Exploring The Rocks. Week 1.

Sydney Opera House. Tracing contours with expressive lines.

When thinking of The Rocks in Sydney, my mind begins wandering down it's quaint little laneways. Picturing Colonial buildings tucked away in tight spots, hosting cafes and restaurants and its fair share of the upmarket tourist shops. With my thoughts in that space, I often forget that only a few hundred metres away, across Circular Quay, sits the Sydney Opera House in all her glory.

 

So it was an unexpected, but welcome surprise that the Sydney Opera House was the on location sketch subject in our first week of Liz Steel's "Exploring The Rocks" workshop. After a dose of theory in an old Rocks prison cell (roughing it with fabulous coffee and fine French pastries), we left for a grassy park and sat in the shade of a tree, sketching away. A great benefit of a teacher who is also an architect is the added insight into the structure of a building and the tips on what to focus on. Most memorable was that the front part of the podium on which the house sits was designed partly to reflect the shape of the heads at the entrance to Sydney Harbour.