Tag / watercolour

by Leonie Andrews

Urban Sketchers Paris

I went out sketching with Urban Sketchers Paris last weekend. We started off at La Monnaie (The Paris Mint). By complete coincidence I had the great pleasure of catching up with friends from USk Singapore and USk Kuala Lumpur who were also visiting Paris. Urban sketching certainly brings the world together!

Inside the mint there were a plethora of things to draw. An exhibition by artist-in-residence Subhota Gupta inspired many. I was struck by the contrast between his glittering and complex sculpture ‘Family Tree’ that was set in the main courtyard of La Monnaie and the 18th century building facade behind it. It was an extremely challenging subject to tackle, but I was pretty pleased with the outcome, (although I subsequently noticed that my building was a bit lop sided).

Family Tree, in the main courtyard of La Monnaie, Paris

After a picnic lunch by the Seine we walked down to the Marais to visit the Foundation Lafayette. En route our host for the day, Xavier, showed us the workshop where architect Renzo Piano has his architectural models made.

Unfortunately a gallery changeover at the Foundation meant that we couldn’t draw where we had planned. Instead we opted for a coffee break and the challenge of sketching each other.

My sheet of sketches of fellow sketchers

Some of us then walked to the nearby National Archives, but our plans to draw in their lovely gardens were drenched by rain. My final sketch of the day was made while sitting under the colonades of the building, looking across to the blown-up (only in size), version of some classic posters, currently lining the inner walls of the building.

Thanks to Xavier for organising and the other sketchers who made it such a great day.

by Leonie Andrews

How now brown cows?

(Serious amounts of watercolour obsessing follows, you were warned).

The desperate need to clean up and refill my palette has lead me to look at my current watercolour paint sets. Just to be clear, all my paint ‘sets’ now consist of my own choice of colours in half pans, in tins I have found or purchased. Some of my half pans are all used up, while others sit full and untouched. So I grabbed my newest sketcbook, a Stillman & Birn Beta series (270 gsm) and as many tubes of paint as I could find and got to work.

I don’t know about you, but I get so envious bored of all those sketcbooks that are artfully decorated with renderings of the artist’s working palette on their opening page. Give a girl a break! I give to you the ‘art cow’, a far more entertaining way of getting a sketchbook underway, without the need to resort to ‘serious-ity’. This approach also immediately renders concerns about not ‘ruining’ your sketchbook irrelevant.

On sorting out my paints I asked myself (rhetorically, of course), can you have too many browns/ earth tones in your palette. The answer is, of course not! I have some 15 colours in my palette that fall roughly into that category!

How now brown cows?

What about the rest of my paints I hear you wonder? In comparison they are fairly ordinary, although there are the odd outliers.

Most of the rest of the colours

I have a definite need for lots of greens. I find Perylene Green indispensable for super dark shadows in trees and elswhere. The yellow greens, such as Serpentine Genuine and White Knight’s Olive green are there as well. A darker cousin of those yellow greens, Undersea Green will be put on trial over the coming months. Viridian has finally been given the flick, it’s one of those ‘thug’ colours, that can overwhelm a painting. And no, I have never like the grey it makes with magenta either.

The blues are pretty standard, with the exception of Sodalite Genuine, which works beautifully as a subtle blue grey. Peacock Blue, from PWC, is a fun inclusion, with a better than expected lightfastness rating of two. I often use it in a mix with greens or yellow to make green.

My former fantasy colour favourite, Opera Pink, has been cast, like Tosca, out of the window, to be replaced by the more reliable Permanent Rose. I will be interested to see how my old favourite fares in my ‘test cow’ as I heard recently that some brands of Opera Pink, which is colour-heightened by a dye, can be so fugitive as to fade inside a closed book.

As I have currently run out of empty half pans, the decision is still out on whether Naples Yellow or Quinacridone Violet will make the final cut. Oh the fun of playing with colour!

The full herd over the start of my book!

PS No correspondence will be entered into over the anatomical accuracy, or otherwise, of my cows.

by Leonie Andrews

A fistful of cafes

I have been refining my coffee sketching process this year, applying the KISS principle (‘keep it simple stupid’) to what I carry in my bag for impromptu sketching sessions. A test card of watercolours, a pencil, a pen and a waterbrush and a ‘book’ made from one sheet of A3 watercolour paper. Both the book and the colour card fit into a plastic sleeve from an old bank passbook (gosh, do you remember those?). Here’s a shot of the set up.

Each A3 sheet is folded in half horizontally to make two panorama style pages. These are folded in half then sewn together through the fold. Each side of the panorama is the folded in half again (as you can see in the photo above), which means the final size all folded up fits in the plastic sleeve.

The completed booklet

Here are sketches from my latest book. What I really like is that, depending on your layout you can sketch over part, or the full stretch of the page.

Cafe sketch, watercolour and graphite

Celebrating ‘National (read USA) Pencil Day’, the day the first pencil with attached eraser was patented in 1858

Inspired by the woman with the red hair, watercolour and graphite

Reading the papers with the rest of the retirees, pen and ink

Arborists clearing our trees from the powerlines. The left hand page of a full spread.

Shredding the prunings, the right hand page of the full spread

At the markets, pen and ink with watercolour

A final cafe sketch for the week. Watercolour and ink.

Ultimately I plan to bind these booklets together into a single book.

by Leonie Andrews

Unplanned connection

Without the internet I am unlikely to have ever found Claudia McGill’s Haiku 365.

Everyone I asked

said it was an ugly thing

and handed it back.

Together it sits here with my watercolour and paste up work about demolition and rebuilding in the Woden town centre near my home.

Thanks Claudia!

by Leonie Andrews

Surfside life-sketching

We continue to head down the coast for our weekly swim while the weather and the east-coast current are warm. We have a decent sized beach shelter so between bouts of swimming and boogie-boarding we can sit comfortably inside out of the sun and sketch.

Like a life-drawing class the length of the poses changes. Some people stand still for some time looking out to sea,

others, bend or lift a board so quickly that the stance lasts only for seconds.

I am often surprised at the variety of subjects matter that present themselves.

If there is one thing I need to remind myself, it’s that I need to bring bigger sheets of paper with me to capture all the action.