Urban Sketchers Sydney - Saturday 5 April. St Peters Sketchwalk

Saturday 5 April... we will be heading back to St Peters to explore the backstreets with our sketchbooks.
Thanks to Rod for the suggested route and the great tour that he gave last month.
Hope to see you there- everyone welcome!

Sketching at Brisbane City Hall and Maritime Museum

Albert Street Uniting Church

Daphne Mayo sculpture on City Hall

Brass Dome roof of the concert hall

Smoking room of the Orion I think, at the Maritime Museum

Lots to learn from the Expressive Urban Sketching Workshop

Last weekend was my first opportunity to experience an official Urban Sketching Workshop. I had brought with me some hopes of enjoying the energy and creativity Liz Steel has often spoken of in relation to past USK Symposiums. The workshop turned out what I had hoped for and more. Paul Wang and Liz taught with ease, managed the group of 25 superbly and ensured we all had a great time and challenged ourselves with the variety of concepts they presented.

Cockatoo Island is the host of many old and rusting structures, preserved on the island for the enjoyment of the public and to display the history of the area. Through demonstration and exercises Liz and Paul guided us with new materials, mark making and creating a focal point. We then had ample time to put these skills and media to use with urban sketching on the island.

 

Having a second consecutive day with the workshop really helped to consolidate what we were being taught. I have fallen in love with this Daniel Smith Green Apatite which is part of Paul Wang's selected palette. There is a texture of dark flecks that appear once the wash starts to dry as well as a variation in the green that results.

 

I enjoyed the 2 days and would not hesitate to repeat the process. It's helped to free up my ideas of how materials can be used and unlock opportunities for further exploration. There were moments when I looked at my work and wondered what was I doing, where was I heading - feeling overwhelmed and exhausted! Some time ago I would have stopped at those moments for fear of heading in the wrong direction with my results, but having good teachers who I have a lot of confidence in encourages me. Its part of the process of moving onward with my sketching.

Cockatoo Island sketching - Alissa Duke

I spent the last two days  on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. A place full of Sydney history from convict to industrial era and through to the present day, where you wander and explore. While Liz Steel and Paul Wang ran their Expressive Urban Sketching Workshop on the island, I spent the days drawing and taking the opportunity to catch up with my old and new sketching friends before and after the Workshop each day. I could feel the sense of enthusiasm and excitement in the group each time I talked to them. There will be many blog, flickr and facebook posts from the 25 participants from around Australia and the world .

I had put aside these two days take my watercolour pencils to the island to explore and draw on Cockatoo Island. I generally ignored the Sydney Biennale Art installations that were on the island. There is already so much to see and sketch ! The Biennale was launched on the Friday and crowds were expected. But it did not cause any issues.

The weather was spectacular - blue skies and sunshine.
All my drawings from the two days are on my flickr site . I filled 16 pages with drawings

Begin the day with a coffee !!

First drawing was on my coffee cup with Lamy Safari Joy ink pen.

Then a focus on one of the rusty cranes


 

 

and my drawing position - on a bin ! One person stopped to say it was a great drawing. Two people stopped and asked to use the bin !

 

 

 ok - a visit to one Biennale Art installation. I listened to the Artists talk and then watched the video made a lot more sense ! 

my morning drawing - looking up to the cliffs

  

 

and my afternoon drawing. I was sitting in the area I drew in the morning Looking down to where I sat in the morning. Does that make sense?

 

(Note to self: During the drawing, look at page without sunglasses on ! My long distance prescription sunglasses are great on a sunny day to shield the sun and focus on the distance to sketch BUT when I took them off and looked at the page at the end of the drawing the colour and linework looked completely different. )

 

 My quick sketches of the Expressive Urban Sketching Workshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anzol paint factory, Mortlake, NSW (3)

An early morning sketch. There’s even more graffiti than there was a few weeks ago. Literally wall to wall! The third in the series I'm doing before it's demolished.

Melbourne Urban Sketching in Brighton

We held a sketchcrawl in Dendy Beach in Brighton this week. Dendy Beach is home to the iconic colourful bathing houses.

 

We met at 11 am and caught up again 2 hours later to share our work. It was fantastic to catch up with the regulars, and meet new sketchers. Here are some of the work drawn by the group; most are colourful (above).

 

I enjoyed sketching the colourful bathing boxes – what fun with so many colours!

I was early and sketched over breakfast at a nearby cafe - a kayak in the foreground, Brighton residential homes behind it and the city in silhouette in the background.

Cockatoo Island afternoon sketching - Saturday 22 March

To coincide with the first official Urban Sketchers workshop in Australia we are pleased to announce a sketching event open to everyone - both to sketch Cockatoo Island in the late evening and also to provide an opportunity for those that where unable to attend the workshop to check out what was done.

Meeting at 4:00pm in order to catch the end of the Expressive Urban Sketching workshop and then start sketching at 4.30pm till 7:00pm. We will meet back at the cafe at 7pm for a show and tell and finally heading off for dinner for those that are interested.

Please note Saturday 22 March is the opening weekend for the Biennale of Sydney  and it is expected that the island will be packed with people visiting the exhibitions.

There are special ferries operating but you need to book a ticket beforehand for these and might not be still operating at 7.30pm…but normal ferry services will be operating as well so recommend you use those instead. Although it will be very busy we do not expect that arriving at the island at this time will be quite as crazy.

Please note exhibitions close at 5pm.

Anzol factory (2), Mortlake, Sydney

The next section of this old paint factory. The trucks were busy in the driveway this week removing the  items stored in the grounds by renters, so it looks like demolition draws nearer. I'm going to have to get the rest of the building down soon !

USKSYD: Sydney Park St Peters

A great day today in St Peters with the Urban Sketchers Sydney gang. A huge thanks to Rod for hosting the event. He gave us maps, a little background to the area and then took us on a tour of old St Peters area including the amazing graffiti zone of May Lane.

The idea was to sketch in the park (an old brickworks) for the first half of the morning and then head to the back streets but most of of us didn't leave the park. We have decided we need to go back next month to explore those lanes.

Here is the group photos and a slideshow of work done today.