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