I completed a second drawing of six objects and scenes from around the house that have special memories to the owners. I love the combination of the two.
May
Melbourne Rare Book Week launch & posters – I designed five posters for the Melbourne Library SErvice events for Melbourne Rare Book Week in July. Marketing due in early in the year for the July event. http://alissaduke.com/2019/05/melbourne-rare-book-week-launch.html
Clunes Booktown Festival I applied for and was appointed a Social Media Reporter for the day – a BIG event for me. It was perfect for me as could combine my love of books and sketching, http://alissaduke.com/2019/05/clunes-booktown-festival.html and a
Melbourne Rare Book Weekhttp://alissaduke.com/2019/07 . Once again, I was Sketcher on location at many of the fascinating events at Melbourne Rare Book Week. This is a major event in my year and I am so pleased to be involved with the people and organisations that make it.
Commissions – St Peters Eastern Hill Church. Drawings for an event invitation and cards. Below are the sketches as works in progress.
Commission – bookstack – this is as it was as a work in progress. The final version had personalised book titles.
commission – an A4 drawing for a raffle prize. Below is a work in progress.
as a work in progress
I held a Travel Sketching with Watercolour Pencil class as part of the Melbourne East Arts Festival, based in the local Holy Trinity church. We were fortunate to have nice, but cool weather to go for our walk.
Commission – womble . Lisa from London had seen my previous sketch of a Womble on the Wimbledon page in an old London A-Z Street Index. Fortunately, I had just purchased another discarded old London A-Z and could draw a new one for them, choosing Uncle Bulgaria as their favourite womble.
I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas break with whatever you had planned.
I flew home for a week and spent a festive time, with many friends and family visiting us. The table was decorated and food always out to offer visitors, who also brought more food! I always had a colourful array of things to draw during my holidays.
I was delighted to be invited to have a stall to sell my greeting cards at today’s local East Melbourne Library Community BBQ. We were very fortunate to have good weather (after some some shockingly hot few days) for our outdoor event.
There were stalls and people from the local Melbourne Men’s Shed Inc, East Melbourne Community Herb Garden Group, East Melbourne Historical Society and Melbourne Rooftop Honey. and me . I took along a selection of greeting cards printed from my drawings of books and libraries, Christmas themes and nature sketches and I was pleased with the amount of sales.
This free community barbecue (sausage sizzle and curry puffs) had Christmas goodie bags for children and festive poetry readings. The queues for the food were long and people stayed around and chatted for a while as well.
I had fascinating conversations with local people who were visiting the library to borrow books or to visit the BBQ. We think about 400 people visited (based on the number of sausage in bread and curry puffs that were eaten). I caught up with friends and met new people (including three who live in the same apartment block as me !)
I also had a poster about my watercolour pencil classes which started a few lovely conversations and some potential bookings.
Well done to everyone who was involved and thank you to East Melbourne Library for organising this great event and inviting me to be involved ! It was a wonderful community event.
Yesterday was a very special watercolour pencil sketching class – Christmas High Tea at Dromkeen.
I arrived at the historic homestead Dromkeen to find the dining room magnificently decorated for our Christmas High Tea watercolour pencil class. I have held classes in the beautiful room here during the year, but on Saturday it was looking grand and festive. Dromkeen is about 1 1/2 hours from Melbourne and hosts a wonderful array of events during the year, It has a children’s literature centre, art gallery and tea rooms. Denise and Bernadette cooked a beautiful selection of savouries and sweets, which were set on on the tiered plates and we also had tea and coffee. It was all so beautiful to sketch and to eat.
There was full class of ten and they all went home after the three hour class with full stomachs and many sketches. There was so much to choose to sketch: the appealing food, pretty plates and matching tea cups, ornaments or tiered plates
It was a lovely way to end my classes for the year, There are more watercolour pencil sketching classes planned for January, February and March next year, These include Travel sketching, Nature sketching and Sketching Memories and Nostalgia. Details of times and dates and bookings here
This past weekend I took a long weekend to travel with a sketching friend, Angela ( instagram @lunchsketch) to Warrnambool and Port Fairy . We were going to Port Fairy for the Exhibition Opening night of the Blarney Books & Art Biblio Art Prize. We both had entries accepted. It was such a thrill so see mine exhibited among so many creative works. That is another story….
A long weekend gave us three days of sketching ! I completed 25 pages of sketches (Angela was about the same ) and two postcard giveaways on Instagram. Today I am showing you the sketches from DAY ONE – the Great Ocean Road, My sketches are with watercolour pencil and Lamy Safari ink pen.
The Great Ocean Road is a famous drive with 243-kilometre (151 mi) stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia . Built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932 and dedicated to soldiers killed during World War I, the road is the world’s largest war memorial. The road is an important tourist attraction in the region.
It has beaches and stunning craggy cliffs composed of limestone and sandstone. You look out on the wild and windswept Southern Ocean. The coastline is dramatic ! The stories associated with it are too.
The day was grey and cool ( 16 degrees) and very windy along the coast, At the stops where stayed and sketched we found a sheltered nook to stand in.
The tourists came in waves as the buses came and left. They did not stay for a long time. As sketchers, driving by car, at our own pace, we are fortunate to be able stop and stay longer. When you sketch, you look and observe and see things that a quick photo would not see. We sketched and could hear the waves crashed in on the rocks.
Travelling the Great Ocean Road was a wonderful experience and the dramatic coastline continued to amaze me. I was very fortunate took have slightly local person (Angela) who could tell me a bit of background and stories of these places.
My entry has been accepted into Blarney Books & Art Biblio Art Prize. When you enter the competition you get given a book title to interpret artistically . I entered in June this year and got A year of Wonder : a novel of the plague by Geraldine Brooks. I purchased a second hand copy, knowing that I would draw on the page.
I read the book twice (and really enjoyed it) and have browsed through it numerous times in the last few months. My initial thought was that the drawings I would do in the book would probably be of the plague as it was described on various pages through the book. But in a moment of inspiration I noticed the references to plants in the novel. Looking further, I realised there were many references and knew that this would be my theme.
The novel is set in 1666 when the plague sweeps through England. It is based on the true history of the small Derbyshire village of Eyam that quarantines itself in order to prevent the disease from spreading further. It is written from the point of view of Anna and what she lives through in that time. It includes her observations of the reaction of villagers as they descend into social chaos with increasing fear, paranoia and suspicion. Anna’s resilience grows as she takes on a role as healer. During this time she learns about medicinal plants and they work to help the community at this time.
This weekend I have scanned the pages I have drawn on. I will post the book shortly to arrive in time for the Saturday 7 December Exhibition Opening Night at Blarney Books & Art in Port Fairy. If you are Melbourne, It is about a three hour drive. I would love to know if you are going to visit. My friends Angela & Jodi also have their projects in the exhibition. I believe they have both done paintings for their titles.
You can view all of the above drawings on my Flickr site
I also entered last year, drawing on the pages of a book of my own choice .see my blog post about my entry Blarney 2018 entry
I realised last year that when people were at the exhibition looking at my book, which was displayed open on a bookstand, that they did not turn the pages to look at the different illustrated pages. This weekend I am working on a poster of all the images, which I plan will stand next to the book, and once again, all pages will be bookmarked with a ribbon.
Once again, it will also be available for purchase.
On Saturday I held a Nature Sketching with Watercolour Pencil class at the beautiful Dromkeen homestead ,just outside of Melbourne. This is a short post showing the sketches I did on the day.
After playing with the watercolour pencils inside and learning what they do, we head outside and observe a tree up close. A little time is spent observing the details, intricacy and character of one tree.
This is a practice sketch I did in the morning. 15 minuteswe then step back and sketch a bigger scene
This final sketch is an explanation of how I built up a page. It is quite hard to explain what you do, when you just do it without thinking. I would love to video this one day.
I had eight enthusiastic students and beautiful day. We were very lucky that the weather cleared and we had a bit of sunshine and warmth.
I have a variety of Watercolour Pencil sketching classes over Spring and Summer at Dromkeen and in Melbourne. Please contact me if you have any questions. See all the details on my website
I was in Sydney for a work conference and I put all of those sketches on last weeks blog. I had arrived a few days early and spent time with Sydney sketching friends. There were hours of chatting and catch up and also pages of sketches. I also sketched before and after work, Here are a few Sydney icons, most of them completed quite quickly.
Last week I attended a conference in Sydney. Unlike my previous conference in early October the Brisbane Sketchfest 2019 , this was not a Sketching conference, but the International Association of Law Librarians. There were 132 Librarians from 25 countries here in Sydney to learn about the Australian Legal Landscape, A unique learning and professional opportunity for everyone, by attending lectures and social events in day and night.
Of course I sketched, and with the encouragement of the local organisers, shared my sketches on social media. Most sessions went for 45 minutes,but some of the walking tours were an unknown and shorter time. All of my sketches are done on location. This means that they are creating an impression of the moment and are not portraits. They give you a sense of the event, the people and the space they are in.
After one lunchbreak we re-entered the room and one of my sketches was up on the big screen (below) – very exciting. I was introduced to the delegates and my sketches on Twitter were followed and retweeted. It was wonderful to be able to add something a little different to the event.
I also sketched before and after events. There are many sketches of the Sydney Opera House, ferries and Harbour Bridge, and I will be scanning them this week and adding to my flickr account. I put all of my sketches on Flicker. I post one a day to Instagram, some to Facebook and different facebook groups, depending on the sketch.
