Catching up on a busy week

March 15, 2014 | Leave your thoughts


It has been a very busy week… must have been as I haven’t blogged at all! I feel like I haven’t sketched much but I have still filled three double-page spreads of my book somehow (I am not going to scan them all!)

On Tuesday morning I popped across to Cockatoo Island, to speak to a few people and have another quick look around. I am getting very excited about the Expressive Urban Sketching workshop I will be running with Paul Wang from Singapore in a weeks time. This was a little study that I did from the cafe. I really love the composition and the colours of the different building materials. It was also a sketch for last week’s Scavenger Hunt for ‘Blue.’

On Wednesday it was the last week of my Exploring the Rocks classes and we had a very special guest. A Urban Sketcher friend form Ohio – Polly Hart. I met her first in Portland at the first USK Symposium and then 2 years later in Santo Domingo. I remember a very inspirational dinner with Polly and Suzanne Cabrera on the 2nd night in Portland and seeing Polly again, brought it all back.  I sometimes feel like we are a long way from the rest of the world…so it was very exciting to have a USK friend visit!

Here is a photo of my wonderful class… it has been a great 5 weeks and I am very sad that it came to an end so quickly… I have really loved spending Wednesday mornings with them and we always learn so much from everyone’s work.

I was in the middle of my final review of the sketches from the class and wrap up when this photo was taken hence the kneeling position on the ground!

Friday night: a rare treat (these days) of not having to do work on a Friday night… I was planning to treat myself to an evening of sketching but all I managed was one of my lemon curd cheesecake. ….just drawing my ‘sweets’ as we used to call dessert back in the days when we called dinner ‘tea’.

I am rather excited by all the crazy things that happened with the watercolour on the page… I am using a triad and missing some of my granulating friends. This is done on Stillman & Birn Alpha paper.

Right now I am enjoying a catch-up Saturday at home… and although I have been playing with paint haven’t done a sketch yet. .. some days I just have too many art ideas in my head to settle down and actually do something (and some days I am just too busy to pause!)… only 6pm now…so maybe after dinner.

Two other important things from today: Reading the Daniel Smith colour chart – not for tempting myself with new colours but looking up properties of various paints.

The other important thing is doing some cafe research for next week with Paul in town (we also have people from QLD, VIC, regional NSW and SA coming AND a USKer from Montreal coming for the workshop) My sourcebooks are a little out of date but still plenty to choose from!

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