Lucy Loves Charlie - Auburn Road, Hawthorn (Melbourne USK)

I live just 5 mins drive away from Auburn Rd, but I'd never really been down there. The small village of shops in Hawthorn is a treat to draw: from the heritage buildings to the cute shop fronts. Lucy loves Charlie is a florist which stands out. It's certainly a complex but lovely heritage building. Then Angela pointed out a shop front of shoes and I was hooked. We seem to be having a run of beautiful sunny Saturdays, perfect for our sketch meetups.

Melbourne USK Sketchcrawl in Maling Road

Our sketchcrawl yesterday was at Maling Road in Canterbury. It is a lovely little street; quite quaint with retails shops – not the usual big brands but nice little boutique shops and a number of antique shops - and many coffee shops. This is Maling Room, a cafe (used to be a post office) we went to after our sketchcrawl.

Handmade House in Bush, "Kangaroos, Wombats are Next Door"

Hi, Friends, did you enjoy your Easter Holiday? We had a great time in the "BUSH" (= "wild or uncultivated country," in Australian English). We had to drive down to Town to buy food, see people, sheep or cows. The trees are alive and the creatures that share it all with us are very generous!
One more, yes, Friends, please get surprised that we stayed at an all-handmade house. Thirty years ago, like pioneers, my dear friend's sibling built up the house brick by brick with friends' help on a hill. Tada~~, see this wonderful and super-solid brick house with a chimney and water tanks! What I loved most was that the house has all 19th century setting in it -- no electricity! As if we were time slipping back to a frontier time!

Can you imagine? Oh, everything antique in the house, around the house amused visitors such as a kitchen, an attic room, a loo, furniture, coal irons, oil lamps, a white tin pail bucket etc, etc, Hail the builders' frontier spirit!

I'll take you into the house.
Here, a kitchen has a very old fashioned atmosphere. What would you like to cook for dinner? I've also learned how much important water is in bush. We tried to save it as much as possible. 

Now, let me take you to upstairs. Watch your steps (no handle!). I've loved this attic bedroom so much. You cannot imagine how much I got excited to sketch this room and its light! Hope you can feel the mood.

BTW, an out side of the house, I picked up a small animal's skull, old and broken. I googled a rabbit, a possum, a kangaroo, a wombat, a flying fox, a sheep, a dingo, a cat, but none of them seems to match that skull (*or simply because my lack of knowledge of animal anatomy...) Mystery?! Does anyone have an idea?  

In the bush, kangaroos and wombats are next doors. I've found that kangaroos' grey is camouflaging them in the bush, because gum trees and eucalyptus tree trunks are grey! It was very hard to tell kangaroos in trees. Some brave kangaroos came to the house, just under our window or even at a door! Wow!! They quickly skipped away from us, when we looked at them. So, all my sketched kangaroos are back figures.
In bush walking, the friends said, "Wombats put (their pulled down) trees over their holes and cover it." Oh, I see. But trees were too big and too clear. I said, "Well, in my eyes, it's more like showing off their house number plates, not cover-up!" We giggled!

When a night came, so many stars came up. Those dark starry skies were incredible. Interestingly, when the bright moon rose, the stars lost shining and the dark sky got brighter.  
Then, a chimney was so pleasant in eye and for heart. Come closer and make yourself at home. Relax! (*Under a lamp, in the nearly darkness, I made this image! But an enhanced value worked well. Hurray!) 

Each of us said, "I want to stay here more and don't want to go back to Sydney!" at the end of holidays.

It was wonderful to stay in a countryside. My picture book mentor Ann James is so glad to know this experience has enriched my images. Great inspirations for illustration!! Friends, go to the "bush" and sketch anything that interests you!
Friends, Happy Painting!

My sketches from day in Newcastle: Liz Steel

So here are my sketches from our great day in Newcastle.

It was impossible not to spend the first hour or so talking - with so many new people to meet and  good sketching friends to catch up with. And therefore it was a little hard to settle down to sketch - so I  did a number of quick loose sketches of the Customs House tower and the old Post office.

The afternoon was more relaxing as a smaller group headed down to Queens Wharf area -such a beautiful day and a great place to sketch. I hope to be able to come back to Newcastle again soon.

I was working in a new Stillman & Birn Gamma book and also sheets of Cold Press Fabriano - more about it on my blog

Melbourne - Post 90th Birthday Party

Hi

I was down in Western Victoria again for a Surprise 90th Birthday Party! It was such a fun lively gathering for wise L in Horsham.  

We drove back Sunday so I had the Monday for some last minute sketches ... 

Next time I'll have to be more organised and arrange a catch up with some Melbourne sketchers!  

On the corner of Swanston St and Flinders St, you have 4 distinctly Melbourne buildings. The two that I sketched are St Paul's Cathedral and the Flinders St Station. The third is Federation Square and the only thing I know about it is that I had a nice meal although dead tired at Taxi when I was in Melbourne for work. The last building is a pub, the Young and Jackson. The Young and Jackson houses the once scandalous nude Chloe. So next time, I think I'll have to sketch the other two buildings. 

I found a nice spot on the steps of the cathedral to paint the Station ... but I painted in full sun. It blinded me a bit and the colours turned out a little bit wild and bright. I don't think I have learnt to ease off on the Quin Gold or Azo Yellow ... as I am used to using Raw Sienna.  

The painting of the Cathedral was done on the steps of the Station - pretty much underneath the central hand rails. It was tough as I painted it at what seemed like peak hour for Australian standards and I had people walking passed really closely - palette to the right, bag under my knees, no room for a water bucket so I was spraying the water into the palette which means no clean brush. 

So I had two challenging sketch locations ... can other people share some tips on where they sit and how they get some space. Does having a  small seat help?

The last sketch was done in very pleasant surroundings at two cafes! Toby's Estate and Phillipa's. I am always a bit torn between relaxing and enjoying the cup of tea or coffee or getting out the sketchbook!

I found links to the Flinders Street Station design competition here and here. They announced the winner of the competition in August 2013 - the same people that designed? the Tate Modern and National Stadium, "the Bird's Nest", in Beijing. They are now going to see if it's viable ... 

A

Paper: Moleskine Watercolour A4
Tools: Watercolour, pencil

Drawing on Bridge Road, Richmond

Bridge Road in Richmond, Melbourne is such a nice place to sketch. It’s a busy street with power lines, trams, old buildings, and lots to cafes to sketch in. What more can one ask for!

Sub-urban sketching

pardon the pun... but I am just starting a new series on my  Architecture blog that involves sketching 'boring' suburban buildings and explaining some fundamental approaches to sketching architecture. More here

Also, I am going to be running a 1 day workshop of Sketching Architecture in Melbourne on Saturday 14 Sept - there are only a few places still available. More details here

Sydney Uni

I haven't been able to attend many USK meetups since its beginnings, but as this one was in my area I knew it was possible to make it, even for a an hour or two.

I decided to get there earlier as well to make up for my early departure and Sydney Uni is one of my favourite sketching grounds. I'm not a architectural aficionado, but they are wonderful buildings that are also uncluttered by looming skyscrapers, billboards, buses, signs etc. and its quite peaceful on weekends.

To stop myself from being overwhelmed by the ornateness of these buildings, I spent more time looking at my chosen scene before I started – working out the best approach to take for what I wanted to achieve. Lately, foremost in my mind has been to create more space and depth of perspective in my drawings.

The drawing above I diluted my ink with water for the background building and tried very hard not to put in too much detail, then I used the ink straight out of the bottle in the foreground. When I finished it, they weren't working well together, so I added some of the concentrated ink to the background in the windows which seemed to anchor the two spaces better.

I moved on, and found the sun streaming into this archway really pleasing. Initially it was to be a watercolour wash gone over with a dip pen and ink for linework. But my choice of a smaller brush gave me the ability to add line with watercolours. However, it was hard not to overwork it.

Looking out onto the rooftop - it was sooo long and detailed, I decided to find a section that had some "quiet" areas only to help balance out the more detailed areas.

In my last half hour I zoomed in on some grotesques. I've always noticed the more drawings I do in one sitting, the looser my style gets. So by this stage I was quite warmed up, and just sketched with my instincts and had a bit of fun with it.

Anyway, hope to attend more meetings in the future!

Cheers,

Meegan

Trip to Canberra and Adelaide

Back in March, another urban sketcher, kaz e dru, and I took a trip to Canberra and Adelaide to see the Toulouse-Lautrec and Turner exhibitions in each respective city. While I didn't draw anything from the two exhibitions, we found other places, especially outdoors, to draw.

CANBERRA

As always, the Australian War Memorial provides ample inspiration for any sketcher. This trip we stayed outside and had a look around the Sculpture Garden.

ADELAIDE

We spent more time in Adelaide as we had both never visited this city before. It is so different from any Australian capital I've been to. It's close to being pure vintage, particularly its architecture. We spent a day at the Botanic Gardens and I painted the Palm House a few times.

Then another day I ventured out and around the city and did my own sketchcrawl.

Another day was spent at the zoo. Always a challenge to draw moving animals but always up for it.

We ended the trip by having a wonderful, scrummy meal at Ruby Red Flamingo in North Adelaide. A very laid back atmosphere and very colourful setting.

This is only a small selection of my sketches from this trip. I cannot upload them all here as there are too many, but if you would like to see the rest and with some detail on the hows and whys of my artwork, please click here and visit my blog.

Thanks,

Meegan

Drumming in Abu Dhabi

In February I was given the exciting opportunity to travel to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates to play with TaikOz. Most of the time we had rehearsals and the actual performances. But I managed to sketch inbetween everything and in the afternoons when we had time to ourselves. Here is a selection of my sketches, if you would like to see the rest please click on this link to my blog post.

Cheers,
Meegan.

Random ramblings

Work has been frantic lately and I realised I have all these one off sketches I have done over the last month and not uploaded them to anything. They are all disconnected from each other but worth sharing.

Still thinking about my architectural struggles, I took my sketchbook with me on a grocery run and stopped at a local park to draw the aquatic centre. I spent a few minutes studying the scene before launching into it, reading the patterns, etc. It worked out okay but it is very clinical and lacks a lot of character.

Catching a bus all the way from town in peak hour on a rainy day can be a very long journey. Initially I was going to draw whatever I could see out my window whenever the bus stopped, but as the bus filled up that became more interesting.

Met up with a few other Urban Sketchers on the nastiest last night in winter, what a performance Mother Nature put on. We found some refuge on the ferry pier, and I found the rain splattered windows looking out across to the Opera House really exciting. It was like an Impressionist's painting because it was softening the definition of the scene.

The first Sunday in Spring was too good to stay indoors, so I headed out for a few quick sketches. I had thought some more about my architectural studies and wanted to practice another approach. I hate putting in pencil lines but obviously the benefit of that is everything is in proportion and it all fits on the page. To avoid that I decided to paint very faint gestural strokes enough to give me some guidance. It seemed to work quite well, and by doing that it also took the pressure off "will it fit? have I left enough room?" and can now enjoy the sketch more thoroughly.

I did a two stage breakdown of another building (from a photo) on my blog if anyone would like to see it.

Cheers,
Meegan

Newtown Post Office

Here is a sketch that I did in 20 minutes (before meeting up with friends for lunch) It was a very rushed sketch but a lot of fun and I did it from the comfort of a plastic crate that was sitting on the side street. I did another version later at home- which you can read about here

Drawing Architecture

Over the last couple of months I have been spending time developing my architectural drawing skills. It's not something I am completely comfortable with drawing compared to figures. So there was a lot to learn and plenty more to develop and carry out. If anyone is interested in reading about my study please visit my blog. Cheers!