Here are some more sketches from my current cafe sketching booklet. I am currently putting in some more backgrounds rather than letting my people float on the blank page. Some work better than others.
The red bottle, 1 December 2018, watercolour and graphite.
Woman under an umbrella, 3 December 2018, watercolour and graphite.
Mother with her two sons, 5 December 2018, watercolour and graphite.
Two women with a pot of orchids, 11 December 2018, watercolour and graphite.
More sketching today. I was pretty pleased with my first sketch of a young woman with red hair rocking a 1960’s vibe.
Red-headed woman.
For those of you who were asking about my sketching kit, you can see it in this second photo.
Cafe sketches and sketch kit.
What used to be Cafe Wednesday has, with a slight drifting of routines, now become Cafe Friday. At present I am carrying a small booklet made from an A3 page of Fabriano watercolour paper, which I stitch together and fold into an old bank bookholder (those were the days!). In the holder I also carry some home made paint dot cards and the obligatory coffee loyalty card.
I made two sketches today to fill up this current booklet, which also includes several pages from my recent trip to Taiwan (more of that later).
A Strawberry Lamington at the Palace Museum in Taipei.
Sketching and drinking coffee at Fu Coffee in Taipei.
Drinking iced coffee and scoffing marscapone and raisin icecream at The Fourth Credit Corporation in Taichung (a very hip repurposed bank building).
In September I had a two week run at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space in Manuka, showing work that had developed from my residency in Tokyo two years ago. In between visitors (good numbers of people walking in from the street), I managed several sketches from behind the desk.
The view from the desk, including the gallery on the right and the view out the door on the left.
A more detailed view of what I could see out the doors of the gallery.
The spring blossom across the road attracted many passing photographs.
Here’s the next installment of un-posted drafts.
We visited the National Museum of Australia to sketch over the weekend (quite a few months of weekends back!). The building is certainly quirky and in many ways fails to fully deliver the concepts which lead it’s design. (I note that there has been a recent announcement that the rivetting stretch of concrete outside the museum will be removed and turned into a garden of Australian plants. Three cheers for common sense).
The Garden of Australian Dreams is a symbolic landscape of largely sculptural forms within a body of water, a little grass and a few trees. Encircled by the Museum, it provides an opportunity for visitors to stop and relax as they contemplate this symbolic representation of ‘place’ and ‘home’.
The garden reflects our nation in ways that I am not completely sure were intended, but seem quite accurate in an ironic sense. All the ‘relaxing’ bits of the garden are around the edge, rather like our population which is concentrated on Australia’s coastal fringe.
The centre of the garden represents central Australia and the expanse of painted concrete is certainly a blisteringly hot location on any summer day. I also find it scarily reminiscent of the asphalted playgrounds of my childhood. Although what the wooden paling backyard fence is doing there eludes me. And the screaming? I hadn’t realised before now that this area is where all the children are taken to run off all their excess energy.
leonieandrews 