SketchingNow Adventure Paddington

January 21, 2015 | 1 Comment


Last Thursday I headed to Paddington for my next SketchingNow adventure – to one of my favourite spots to sketch in Sydney – The Reservoir Gardens. The remains of a water reservoir built in 1866 have been converted into sunken garden which is truly an urban oasis. Apart from hearing the buses go past, you would have no idea that you were right in the heart of busy Oxford St.


The conversion completed in 2006 by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and JMD Design is so well done, with the new and old combining seamlessly. There are so many vistas, elements and details to sketch – it was the perfect location for demonstrating my current lesson in my Foundations course.

This week I was doing a full video demonstration –  I first explored my subject with thumbnails going on an exhilarating adventure with my eye and pen in hand (this is exclusive content for the class). This is my sketch after I had explored lots of options with my thumbnails.  I felt a bit constrained by having to keep my sketchbook in camera but I think I will get used to this over time – or zoom the camera out so I have a little more tolerance! Doing demos and commentary during a face to face workshop is quite a bit harder than just sketching for yourself, but being filmed while you are sketching is different again. You just have to ignore the fact that every stroke is being recorded and could be watched over and over again.

But… seriously, I am REALLY loving the transition from my home video demos to ones out on location – it is just so exciting to be able to share the full adventure!


And I thought I would share you with the second, somewhat mindless sketch I did!


This is a pure prop to enable Chantal who was doing the filming to get all the context footage and me in action. So much fun!


After lunch I headed down to Five Ways. The weather couldn’t be more different from what it was last time when I was there with Paul Wang in March last year when I was pouring with rain and we just headed straight for a cafe and then to onto the tearoom next door. This time I sat on the pavement and sketched a big view.


And then I focused in on the part that had caught my attention initially. There are a lot of painted rendered walls in Paddington – white, grey or black (black seems to be the in colour!) so the green framed bay windows in brickwork above Sonoma stood out.


I then had a lovely chill session at the wonderful Ovvio Organics.



Here are the two full pages in my sketchbook. I am not sure I like using the raw sienna ink on its own. It looks too light in real life.

It is hard to believe that I only have one more outing associated with my Foundations course – but I plan to continue them! Certainly the sense of adventure has been less in some of the latter outings due to the commitments to filming. It has been so much fun but I am looking forward to be more focused on a sense of ‘travel sketching’… just me and my sketchbook going places!

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