Yesterday I had the joy to hold TWO Nature Sketching with Watercolour Pencil classes at Dromkeen homestead at Riddells Creek, an hour out of Melbourne. This was part of the Macedon Ranges Autumn Festival. Dromkeen also had a Wonders of Nature art exhibition with 130 pieces of art by amazing local artists. I visited for the opening two weeks ago and was very excited to meet and talk to some of the artists involved. It continues for another two weeks.

In the photo are a small suitcase with sketchkits for those who have purchased them. They contain a pack of 12 FaberCastell watercolour pencils, a Pentel medium waterbrush, an A5 Art Spectrum 210gsm smooth watercolour sketchbook (draw and wash), an Albrecht Durer watercolour pencil, a hints and tips sheet and a serviette ! all have a purpose.

I also have a backpack of some of my sketchbooks to show examples. I take a pull-up banner which I display at events. I also have done some swatches of the colours in their kit.

My class was held indoors. Autumn has decided to arrive in Melbourne and the day was drizzling. This is not good for watercolour and watercolour colour paper (or people). I made a decision to hold my class inside when I arrived on the train from Melbourne. This was Plan B. The class was held in Garden Room which is a separate room from the homestead, as there was so much happening in Dromkeen tea rooms and Art Gallery.

I collected some autumnal leaves. branches with lichen, nuts and a few peacock feathers (there used to be peacocks on the homestead property) for attendees to sketch.

Autumn leaves sketching video

An email was sent to participants with the following links.

• The 26  watercolour pencils I carry everyday http://alissaduke.com/2022/03/the-watercolour-pencils-i-use-2.html
• My top 12 http://alissaduke.com/2022/03/top-12-watercolour-pencil-colours.html
• Hints and tips  http://alissaduke.com/2014/03/five-watercolour-pencils-tips.html
• Practical hints and Tips http://alissaduke.com/2017/05/practical-blog-posts.html

Happy sketching every and let me know have any questions.

Easter Greetings 2025.

I am enjoying a lovely long weekend. Lots of Easter sketching!I have two videos for you of sketching a hot across bun in watercolour pencil and step by step photos of an small soft toy rabbit.

These are my annual Easter sketches that I have been doing for at least 10 years. I get to try our new hot cross buns each and practice my rabbit after his emergence from the cupboard where he lives for the rest of the year.

• Warm Grey II
• Payne’s Grey
• a Pink Madder Lake – nose
• Black

and then onto the serious stuff…

• Ivory
• Warm Grey II
• Burnt Ochre
• Paynes grey
• Dark Sepia
• Black (coloured pencil) – I use for the lines where I dont want the pigment to dissolve or blend. This is the only non watercolour (in coloured pencil) pencil that I have in my sketchkit.

And a second video. What happened next…

new colours of

• Light Cadmium Yellow
• Cream

Farewell from the Easter Bunny

note: the darker the colour around his tail, more white it appears becasue it stands out more.

and he left a colourful Easter Egg for me to sketch in my Zoom catchup with UK sketching friends Sue, Jules and Jean.

The Melbourne Urban Skechers had their montly catchup on Sunday in Fitzroy Gardens.

It was a summery Autumn day and about 40 sketchers turned up at 11:00am , spread around the park and met up again at 1:00pm for a “throwndown” where we spread out our books onth ground. We can then see the amazing vaierty of markmaking and colours. Each sketch is different and no two are the same.

I sketched the sketchers! They stay still !

I focused on the trunk of this Moreton Bay Fig. I got in close as I am always fascinated by the lichen and scars and textures that make each tree individual.

I also wanted to sketch Nature, which was easy in the Gardens. I have two Nature Sketching with Watercolour Pencil classes on 26 April at Dromkeen homestead, just outside of Melbourne. See more details here.

It is part of their Autumn Festival, which began with a pop up art show last Saturday.

150 beautiful art works by Macedon Locals. One of many events over the next few weeks.

I quickly sketched at the launch!

I received a lot of lovely comments on my timelapse watercolour pencil sketch of vegetables last week. I was asked if I could show one in real-time.

This is a 15 minute video. Next time I may figure out to have appropriate music playing in the background.

A container of mixed olives. I chose this as I wanted to use an obscure colour that I do not carry in my everyday sketch kit. Olive Green Yellowish. You can see it is perfect for olives, but probably not much else in life.
I used a few other colours from my daily sketchkit:

• Caput Mortum
• Black
• Cold Grey V (for the plastic container)

I put the pencils out on the table beforehand. I began by sketching the different olives in each colour as I changed olives,

I used a serviette (offscreen) to squeeze water from the waterbrush to clear the colour from its tip between colours.

Let me know if you have any questions.

I have been meaning to film some watercolour pencil sketching for quite a while. I don’t film regularly so it is always a challenge to remember the technical parts of it.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping, choosing some colourful vegetables, that would be ideal for showing watercolour pencils: pumpkin, carrots, broccoli and red onion.

Now that I have my subject, I decide what I want to sketch and then where it will sit on the page.

I do this all in my head. I don’t do thumbnails (small tonal studies). My sketches are not still-life compositions. They a quick, often spur of the moment, captures on the page. Often the subject will move or get moved. A lot of my sketching process is based on travel sketching.

Before I started to sketch I choose the watercolour pencils that I am going to use. I always chose from MY SKETCHKIT that I carry with me everyday. It has 26 watercolour pencils, an ink pen and sharpener. I know my pencils, their colours and what they do on the paper and then when water is added.

If you have watercolour pencils play with them on the page, make marks. scribble. add water and see what happens. I have been using watercolour pencils for over 20 years and know them well, but still excited by what they can do.

Today I used:

• Magenta
• Orange Glaze
• Chrome Oxide Green
• Grass Green
• Payne’s Grey
• Naples Yellow
• I would have used Pine Green but forgot to put it aside for this demonstration.

I do have the whole 126 Faber Castell watercolour pencil range, but usually only use these when I need very specific colours for a commission.

In my watercolour pencil classes. I explain watercolour pencils, paper, waterbrush and we play on the pages. We then go and find a place to sketch for 15 minutes! Not a lot of time but enough to get some colourful lines on the page, capturing the essence of the object or scene. As you will see…

In the first video my first marks on the page are getting the basic shapes of the vegetables on the page. I sketch in the colour of the object ie the carrots and orange, the broccoli is green etc.

The next steps are:

• sketch with heavier lines and blocks of colour
• spread with waterbrush
• wait to dry
• add another layer of the colour to intensify the colour and add volume or texture.

While I am waiting for one area to dry I work on another, You will see that I move all over the page, changing colours.

NOTE : when I use a new colour on the page I squeeze the waterbrush onto a napkin / serviette (or my hand, because I did not have one nearby). This is to clear the waterbrush of the previous colour.

You can slow this down by locating the Speed control (the first icon. the two parallel lines) and the SPEED . slow down to 0.25 for the slowest.

My second video – focusing on just one vegetable.

See how much can be achieved in 15 minutes! I have sketched pumpkins before and I also know the colours. It is the impression of detail, not actual detail. There are a few areas where I add hard, defined lines to give that impression.

While I was sketching and filming, I was making notes in my head of what to explain. I know that I have left a lot out. Please feel free to ask any questions.

I hope this has inspired and motivated you to get your watercolour pencils out again.

I will now go and cook these and may even sketch the final meal!

Happy Sketching

I am home from another wonderful Clunes Booktown Festival.

This two-day annual event dominates my evenings and weekends in the months leading up to it. Once I receive the email confirming my application, I focus on drawing in the old books I have been acquiring throughout the year.

We drove up from Melbourne 1 1/2 hours and immediately set up in the Old Bluestone Church. Most of the stall holders are in the main street in the large white marquees. There was excitement in the air, with everyone setting up stalls, signs and books.

The weather was perfect sunny, Autumnal weather all weekend. It could have been better.

and in the town. Thousands of book lovers filled the streets to browse books, enjoy the talks entertainment and local traders.

You get the idea !

Here is our Old Bluestone building set up.

Cheers to us at the end of day 1

and again on Monday morning with coffee.

and of course, I brought some bargains to draw in for next year!

I had wonderful conversations with friends, librarians, and book lovers galore.

My greatest thanks to my good friends Adam & Micheala who provided transport support and fed me ! Also to the organisers and many volunteers who made it a success.

Any books that I did not sell on the weekend will be added to my ETSY store this coming weekend !

This is the third week in a row that my blog has featured ‘This week’s sketches”. Those of you who follow my daily posts on Instagram and Facebook will have seen these.

Next week I promise something new and exciting as I report on my Clunes Booktown Festival weekend.

Another busy week. Most of most non-work (I have a full-time job) time has been spent drawing in books for my stall at Clunes Booktown Festival in just three weeks!

Last week I started by celebrating swimming by drawing my goggles.

Thsi was mirrored in the goggles I drew in a book

My other sketches were very quick.

A quick lunch break sketch. fire hydrant . Red watercolour pencil . unfinished . I won’t go back and complete it. I am happy just to have done some sketching on the day.

Drawing a pencil in Pitman’s Shorthand Instructor 1930s. I love to draw my pencils and pencil shavings, so this was an excellent opportunity.

I did not do Shorthand at high school, but it was still part of the BP (Business Practices ) subjects you could choose.

Drawing an owl on a page about birds in “The Camera in the Fields: a practical guide to nature photography” by F.C.Snell (1905.)

Each book I draw in has different quality paper pages printed in different years. I never know what it is going to be like until I add pencil to paper and then add the water. It is always different. This is slightly glossy. Adding water with a small paintbrush the colour gets richer and darker. But the colour slides all over the surface. I will see what I can do with this one ! I also used water soluble crayon on the black and white parts of the page. The colour is thicker and darker, but it quite waxy. so I can’t use watercolour pencil on top of it.

I have 53 books drawn in at the moment and ready to sell. I have 16 almost complete.

And 10 to be complete. I have decided on the page to draw in and what image to draw.

Work in Progress.

Drawing in Herbs, Spices and Flavourings by Tom Stobart 1977 .

Below are my sketches and drawings from the past week. It will give you an idea of the opportunities I take/make to sketch.

Waiting time is sketching time. I did not have time to colour my stockings black.

I received a new bottle of ink in the mail, I decided to line up some old ink bottles and sketch them.

Arriving early at State Library Victoria for a breakfast function. I spent the time sketching.

Friday night. It is a tradition to open a bottle of wine on a Friday night and sketch it. It is also practice at ellipses’, reflections and colours.

Saturday morning class of “Sketching the Library FGarden with Watercolour Pencils” . Six lovely creatives attended and had a wonderful time. I like to inspire and motivate people, so that they walk away ready to continue their journey.

Lots of playing with colours and then going out into the garden to cut some leaves and flowers to take back into the room to sketch.

And then planning for the next Watercolour pencil class.

I am also working all the time in the evenings on “drawing in books” for my upcoming stall at Clunes Booktown Festival.

Sketching, sketching, sketching all the time. I love it .

Happy sketching everyone.

A short video showing how I use a waterbrush and watercolour pencils colour on a page. The video plays in a loop and I finish with nine colours on the page.

I am experimenting with swatches of different colours on the page.

I am using a waterbrush (basically a tube of water). I could be using a paintbrush and water container.

• touch the waterbrush to the page and move some of the pigment around. You can see that sometimes the colour becomes a lot more intense when the water is added.

• I then pull the brush across or down the page, spreading the pigment. You can see that it gets lighter as it bceomes diluted. This means that you can get a large range of colour from one pencil.

• I clean the brush between colours on a serviette.

• You don’t need to keep pumping the waterbrush. It is very easy to flood the page with water.

Colours used are from my daily sketch kit:

I hope that this post inspires and motivates you to put pencil to paper.

Any questions – just ask !