Hyde Park, Sydney

Finally managed to get to another USK event, and it was a lovely day in Sydney's Hyde Park. Could only stay half day so only managed two, would have loved more time tho.

Lately, when I do find time to sketch outdoors I am trying to inject more contrast in my pictures, and create more depth of perspective, but its still a work in progress. An enjoyable work in progress tho.

Cheers,

Meegan

Oh, and both pictures were done in watercolours/brush and colour inks/dip pen.

You Am I

I saw one of the best rock and roll bands this country has ever produced last night at the enmore. Normally I'm quite satisfied with drawing one or two sketches, but I felt compelled to do more. They played two albums worth, so I had plenty of time to sketch. Here is a selection, for more please visit my blog here. Cheers, Meegan

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

Better late than never

Hello everyone,

I've been caught up with other art projects and forgot to upload some outings over the last month.

Gastropark Game of Thrones dinner

Some friends booked a table at Gastropark in Sydney - its a resturant that's won several awards and is know for its gastronomic inventive dishes. The owner and chef is a big fan of this fantasy tv series and celebrated the release of the second series by creating a menu inspired by the show.

So everything had a viking-barbarian-knights of the round table feel to it. As I was sharing the food with others I had to quickly draw everything, so I'm not sure if its all accurate and discernible in my sketches.

Taronga Zoo

I went on my own international sketchcrawl to the zoo. I went in the afternoon with a friend who wanted to spend some time patiently photographing animals, so it was good to go to the zoo with someone who didnt necessarily want to check list all the enclosures, but sit and study a few.

If you would like to see more sketches from both of these outings, please visit my flickr site here.

Thanks,

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.

Taiko team up

Over the last month Australia’s TaikOz and Japan’s very own Kodo have been touring the country together, both groups specialising in Japanese taiko drumming. It was a brilliant concert, it was so full of energy and the character of both groups came through. Here is a snippet of what I drew that night, if you would like to see the rest of my drawings please visit my blog. Cheers!

More from Rookwood

I dont know what it is about cemeteries that I enjoy drawing but Rookwood has always been on my checklist of places to draw, so when the Sydney Sketch Club headed out for its Open Day I thought it was a great opportunity.

Although I never managed to actually meet up with the other sketchers (due to my inability of reading maps and understanding bus shuttle services) I headed up to the older Anglican section. Many of the graves in this area dated around the early 1900s and many seem to be neglected, which from an artistic point of view, is appealing.

As sad as it may be, some of the graves I saw had flowering trees growing from it which I thought was really heartwarming, and the weather was so perfect it was really peaceful and pleasant sketching away from all the noise. I couldn't think of a more idyllic location.

The last place I visited seemed to be an area dedicated to fallen Australian soldiers with a simple, but striking memorial called The Crown of Thorns. It goes to show how big Rookwood is, I used to come quite regularly with my family, as part of my culture's customs, but I never knew of this area.

The deceased are just as interesting as the living.

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