Sketching creative people as they create

As a continuation of a goal to sketch more people on location, I have set myself a task to try and capture the focus of people set about their work. A sketch of the pastry chef at Pana Chocolate in Alexandria, through the glass walled kitchen was the first.

Next was my friend and artist Fiona Verity and her lovely Labrador Sunny in Fiona's Brookvale Studio. Fiona's work is as colourful and energetic as she is, so it was a joy to develop a sketch and at the same time witness an ocean collage emerge on the wall. So much so, that I have resolved to sketch many more creative people at work during the year.

 

 

My third sketch was the result of a morning with glass carver Kathy Elliot. Her husband Ben Edols creates the blown glass vessel and then brings it to their home studio where Kathy carves and creates surface designs.  Kathy has admirable strength and focus in addition to her skill, as she stood carving the heavy vessel at the lathe for the full hour I sketched! You can see more about the process of their beautiful work on this video.

Sketching People in Motion Craftsy class with Marc Taro Holmes

 

A sketch from this week in a café - 6 weeks after starting to use Marc's concepts.

Adding people to my sketches on location has always been a challenge. Particularly when I'd devote an hour or two trying to capture a building and then fear I'd destroy the overall image with distorted out of proportion figures that had nothing of the conviction I might be able to give my building.  However through Sketchbook Skool classes it became more and more clear that in order to communicate all that I want to in my sketches, to tell a story,  I needed people to complete most scenes.  Finally, I seemed to have found what would get me regular sketching people live in Marc Taro Holmes Craftsy class "Sketching People in Motion".

 

Live sketches from a week or two of using Marc's technique.

 Marc's style is I think quite unique to him and at first it seemed foreign and unlike my own work to add such things as a vertical shading/background line. But by having the focus of following a set method I seemed to be sketching without worrying about what people looked like until I'd made my way through all the stages. Only at the end of it did I stop to assess the sketch to realise I'd drawn a couple of people, sufficiently proportioned, telling a bit of a story. That they didn't always look recognisably like the people in front of me ultimately became irrelevant and liberating. I know that will come with further practice if I want it to.

 

3 weeks ago - Having to sit in waiting room became a joy - great time to study people!

I dedicated a sketchbook solely to sketching people live and ensured it was the only one I carried with me. Trying to keep myself honest to my commitment I didn't allow any food, coffee or building sketches in this sketchbook - if I had time to sketch, it had to be from live people. After getting a bit more confidence in doing this I started moving back toward more of what I think is my style and away from Marc's. One particularly huge help for me in Marc's strategy is being able to get the gesture and general shapes down in pencil first. I like sketching straight out in pen first often as it feels quicker but to get proportions right and get my confidence up, the pencil first approach is a great advantage to start with.

 

Last week - Watercolor first (no pencil) then pen after.

In the past week I have also been playing with watercolour first on some occasions (no pencil) which I still lose a bit of proportion on, but I find it fun and relaxing. My aim now is to keep up with the regular people sketching, maintain using Sktchy app once or twice a week (keeping familiar with faces up close helps me when people leave or are moving their head about a lot), move onto Marc's more advanced techniques (much of the above is based only on the first part of the Craftsy course) and learn more about communicating gesture, relationships and actions.

 

I would love to know what has helped you with sketching people live?

Boronia House, Mosman

Today I met with others of the Sydney Sketch Club at Boronia House in Mosman. I often glance in at this grand building when I pass it on Military Road, but had not before ventured through the front gate to sketch it.

 

Boronia House was built in 1885 and is now heritage listed and used as dining rooms for high teas and functions. An example of Victorian Filigree architecture - the iron lacework was quite a challenge.

Sketching in Melbourne

During a family trip to Geelong in December, my sister Suzette, my niece and I squeezed in a day trip to Melbourne. There is an overwhelming number of buildings I'd like to sketch there but many of them would take me 2 hours. So as not to bore my poor companions too much, we settled for a café in Hardware Lane in the morning and sketched this view from the outside tables. Lots of great little places to eat along this street.

 

 

On short notice we were also able to meet with fellow Urban Sketchers, Evelyn and Janice for lunch. I enjoy the fact that Urban Sketchers has created community both online and in real life that it is so easy to catch up with these friends and fill a couple of hours with talk of sketching, materials and travel.

Urban Sketchers Sydney at Mortuary Station

Mortuary Station, Regent Street, Sydney, from yesterday’s Urban Sketchers meet. This Gothic inspired style Sandstone structure was built in 1869. It’s original purpose was to receive the dead of the city, as they began their journey by train (along with mourners) out to Rookwood Cemetery. Such a detailed building that I appreciate so much more having sketched it. It as designed by James Barnet who also worked on the Sydney GPO in Martin Place and several other Sydney Buildings.

Urban Sketchers Sydney at Millers Point

Many historic buildings to sketch at Millers Point for the USK Sydney meet yesterday. My favourite is this one. The Lord Nelson Hotel was first licensed in 1841 when its landlord was William Wells, a former convict. It s believed to be the oldest existing hotel building in Sydney. (from the green historic plaque on the wall)

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.

Urban Sketchers Sydney - Surry Hills

Continued Sydney wet weather made Surry Hills cafes the perfect spot for our latest Urban Sketchers meet. There was the option of some great streetscapes and the more hardy sketchers braved the soggy conditions to sketch them. But the Book Kitchen in Devonshire Street proved too tempting for me.

 

 

 

The choice to stay indoors was rewarded with a nice clear view of fellow sketcher Chris. Followed by another angle of a couple on bar stools with their back to me. Great for a sketcher a little too timid to sketch strangers face to face. This time there was 10 minutes or so to study body language and profiles, and with the benefit of practicing contours lately, the shapes and proportions seemed to draw on my page much quicker and more accurately. There must be a tipping point on this sketching journey that's getting closer. When I will recall faces from photo references I've drawn in the past and have them start to seep into drawing from life. It's still a great challenge to sketch accurately when people are constantly shifting position and turning their heads in conversation. Maybe another thousand or so? I'm fairly sure though that contour drawing is helping me lots.

 

 

 

After my small triumph in the café the sun came out and I joined other sketchers across the road to record the Bourke Street Bakery. Another good spot for people sketching due to the queues! Very popular! This sketch was rushed as time was short and I think I spent as much time adding in the brick texture later  as I did doing the rest of the sketch on site. The day was made the merrier by a little girl Alice who came to chat and watch us sketch whilst her Mum queued. She had a real keenness for what we were up to. She signed my picture quite happily. Hope she went home to sketch!

Urban Sketchers Sydney meet at QVB.

It's been a busy few months and I'm a little behind with my posts!

The June sketch day for Urban Sketchers was at Queen Victoria Building. I chose to sit at a café outside the beautiful shopping arcade and make a study of 149 York Street which was once the Gresham Hotel, built in 1890.

Then in July we headed down to The Rocks - one of my favourite historical areas of Sydney. We had been offered to participate in the Aroma Festival by sketching on disposable coffee cups. They were surprisingly good to sketch on (once you get used to the curved surface) and took both ink and watercolour quite well. (The image looks a bit weird as we used the panoramic feature on our phones to try and capture the rotated surface of the cup).

Before and after the cup sketch I took the opportunity to sketch The Russell Hotel in George Street. This is one of my favourite hotels in The Rocks area due to that fairy tale like Scots-Baronial Tower. Many of the architectural features have been retained since the hotel was built in 1887.

Beach Sketching

 

 Lately I've been sketching down by the water.

 

There are still many buildings I prefer sketched with closer observation and precision, but sitting on the sand or hillside, overlooking crashing waves and enjoying a sea breeze tends to push the need for accuracy aside and respond more in colour and play.

 

 

Here's the Freshwater Beach Ocean Bath with a view to Manly Beach in the distance. A Pied Cormorant, one of my favourite birds of the area, sits high atop the light pole. Observing all and preparing to dive for its next fish.

 

An IRB (inflatable rescue boat) ready to go out in last week's heavy swell.

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.

Sketching Architecture - Week 2

 

 

 

Back to one of Sydney's quaintest historical suburbs - The Rocks. Week 2 of Liz Steel's course had us admiring various shop fronts along George Street. I chose this one for its worn looking façade and charm.

 Built in 1856 in the Victorian Regency style, 103 George Street is significant in that it has maintained its use as both a shop and residence until this day. A faint trace of the words 'Boarding House' could be seen on the façade, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any historical reference for the large number ‘6’. The shop below has been remodelled over time and currently exists as Ariel Booksellers.

 



Store Espresso, Camperdown

During this sketch I was determined to add a person as a part of a record of my experience in the café. The staff were attentive, courteous and also happy for me to draw and paint. Much appreciated! 

 

Baristas seem to be a good place to start introducing figures because they are so often only viewed in parts - rarely the whole - and even if they move, there is a very good chance they will return to the same position soon after. Plus, in my view,  anyone who has the ability to make a great coffee deserves some kind of immortalization. 

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.

Queen Victoria Building Sydney - from the inside

A quick venture into the city on Friday gave me time for a 30 mins shot at onsite sketching inside the beautiful old Queen Victoria Building in George Street, Sydney. The building in its current state is a shopping complex but has had various purposes in the past and was first built in 1898. I'm keen to sketch the outside but finding a good spot to view the building from where I won't be trampled by the busy street traffic (both car and pedestrian) will be a challenge. On this day I settled on the comfort of a café inside. The decorative arches and pretty coloured glass above the shop windows offered a good start.

 

 

The initial foundation lines are watercolour pencil which I don't erase but wash away when I introduce the watercolour paint later. Then with my extra fine nib in my fountain pen I add the black lines with a waterproof ink which once dried can withstand the wash of watercolour paint. Often, as I have done here I tend to add more pencil work than necessary (I should be leaving much of the details like the coat jacket and tie for just ink to save time).

 

 

I finished the colour and much of the ink details at home afterwards.

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.

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.

Fighting the urge to detail

Last Saturday I went to Pyrmont to sketch with a group of experienced Urban Sketchers. They tend to work more quickly than I and with more detailed and accurate results. My aim on the day was to only use one hour or less per sketch (we draw for 2 hours). My preference here is still to offer more to these wonderful old sandstone townhouses by trying to capture its design and surface with further detail.  I am familiar with the term less is more but I have a real problem in recognising when is best to STOP. So time constraints for now seem to be still the only way I can prevent myself from trying to "finish" this in the way I am most accustomed too.

 

 

The rest of the week just flew by and suddenly it was Friday and I'd had no other opportunity to sketch. I took my sketchbook to my hair appointment and fitted this in before the weekend returned.

38th Worldwide Sketchcrawl - Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Today I partook in my first Worldwide Sketchcrawl - groups of sketchers from around the globe getting together on the same day to sketch and then share their results online.

The Sydney group met at the Royal Botanic Gardens. About 50 of us spread out around the gardens to draw sculptures, plants, wildlife, other sketchers, buildings and so on. The 2 hours went very quickly. I spent 90 mins on the sketch above (very easy to get absorbed drawing the various types of foliage!) and 30 mins on the glasshouse at the tropical centre as seen below.

 

I chatted with several other sketchers who's work I had admired online. It was great to see so many different individual styles.

 

Suzi Poland, who I had the pleasure of meeting on the day, has further photos and her recount of the day over here on her blog "vignettes de la vie". 

The French House, Waterloo. Sydney

Coffee, cake and good company at The French House, Dank Street, Waterloo. I drew the pen lines whilst seated outside under the fabulous balcony and then finished the colours later when I returned home. The chandelier proved a challenge - trying to see details whilst staring into lights is just not a good idea! I love the grandeur of the decor at this cafe. Its decadent but helps me dream of travelling to see beautiful French architecture again one day.