October 27, 2025October 27, 2025 by Leonie Andrews

New starts

[This post was originally written on 15 September, but for some reason I forgot to post it. Oops.]

I recently went to the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan, where I did a workshop with French artist Olivia Markus. She was teaching, amongst other things, an interesting approach to colouring sketches. The point of which, in part, was to reinforce a sense of depth of field in your sketch.

I think the simplified colour choices deliver exciting results. Of course, they also challenge your use of tonal contrast. So far, I’ve mainly used them for scenes with people in them. The limited colour selection imposes a unity, which is often missing from my regular sketches.

Now, I’m taking the next steps of testing out what I learned and then trying to integrate the process into my practice.

I use watercolour as my main medium, so that does yield different results to the inks that Marcus uses. To be fair, I really haven’t tried the process with ink yet.

Demonstration in support of Palestine, London

I’m also experimenting with which colour combinations work most effectively together.

I find the stark black pen a bit strong, and it tends to overwhelm the watercolour’s subtle tones. Lately, I have been using less black, instead choosing to use a more intense pigment.

Friday, queues at the coffee shop, first version

The final version with black and white marker bring added.

I’m still ‘not there’ yet in terms of the outcomes, but as today’s sketch show, there is some progress.

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 by Leonie Andrews

Clarice Beckett

It is an all too common trope, that women in the arts are neglected in their lifetime, forgotten when they die, only to have their work resurrected decades after their death. Clarice Becket is the “poster child” for this worn out story.

The daughter of a Bank Manager, you can imagine, looking at her at age 18, the expectations for a young woman of her social class.

She studied art with leading Australian artist Frederick McCubbin from 1914-16 and later with ‘Tonalist’ painter Max Meldrum. By 1926, she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their “radical simplicity”, and from 1930, she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions.

In 1935, while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm, Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48. (Wikipedia)

You can read and see more about her work in an earlier post of mine here.

I didn’t have much luck finding photos of Clarice to work from. This one, which I’m guessing is from the late 1920’s early 1930’s, at least shows her in her preferred occupation, painting at Beaumaris, where so much of her work was made.

October 3, 2023 by Leonie Andrews

Quietly Contemplating

It seems like only minutes since our feet touched home again after being away for four months, but again we have jumped back on a plane to join fellow Urban Sketchers in Suwon, South Korea. This is the location for the Asialink Sketchwalk, where sketchers get together to draw for 4 days.

We have been staying in Seoul for a few days and have been doing a lot of walking and some drawing. Yesterday we went to the National Museum of Korea which holds many treasures. I was intrigued by the space called ‘The Room of Quiet Contemplation’, which holds two statues made in the 7th century of Pensive Bodisattvas. I took the opportunity to do blind contour drawings of both sculptures, remembering to breathe slowly as I focused my eyes on following my way around their forms.