We are currently wrapping up an amazing month inside my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon exploring the theme of Framing!

I have a strong preference for open-ended sketches, starting at my focus and working outwards in a spontaneous way (Foundations Lesson 11) so having an entire month of trying to contain my sketches using framing devices has been radical for me. But oh! so much fun!

I had lots of different starting ideas (you can get a glimpse of them here) but in the end I focused on using foreground elements and often converted them into a negative space frame. I tried using trees, buildings, windows and narrow streets as frames and thought about white vs dark frames.

I explored ways of using these framing techniques for the 3 layers approach from my Travel Sketching course (if you haven’t already heard I’m hosting a Live Version of Travel Sketching starting 13 May 2026 – find out more here).

I was also very interested in discovering when the frame or the sketch itself became the more dominant feature in the end result. 

So many ideas to explore!

As always, this month inside the community I filmed weekly update videos explaining the ideas I was working through and then last week we had our usual monthly livestream where I went through all my work, answered questions and did a demo. So much fun to hang out with everyone.

Here are some highlights from my framing month….

A few local sketches… side framing

Top framing

Top and bottom framing with lots of negative space

Beecroft Note: if you are part of the community you will know that this is a cropped version 🙂

The view into the garden from my friends’ place.

Then a few sketches from photos. These were from a trip to Europe when I first started sketching.

Back then I took way more photos and seemed to have quite a few framed compositions. 🙂

City Sketching… you’ve seen these two before but this image shows you how they sit next to each other in my sketchbook

Foundations Park in The Rocks – trying buildings and a sandstone cliff as a framing device.

 
Sitting in the colonnade of a Jimmy B building (the GPO in Martin Place).

And finally two table-top sketches. You’ve seen the first one before. 🙂

At the time I felt tempted to add the black table shape but decided to leave it as it was – I was chatting with my friends and knew I wasn’t concentrating enough to make an informed decision.

So I decided to do another version.

This is my afternoon cup of tea on my filming desk! I loved doing this sketch!

Thanks to everyone who is part of my Sketching Adventure Community and especially those who have been joining in with the Framing fun! You are all so inspiring!