Neutral Bay

The lower North Shore is probably my favourite place in Sydney. I'm not a fan of suburbs, but the "Garden City" concept and the XIX early XX architecture looks good enough for me! The bits of shore here and there around Sydney Harbour are amazing to sit down, read the newspaper and realize that I should be sketching. A pleasant thought anyway.

Pub Crawl In Newtown

Hi, Friends, pub crawl is fun(...depends on a budget!?).
Let's start from this pub. Still the sun is high. Chat, chat, chat and sip, sip, sip. People come to a pub to find something they seek for. Students enjoy freedom after a semester. Working people find an escape from reality such as one-night dream or entertainment or a rest.

OK, let's try another pub. Hey, an outside is getting dark.
When a night softly falls on Newtwon, pubs begin to shine through and swallow people more and more in darkness.
Time for adults begins.

Technically, not an ideal spot for sketching, because of poor light, especially, in the evening.

Kind people pretend not knowing my sketching and let me work on. (Thanks millions!)

When I look at a street from a window, light is very fascinating. Colours diminish in darkness. Paradoxically, good value study.

A gig is another fun as well as alcohol and chats with friends.

Once, I did play an acoustic guitar and sang at a folk song cafe, but NO PAY. So, I'm totally empathic for gig performers. Hang in there, guys!! Survive and strive for a dream!

In the middle of night, a fiasco is over and people go home before morning comes.

Friends, have a good time at a pub!
...but be careful, it is said...
"Bacchus(=Dionysus) has drowned more people than Neptune(=Posaidon)."
If you want to enjoy my sketches more, come over Sadami's Graffiti and let's have fun together. Cheers!

Coffee Shops of Newtown - Chill Cafe

Oh yes, working too late at night finishing off my page. That's how the name got an extra 'I' on the end. Silly me! I had an early appointment in that part of Newtown and I wanted to go to the best button shop in Sydney, All Buttons Great & Small. I wanted to buy one button for a necklace fastening. I thought the necklace was cobalt blue, but seen beside it, the blues looked too green. This amethyst coloured glass button picks up the cobalt blue and turns it to the exact right colour. That's colour theory for you!

I was waiting for the shop to open so I had this coffee and muesli slice. I drew the button at home afterwards to differentiate between this day, and many other days at cafes with white cups & plates. They had another shape of great red chair though, so I'll be back to draw the chair when there's more time. Good cookie too.

Coffee Shops of Newtown - Cafe C

This week I'm doing the coffee shops of Newtown. Started on Monday at Cafe C, and realised I'm bored, bored, bored with white cups. So I drew the red chair. Liked the pale violet colour on the blueberry bagel (with cream cheese). The bagel was cold by the time I ate it. They DID offer to warm it up but by that time I needed to eat and go.
I always leave red lipstick on white coffee cups (or tea) so it was a good balance on the other side of the page for the red chair.

Sydney Chinatown

Sydney Chinatown is a great place in Sydney. There is plenty of nice restaurants and different food, and a great feeling of community. Also, of course, a lot of things to sketch. 

Ink, Brush, Watercolor on drawing sketchbook 160gsm.

House in Mosman, Sydney

I used to work in Mosman for over a year, and everyday I went there with my "push-bike". I like the gardens near this house at Military Road, with the beautiful Magnolia tree in blossom and the deep greens of winter all around me. I expend a couple of hours on the spot where I did this sketch reading a book and drinking a latte. Priceless! (because the book was from the library but the latte was $3.80, not that cheap).

Ink, Brush, Watercolor on drawing sketchbook 160gsm.

Newtown at night

A local church & cemetery which is popular with artists, goths and the like.
In the adjoining hall, friends were performing a small rehearsal concert before they headed off to compete in Japan. Good luck guys!

A bit of Lisbon in Sydney

For those of you who wished they had been in Lisbon last month with me... the best thing in Sydney is to visit Sweet Belem in Petersham. Their portuguese tarts are as good as they could be (outside of Portugal!!) Yum!! My friend and I spent the whole afternoon there and had two rounds of coffe/tea and pasteis de nata. YUM!!!

Powerhouse Museum again

Last week we went to the Powerhouse Museum again. I particularly wanted to draw something from their special ‘lace’ exhibition on at the moment. It was pretty dark in there and I wanted to keep out of people's way, so I sat back against the wall on my little folding stool. I decided to draw the amazing shadows that were being cast on both the floor and the walls by this exhibit called “Spider Lace”. While I was drawing people were walking through the exhibition and stopping to read the information about the lace exhibits. Their shadows were being cast on the wall among the shadows I was drawing, so in the end I scribbled them in quickly before they moved on.
Then I went to my favourite part of the museum to draw yet another little machine. "Little Rocker" was named by the museum, not by me. It's an oscillating machine. Not sure what it does, but it's a steam machine. They seem to be used for health & fitness these days, but not this little number, I think.

Customs House

I am have now been back a week from my recent trip which included the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Lisbon – what a blast! Will have to get a group of Sydney Sketchers to go to the next one!

I am even more enthusiastic about sketching on location as a result...and so the first full Saturday I went out into the city. My big post-Lisbon goal is to make time to do more serious architecture sketches in Sydney so here is Custom House.

I have been inspired by others at Lisbon who work larger Florian, Gerard, Eduardo, Marc etc and also seeing the amazing pencil sketches of Katherine Tyrrell (done in an A4 moleskine) when I met up with her in London the week after the symposium....so I have got a new A4 size sketchbook.

The new size is wonderful...but I did get a little bored by the sketch at the end of it because I got into a big of a mess with the setout of the building... but hey - I still had a lot of fun splashing the paint around!!!

Check out my blog post for the other things I got up on Saturday - including my sketch of 3.5 hours in the sun drinking tea and eating scones, buying more art supplies and getting into trouble with the security guard on the Harbour Bridge.

Castlereagh St, Sydney CBD

Yesterday was very cold (is Winter Down Under) but I was able to sketch a little bit on the CBD after work. 

Ink, brush, watercolor on 150gsm sketchbook. 

Transco building

This building is across the back lane and along at the corner. I can see the top of it from my courtyard. On Friday (a sunny day in the middle of winter) I was going to go up to the park to draw, but I saw my washing blowing about & thought I'd sit outside for a minute to see how cold it was. It was beautiful, so I decided to stay put and draw what I could see.

This building is inhabited by photographic studios and graphic artists. I walk past it up to King Street and notice it has several cameras mounted outside, watching our every move.

Cockatoo Island sketching

Last week on a perfect winter's day, we took a trip to Cockatoo Island to sketch. Last summer we neglected the island due to our other pursuits, but now we're back.

The sky was clear bright blue, and the colour of the orange roof was so bright against it. Such beautiful weather.

Sydney Conservatorium of Music

Yesterday we went to the Verbrugghem Hall in the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to a concert called "Renaissance & Romantic" with Ricardo Gallén and John Griffiths performing, one with a "vihuela" and the other with a Spanish Guitar, music from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth Century. The acoustics on the hall were excellent, too good actually, as my pencil and brush were doing an atrocious sound getting too much attention around me (Pencil and watercolor on Sketchbook 150gsm). 

Wendy & the Beanstalk

A very industrious neighbour from down the street has made the empty block next to my house into a wonderful vegetable garden. Although it is still middle of winter, the beans are starting to flower and one is climbing above the fence line. In May, it was pumpkins coming over, now it's beans.
The beanstalk is even taller now, but when I drew it two days ago, from my low vantage point sitting on a kitchen chair, it was dwarfing Royal Prince Alfred Hospital there in the background.

Queen Victoria Building, York St - Sydney

The Queen Victoria Building is one of the most beautiful buildings in Sydney CBD. In the background, Town Hall and other buildings of the CBD. I also drawn the blur of the monorail passing, and just ignored the buzz of buses, taxis and desperate commuters that need their McDonalds / Sushi and go back to the suburbs to either watch MasterChef / start jogging.  

Ink, brush and watercolor on drawing sketchbook 150gsm. Drawn on location. 

Spit to Manly

Sydney is the more beautiful city of the world during a sunny day and that was yesterday, so we did the walk from the Spit (Mosman) to Manly, a beatiful 9km bushwalk by the coastline. It was great! (Pencil and watercolor on drawing sketchbook 160gsm)