Yesterday (20 November 2017) we went for a pleasant walk around our local landmark Black Mountain. A walking track circles it below the summit. The walk is posted as taking 45 minutes to complete, but allowing for stopping to botanise and sketch we managed the circumnambulation at a cracking two hours and ten minutes!
Black Mountain telecommunications tower.
Sketches from November 2019 t January 2020.
I decided to clear out my car sketches a bit more frequently. They are mainly in ballpoint pen, but recently I found a wonderful 9B pencil lurking in the glove box. It’s now my favourite.
On a recent sortie I found a number of sketches done on the back of parking tickets from my car. You can tell by the dates on some of these sketches that I don’t clear out the glove box of my car often enough.
When I checked back through my posts I found that I had last shared similar sketches in 2014, here and here.
Some sketches done from my car in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Also a ring-in from 2019 as I couldn’t fit them all on the next page.
I must say that with the passing of time I did struggle to work out which way was up for some of them. I think I have it pretty right. Once I thought back to the places where I was likely to be waiting in the car most of them made sense.
Mainly practice drawing buildings and architectural details. I quite like the abstraction of some of them.
Two quick sketches of Matthew Evans, TV presenter and author, who was speaking last night at the National Library of Australia on his latest book On Eating Meat.
Matthew in conversation with Karen Hardy from the Canberra Times
Matthew is as eloquent with his hands as he is with words.
Pencil sketches were made during the event and watercolours were added when we got home.
This week we had a two hour window to see one exhibition in Sydney, before we had to catch our bus back to Canberra. So Brett Whiteley ‘Drawing is Everything’ was the unanimous choice.
Arriving early, before the gallery opened, I took the opportunity to sketch Gilbert Bayes PBRS sculpture ‘The Offerings of Peace’ (1923), from across the road. In honour, no doubt of my artistic endeavours, I was duly shat upon by Pied Currawong sitting in the tree overhead.
The Offerings of Peace, Gilbert Bays, PBRS, 1923
On entering the gallery we were immediately caught up in the vitality of Whiteley’s works, predominantly made with pen and ink and brush an ink. It was fascinating to see how Whiteley intensely studied the works of Van Gogh, Lloyd Rees and other artists as he developed his own style.
The gallery was encouraging visitors to draw while visiting the show, providing pencils and a small A4 folded piece of paper.
‘Her‘, carvings in Mangrove wood, 1975 to c. 1980 (LHS); a quote by Whiteley “A good drawing (should be) loose, casual, abandoned, odd, wonky, immediate,swift, detached, +soaked in feeling, it should be brief, not just spare or simple, not just quick, It should be brief, beautifully brief, like the best Japanese art, like the soul’s shorthand.”
Luckily I also had my own paper as there were several other sketches I wanted to make.
After Brett Whiteley, Wendy Drunk, 1983, original, brush and black and brown ink. My version, pencil on paper.
It was intriguing to see how Whitely playfully amalgamated and created images, such as the following sketch of Matisse, putatively sitting in the Luxembourg Gardens, reading a newspaper.
After Brett Whiteley, Henri Matisse reading a newspaper in the Luxembourg Gardens, 1989 ink and brush. My version pencil on paper with watercolour added later.
Much as I enjoyed sketching in the gallery, the relative stiffness of the pencil sketches, compared to the brush works in particular, was underlined by a quote by Whiteley “Have you ever seen a pencil drawing that isn’t safe?” (p9, Brett Whiteley Drawings, Lou Klepac, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2014)
Brett Whiteley: Drawing is Everything
Art Gallery of New South Wales, on until 31 March 2019
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