Urban Sketchers Sydney - Manly Jazz Festival

Urban Sketchers Sydney were entertained by free live jazz under bright sunshine today at Manly's annual Jazz Festival. We wandered from the ferry wharf along The Corso where some of us stopped to sketch in and around the New Brighton Hotel. Its an oddly shaped building due to its location on a very sharp corner of The Corso and Sydney Road.

Gargoyles and Bell Tower

Spurred on by the excitement of many sketchers making their way to the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona next week, it was time to challenge myself with some old and beautiful local architecture in Manly. Nothing quite like Gaudi's  La Sagrada Familia but very special for our area.



Watercolour pencil (for foundation lines), black waterproof ink,
white chinagraph pencil and Daniel Smith Watercolours.

 

St Andrew's PresbyTerian Church, built from local white sandstone, was completed in 1890 and is considered one of the finest examples of Romanesque revival architecture in Australia. As I was choosing a spot to set up my sketch, a kind elderly couple offered me a look inside. Such luck! I'd not been inside before and was very impressed with the condition of the church's interior.

 

 

 

During my quick guided tour the gentleman pointed out this old framed photo (excuse my snap with the reflection of the stained glass window from behind). It is a pic of the church taken last century before its renovation. I love that it had high backed cane chairs instead of hard wooden pews. Looks very tropical and relaxed. Slow turning ceiling fans, a good book and a waiter serving Singapore Slings wouldn't have looked out of place. 

 

 

 

I also love a good gargoyle on old buildings and this one has four on the bell tower. Unfortunately as they were way up there, and I was way down below (and a tad short sighted) I couldn't get much detail from a live sketch. I'm considering adding field glasses to my sketching kit.

Play time. Week 8 of Liz Steel's sketch course.

Another fun day, but tinged with a little sadness that it was our last class. What a term we've had. Liz has taught us so much and continued to encourage us constantly throughout the duration of the course. There's been a shift in my sketching and the intensity of colour used , but I also recognise a change in confidence and my willingness to tackle things I would not previously try.

  

 

 

 

For our cafe sketch this week we went to Chica Bonita - a lively little restaurant in Manly with wonderful decor, music, vibe, food, drink, lighting. Everything just right for getting us to play. I ordered a watermelon margarita to further aid the loosening of the lines and decided to draw it against the backdrop of the tiles from the table and next to a feature from the wall. This sketch incorporates every bit of play technique I could remember from the earlier studio discussion - sketching with watercolour pencils, using a white chinagraph pencil (it resists the watercolour paint), salt (from my margarita glass), scraping wet paint with the credit card, white gel pen, wet on wet colours, splashing and most of all remembering not to be too serious about the outcome.

 

Thanks once more to Liz, its been a great learning experience. You can read more about this weeks class here on her blog.

 

Links to my posts on the earlier classes:

Week 1

Weeks 2 & 3

Weeks 4 & 5

Weeks 6 & 7

 

More lessons with Liz Steel - context and composition.

Having earlier touched on some fundamental drawing lessons for buildings, Weeks 6 and 7 of Liz Steel's Urban Sketching course was focussed on context and composition.

The aim of week 6 was creating life around an object (often a building). Placing the main object into context. This assists with the concept of creating a story for urban sketching. It's also an area I tend to neglect. Partly because I'm chicken.

Liz had us warm up in the studio with sketching from photos of models from art reference books.

 

These two faces were finished later from black and white photos.

We also drew trees and cars. Palms, Pines and Gums are the trees I associate the most with Sydney. My greens need a bit more oomph here - a bit more summer to them.  

Once finished in the studio, we were then off to Manly Wharf where we gathered at the traffic lights. Here we sketched people as they waited in the rain for the lights to change. Sketching people within a such a short time frame is all very new to me. I learnt quite a lot and know that I would have continued to bypass sketching people if it weren't part of this course. Having the direction of an accomplished sketcher who is encouraging and enthusiastic made a huge difference.

 

 

Week 7 was about Composition. Balancing a blend of text, headings and images around the page to again help tell a story about the location and also communicate the feeling and atmostphere of the moment.




My studio cup and saucer sketch.. without my unbalanced composition!

 

Liz challenged with randomly selected layouts. We had to sketch a cup and saucer onto the page in the assigned area and then build a balanced composition around it. My composition for this one was messy when I added the words. I painted it later at home, once I regained some confidence! Filling in text to balance composition with an image, whilst maintaing a flow of seemingly effortless prose  is due for a bit of development.

 

It came together a bit better when we then set out to sketch at one of my favourite cafes in Manly, Foundry Fiftythree: huge tables allowing plenty of room to sketch, unique items decorating the walls, cool teapots, good coffee and good food.

Sadly, we're nearing the end of our course with Liz. Just one more class and then we will be left to our own devices. Fortunately, Liz has taught us plenty, she shares a great deal of her ideas online and she is considering teaching more courses. If you'd like to read more about her classes Liz shares her ideas here, and you can also find reviews of Liz's course on class mate Suzi Poland's blog.

Colour.

I've been heavily reliant on a technical knowledge of watercolours, colour mixing, colour wheels etc that was learnt in about grade 4 (about 10 years old?) and not greatly developed since then. It's been a wonderful way to work and play. Frankly, I have enjoyed being naive about certain things because there is a level of freedom to it. As if I can't be held responsible for creating better watercolour work due to my ignorance of how to do it. But now I want to move on. 

 

Thankfully, surrounding this (slightly embarrassing) realisation has been the course I'm taking with Liz Steel and her fantastic knowledge, experience and ethusiasm. Liz's passion for watercolour pigments is evident in her work as well as commentary.

 

In our class we covered hue, value, intensity, cool vs warm, use of complementary colours for shadows, mixing colours, wet/damp/dry technique comparison and more. I took many notes and drew pictures and painted colours. But until I start mixing these colours and  using the techniques in sketches, repetitively, none of the newer concepts are easy for me to recall.

 

 

Pittwater Road, Manly

As part of the course we had the option of setting up our travel watercolour palettes with Liz's current favourite colours. Awesome. Now I can at least go forth with my own changes knowing I have a good platform to work from.  With a handy selection of Daniel Smith colours set into half pans, the above was my first outdoors/onsite trial of the new paints.

 

 

 

The following class focussed on buildings. Here we recalled some of what we did early on in the course in relation to form, structure, detail as well as more discussion on perspective.

 

 

 

 

We completed a few very simplified line drawings of incredible, historic, beautiful archtiecture such as Notre Dame from photos (totally gullibe to Liz's clever strategy of boosting our confidence in sketching buildings) and then headed down the Corso, to St Matthews Church. There I became engrossed in detail,  forgetting most of what she'd just taught us about keeping it simple. In order to complete the full picture - both lines and colour on site I still need to work faster. This one was coloured at home.  

 

 I've also created a colour mixing chart from my new palette.  I then set about to further absorb how my colours mix by sketching a Classic Rover from one of my photos, using predominantly just French Ultramine Blue and Burnt Umber. I snuck in some Moonglow because it looked pretty comfortable with the other two. This was really helpful for me to understand how the colours work together.

 

More Learning with Liz Steel. Edges and Value Studies.

Now, where was I? I blink and another 3 weeks pass. Liz Steel's classes have continued to bowl me over with more great insights to sketching and most recently, the really fun bit, using our new watercolours.

But before I share the colour joy, let me fill you in on the things that stuck from week 2 and 3.

Week 2 focussed on creating hard and soft edges in our sketches as well as using textures to enhance areas we wish to draw attention to. In theory, by defining our hard edges first, we can prioritise what we see and draw more effectively and thus faster (ie don't get caught up in the details, before sorting out the composition for the rest of the picture).
 

 

 

Fortunately, Liz doesn't pass or fail us each week because with this view of Shelly Beach I washed over all of my watercolour pencil work when I got home and continued to 'ticker' (thanks for that word Raewyn!) mostly defeating the point of the exercise.
 

 

 

Week 3 was on value studies. We learnt to determine local colour, cast shadow and shade in a still life setting in the studio. With only a key of 3 options, then 5, we were underaking the most simple exercises in value study and yet it was quite punishing - in a latte sipping, midday, pleasant company, sunny light filled studio kind of way. My Mum also joined in on this class as a casual and did a sterling job of taking in all of what we learnt and applying it to her own work.

 

 Our group then headed up the street and applied the same value study process to sketching a block of apartments. It was good to repeat this for a building and see the impact of preserving the white on the sunlit facades, and darkening the other areas based on local colour, shade and cast shadow. Preserving white has been a problem for me in the past because the temptation to "colour in" usually takes hold.

  

 

A little practice with my Tombow marker later in the week. I love that these pens have a fine end as well as a brush. Given a minute or so drying time in between, I can use the brush layer to create different intensities of value.

 

In the next post I'll show you my new paints : )

 

 

 

 

Sketching through March

My current employment (beyond child wrangling of kids and their various activities) is of a sparodic nature. Days or weeks of work which leave little time for creativity followed by days or weeks of time where I can get outside, enjoy the sunshine and sketch, sketch, sketch. I'm really grateful for this type of job as it suits my wants very well.

So March has been a great month for getting out and about. I returned to The Bower on the walk from Manly to Shelly Beach to draw one of my favourite buildings in the area. This is the spot I started my first urban sketch about 6 months ago.

 

I also had the good fortune this week to meet Liz Steel at her favourite teahouse - T2. A fabulous spot for tea, scones, discussing sketching and a bit of artwork.

Manly has its fair share of cafes that I am still to discover. Foundary Fiftythree was one I visited for the first time last week. It's exactly the kind of place I love to draw because it is well styled with lots  great vintage bits and pieces throughout. Nice character and good coffee.

A morning coffee at Manly Wine.

 

 

It only dawned on me this week that despite being a wine bar this place might be open early enough for my morning coffee. The flamingoes are only the first of many things to draw here.

Sketching in the wet - Manly Public School.

Stormy, stormy weather with days of rain had brought on the usual cabin fever. So, in our last days of the summer break, we found a cafe with a huge awning where we could sit in shelter and have a choice of buildings to sketch.

 

I've often thought the old Manly Public School would be a great place to go to school as a child with Manly Beach just a block away. Head straight down the tree lined street you can see in the pic and you'll walk straight into the Pacific Ocean.

Hemmingway's Manly - Cafe Sketching

 

 

Another recent rainy day, another cafe sketch. This time sketching at Hemingway's Manly. I attempted for the first time to include as much of my surroundings as possible. In retrospect the effect may have been better in landscape than portrait. The masters of this style of urban sketching also manage to round the field of view a little as well - much like a fish eye, wide angle lens. Something I will have to train myself to do! Am yet to get my head around it...

It's raining... I'll just have to find a cosy cafe

I do love Sydney's sunny weather but of late I've also been making a mental list of more coffee shops to draw from the inside when its wet. On a rainy day this week I stopped by the Belgian Waffle Cafe in Manly to sketch their fabulous yellow La Marzocco espresso machine.

 

As a result of good coffee, friendly staff and yummy waffles I'll be heading back there again.

Sketching - the good and the bad.

Continuing on with my sketching in the last few weeks I've noticed a change in how I feel about my "failed" drawings. In the past when I made a drawing I didn't like, it would often result in me packing my pens away for weeks or months until I was ready to try again. However, drawing now most days has taken the pressure off my expectations. If I make a blunder I'm marking it down as one step closer to a better sketch, and just try not to repeat that mistake the next day. 

 

There are still improvements I'd like to make in the following pics but its been a good feeling to produce these sketches of places I enjoy visiting.

 

 

The Secret Closet in Narraweena

 

 

 

Rope & Anchor Cafe in Manly

 

 

 

John & Ginger in Freshwater