Solo sketch on Cockatoo ISland

It was fun to do a solo trip to Cockatoo Island. One pencil, one moleskin. Got there early. Perfect weather. In the zone. Trying some new techniques which I am really enjoying. Good to be back in THAT sketch zone.

Cockatoo Island and the Pipes Book

 I spent last Saturday at Cockatoo Island. We went out on an early ferry and though it was a beautiful day, it was cold on the ferry. A sign that autumn is coming.  I wanted to do some more work on my Pipes Book. I started it nearly a year ago, but a lot has happened since then. You can see what the cover looks like and read more about it here. It has ten pages in a concertina format and this image is of five of them, pretty much complete. I am keen to get back there and sketch some more, though with winter coming it gets cold out there on the harbour.

I have located many wonderful pipes in my local area, and the book is not totally devoted to Cockatoo Island, so as long as I can sketch outside I can proceed with the book. The trick will be to know when I have finished and leave enough white space, balanced throughout the ten pages.

Just time for another sketch before catching the ferry back to Circular Quay. The sun was hot by this time and we needed to be in the shade, so went inside the Industrial Precinct to sketch another one of the machines there. 

It's a long time since I've been able to go out sketching, but Saturday was the day to ease back into it.  We went to Darling Harbour near the Maritime Museum - one of my favourite spots. First we wandered round aimlessly deciding what to sketch. We tried going down near some of the smaller boats, but it proved to be a floating pontoon I stepped onto and the chop on the harbour nearly threw me off my feet.
Finally we just plonked down right where we were. There's something to see everywhere you look in that area. Strangely, right in front of us was this fire hydrant. With my fascination for sketching machinery, off I went.
It was a cloudy day - great sketching weather in fact. It was hot, so had the sun been out we would have been scrambling for shade.

A bit of colour in Sydney

Yesterday at our Sydney Sketchclub Meetup at the Australian National Maritime Museum we had such beautiful weather it was too nice a day to spend in a darkly lit museum drawing things in glass cabinets so I decided to sit outside and draw on the wharf.

Then afterwards I headed over to the Chinese Garden of Friendship. I needed some photo reference of the architecture and motifs for a project I’m working on, but I managed to do a few ink drawings while I was there too. 

Sunset over Sydney

I headed out as part of the welcoming committee for a fellow sketcher from the US, thinking what gawd-awful weather we've been having lately and that we weren't going to get a few hours to sketch outdoors. But just when you think you have mother nature pegged, it turned out to be a perfect evening with a beautiful sunset thrown in. I tried to capture all the reflections on the sails, but they kept changing all the time.

Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race

On Boxing Day, this is what most people in Sydney do - they either go out on the harbour to watch the start of the race, or they lay back in front of the tv and watch the race. This is the first time I've been out on the harbour to see it for years. Now, I belong to the Heritage Fleet which owns some wonderful old vessels restored and crewed by volunteers. I've been out a few times with them lately and although it wasn't sunny, it wasn't too breezy so the sketchbook wasn't flopping about too much.

I went out on the gentleman's schooner 'Boomerang', which, though it doesn't have sails any more, is a beautifully elegant ship. You can read more about it and see drawings from my November sail here. The sea was a little bumpy, but only a problem when drawing the straight lines around the boxes. I could have even put the colour on, but I was sitting next to a very nice lady in extremely pristine white linen, so I didn't dare get the paints out. (Imagine!)

There were many more yachts of course. The newspaper said that the sea was like a washing machine. We counted 13 helicopters, but I only drew four.

Boats at Iron Cove

I drove over to Iron Cove to draw the boats the other morning. It is on the inner harbour, west of the Bridge. I used to swim at Leichhardt Pool which is on a hill above this little park and boat jetty. It was a lovely spring morning, so I hopped in the car with my sketchbook. The light was a bit flat by the time I got there but I did my best and did some quick drawings of the boats. The pole with the sign is advice to fisherman not to eat fish from west of the harbour bridge because of levels of dioxin in the water.

National Maritime Museum

This wonderfully elaborate sailing ship is a replica of the Duyfken, an East Indiaman. The original ship sailed from Banten (Bantam in English) in Java in 1606 to Australia where it mapped Cape York. Strangely I was already thinking seriously about a holiday in Banten. I've been to Java but not further west than Yogyakarta.

The Sydney Sketch Club went to the National Maritime Museum on Saturday. The winter has been pretty wet and cold so far, and there's great drawing both inside and out. Lucky for us it was a perfect day. Sunny and 20 degrees. Beanie and gloves not required.

My second drawing was done looking down on this little rubber boat - they tell me it's called a rubber ducky, From the sublime to the ridiculous really, isn't it!

Welcome!!!

Welcome to the blog for Urban Sketchers in Sydney. I am really excited that over the last 6 months or so we have got together a band of sketchers. My hope is that we can use this blog to share our beautiful city with the world!!!

So please start sketching and posting... And if you like, please introduce yourselves!


If you don’t know me... I am an architect who never seems to stop drawing and painting! I have lived in Sydney all my life and love it!!! Becoming the Sydney Correspondent for Urban Sketchers has really changed my life – being part of such an inspiring group of artists has been a huge spur to my sketching and has also given me the confidence to sketch on location more and more.

I hope to go out sketching tomorrow and post some new sketches but I thought I would start with re-posting this one from a few weeks ago. Here in Australia we have had terrible floods in QLD, NSW and VIC, bushfires in WA and then tropical cyclone Yasi. Now our thoughts are with our friends in New Zealand and those in Christchurch! Our deepest sympathies are with those who mourn or are living in dread of confirmation of lost loved ones.