Last month I taught a 2-day workshop on Cockatoo Island. It was an expanded version of my Sketching with Shapes workshop and the extra day allowed me to add edges and watercolour exercises before we focused on shapes.

It was also the first time I’ve taught a two-day workshop for a number of years and I really enjoyed having more time to build skills and get to know the participants!

We had a lovely inspiring group. Everyone did such great work and I absolutely loved sketching with you all over the two days!
(Special thanks to those of you who travelled big distances to Sydney for this workshop!)

We spent the first morning in a great location with lots of options for subject matter (from simple to more challenging) and we focused on building and refining essential edges skills.

We did exercises for measuring angles and lengths, and also used intersections and relationships (plumblines) to improve the accuracy of our drawings.

It was nice also to have a table for our throwdowns!

In the afternoon we went to the top of the island – to the convict precinct – and got out our watercolour. We started doing some swatches (watercolour plus some watercolour pencil) relating to our subject matter…

…and then I did a full demo, showing how I used the concepts from the morning session to draw the barracks building and then apply some simple watercolour washes.

Great work everyone!

While we were sketching we were entertained by the happenings on a nearby crane. We noticed a lot of workers in orange on the scaffolding and then realised they were passing elements from one level to the next. It was like something in a Richard Scarry book!

On the second morning we headed to my favourite part of the island – behind the big industrial sheds…

…and looking at the cranes on the other side of Fitzroy Dock. 

We then did a number of shape thumbnails of one of the cranes that I christened Fred. 🙂

As it was an overcast day we weren’t able to do the shadow shape exercise but instead we did a value based sketch – focusing on LMD (light, mid and dark). It was great that I was about to use a brand new approach that I had developed during our Value month inside my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon in this way.

For the final session we headed back up to the top of the island to the Drawing Office area.

After showing the group how to use shape thumbnails to work out what will make a successful sketch…

…I did a full demo starting with shape. This is a progress shot.

And then it was time for the group to sketch, choosing their own subject if they wanted. Great work everyone!

It was such a fun two days and I look forward to teaching this workshop again in the future!

I currently don’t have a date scheduled for the next occasion, so if you are interested in attending please sign up to my monthly newsletter for the first notification of any future workshops.