Billy of Balmoral (and drawing what you love).

What makes a good teacher? Obviously, each person can have many answers from their own experience be it a good or bad one. Right now I'm very grateful to have a teacher who provides clear guidance and knows to steer students towards the things they respond to best. 

 

We returned to Balmoral yesterday with Liz Steel's class and revisited the effectiveness of doing good setup and thumbnails. Liz put many ideas in place for us to build toward working faster but still with a pleasing result. So now with the knowledge, some familiarity with techniques and the required materials I should be off on my merry way to create sketches that please me. But there is still a gap to be filled. A pitfall. Choosing what's best for you to draw. I knew what I wanted to draw. I knew I wanted to draw the dog. I have always wanted to draw the sweet statue of Billy the dog at Balmoral. But I was avoiding it. Somehow drawing the rotunda which I was less connected with presented less of a challenge, less of a risk. Seems quite illogical when I think of all those lines on the rotunda.

 

 

Time to sketch under Liz's guidance is precious, and we didn't absolutely have to draw the rotunda. However, it still took me 2 messy thumbnail sketches of the rotunda with Billy looking back at me as tiny squiggles in the distance before I bothered to try sketching him.  Then with a little more courage I drew him again larger. Yet oddly, after all of that I was still lacking courage and considering my final sketch to be a straight view of the rotunda with the pretty beach in the background. At this point Liz outright said go and do a full page setup with pen lines of the dog. From my experience now I can say that when Liz suggests I draw something I'm resisting, then it's probably something I REALLY need to do. She was right. Go with what grabs you. I still managed to squeeze a little of the rotunda but I'm so pleased Liz guided me to go with my heart. 

Studying Tonal Value

It was our first outdoor session for Spring and clearly we weren't the only folk out to enjoy the season. In each direction something different - a wedding photo shoot, a dive class, film crew, mothers groups and screeching cockatoos overhead in the trees.

 

Ethna intent on her tonal value study

Liz had been exceptionally successful planning beautiful weather once again. At Balmoral Beach for our class on tonal value the sun shone brightly allowing us to study distinct areas of shade a cast shadow.

 

 

It can be a challenge for me to switch into the mode of analysing colour as tone. It's still yet to be that simple pleasure of drawing and playing with colour, but the result when the pic starts coming together is rewarding. We used PITT artist brush pens for the tone in this exercise. The final study on the bottom right is watercolour and ink. We've been drawing Stillman & Birn ALPHA A5 sketchbooks. This Stillman & Birn is proving to be a good size for class studies and the paper is working well under a variety of ink, watercolour pencils and watercolour. More on Liz Steel's class here.

 

 

 

Returning to classes with Liz Steel

Liz Steel is running classes to revisit fundamentals touched on in the first course.  But even in that month or so off from focusing on learning, not just sketching for the sake of it, my mind had rusted. So for the first week, apart from the planned lesson itself, through my own frustration I received another about slowing down, really looking hard and not just making assumptions about the subject.. and then finally to live with it, get over it and move on (very helpful to have a teacher who reminds us to not let stress or worry over a result ruin the joy of creating it in the first place).

 

This weeks class had a much happier outcome. We focussed on studies firstly with line work and hatching and then repeated the same subject using watercolour for form, tone and shadows.

 

 

This was a really good way of firstly understanding the subject with the lines and then shaking off the confines of that first sketch and being able to let that go and relax more with the paints. Added to this we had the most beautiful weather and spent the whole class outside at Balmoral Beach under the shade of the Rotunda and then the huge fig trees. A great upside of sketching on location when the weather is nice!

 

Our class is having a lot of fun discussing the expressive lines and work of talent such as Veronica Lawler and Nathalie Ramirez . Their use of colour and line is so full of life. I've started to experiment a little this weekend with coloured linework and brighter pigment mixes. Referring to a black and white photo of Frida Kahlo I first sketched her in  pale blue fineliner (happy to find my pack of Staedtelr Triplus fineliners are fairly water resistant), added the main features in with my Lamy and then celebrated with lots more fineliner and watercolour. Loved the effects of bright pigments mixing in puddles of water.

Sketch trip to Bather's Pavilion, Balmoral Beach

This building is a favourite of mine. Opened in 1929 the Pavilion was a beautifully designed change room for the large crowds of bathers who would visit Balmoral Beach, Sydney. In the 1960s the use of the Pavilion declined. It was then changed to a restaurant and in more recent years its been developed into a fine dining restaurant, a separate café and a kiosk.

Thanks to Ethna and Suzi who joined me on the day. It's always fun to have the company of other sketchers and share what we find interesting. Suzi kindly took a video of the Pavilion whilst we were there. You can see me for a quick second sitting on the beach sketching away in the sunshine, enjoying the sound of the waves on the shore behind me.

Urban Sketching - The Boat House at Balmoral.

This week I headed to the recently opened Boat House at Balmoral Beach, Sydney

Ideally I would have grabbed a seat outside with water views but the café was so busy that my only option was inside. Fortunately the décor all around is beautifully styled so its not hard to find an entertaining angle.

All of the drawing and most of the watercolour was completed onsite in about an hour and a half. I added a little more shading and colour intensity when I arrived home. I took a photo of two fishing buoys and found a postcard by The Boat House for inspiration on the opposing page in my sketchbook. Completed with watercolour pencils for foundation lines, waterproof ink, chinagraph pencil and Daniel Smith watercolours.

 

On another note, I sketched for the first time in the dentist waiting room today and it really helped me stay calm and distracted. Definitely worth trying again in the future.