I drew in two ‘new’ places this week. Appointments and exhibitions took me to different spots around the city. First a cafe in a suburb I rarely visit offered a very trendy setting with a wall of stacked wood and these intriguing pots hanging upside down from the ceiling. Clearly this fern was loving it.

An upside down hanging pot, pen and ink, 11 June 2014.

Less thrilling was the overwhelming smell of gas when, as it turns out the next door petrol station was having it’s tanks refilled. Both my partner and I and several other groups of people thought a gas explosion was imminent. Thankfully the staff told us what the odour was – just before we all headed out the door to save ourselves!

While it is definitely a place I’ve visited many times, I’ve never stopped to draw inside the the National Library of Australia before. The Bookplate Cafe, tucked into a corner of the foyer has the luxury of incorporating several stained glass windows designed by the artist Leonard French. Aided by what must have been the biggest bucket of coffee I’ve ever had, I was able to make the following sketch. That is until my pen ran out of ink. All to the good, according to my partner who told me that I was in grave danger of over-working the sketch as it was.

The bookplate cafe and windows by Leonard French, pen and ink, 13 June 2014.