Sydney Urban Sketchers at Town Hall

Hero Pen (bent nib), De Atramentis Archive ink with watercolour wash. 270gsm paper.

Yesterday our local Urban Sketchers group gathered at Sydney Town Hall. It's a fantastic area for interesting architecture with the surrounding buildings of the Town Hall and St Andrew's Cathedral as well as the Queen Victoria Building in the next block.

 

 

I've signed up for Paul Wang and Liz Steels' expressive sketching workshop in March, so my goal was to try to loosen up with watercolour and less line. An A4 Beta Stillman and Birn from Larry Post last year (the thick pages are great for working wet on wet, so I've been saving it for when I'm feeling more courageous) served well for this. Fate also had a hand with my other choices as my favourite Lamy pen and waterbrushes are sadly missing somewhere. However, with the most perfect of timing, Liz brought along a new Hero pen from her Penang/Singapore trip! I've tried a similar pen with a bent tip (Sailor pen) before and it gives a lovely variation in line thickness as you draw.

 

 





A strategy which worked well yesterday was to lay a first layer of wash down on one page for the watercolour only sketch, and then whilst that dried, sketched with the Hero pen in more detail on the other page. Picking up on preferred patterns and shadows from the detailed pen sketch that could then be layered back onto the watercolour sketch as the progressing layers dried.

 

Sydney Town Hall is one of Australia's finest examples of French Second Empire architecture. Designed by architect J H Willson in 1868, it is said to be inspired by Hotel de Ville in Paris. Festoons, finials and Mansard pavilions - lots to learn about this style of architecture that I have not drawn before.

 

These sketching mornings always pass so quickly. With not much time to go I found this carved angel figure at the front door of the St Andrew's Cathedral. So many, many, many more things to sketch in this area. Looking forward to returning.

Luna Park Sydney

Before the craziness of the September school holidays hit, Ethna, Suzi and I made a dash to Luna Park Sydney for some colourful sketching. The park was originally built in the 1930s and although it has gone through various rebuilds it still holds an old day charm. The concept of the front gate face was taken from the Melbourne Luna Park and the old Steeplechase Park of Brooklyn, New York. The current face is based on the 1950s Sydney version.

 

 Luna Park is situated near the North end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It felt a little surreal on this super windy Spring day to sit with our backs to such landmarks as the Opera House and Bridge in order to paint the garish face.

 

 

I had left my watercolours at home in a hasty departure, so used pastel pencils instead to add colour to my sketches. The second sketch of Coney Island was much faster and easier to do after the detailed front gate. The world's only remaining functional funhouse of its era, Coney Island remains mostly unchanged in concept, games and décor style since being built in 1935.

 

 

 

My biggest annoyance of the day was not using watercolours as this was the first two pages of the Stillman and Birn A4 Beta Series I had decided to break open. So on returning home I bumped up the colours with watercolour... and watercolour pencils.. and white gel pen. The 270 gsm paper held up well to all of  this abuse and it was good to work in this large portrait size.

More pics here on Urban Sketchers Australia

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.