Month: March 2018

Urban Sketching at the Carillion Canberra

Urban sketching1 comment

We attended an informal urban sketchers meeting at the National  Carillion building followed by a picnic. I thought I would share my efforts. This was the last page in my  Stillman and Birn Alpha series landscape (9 x 6, 22.9 cm x 15.2 cm) sketchbook (150 gsm white medium grain surface paper). I used water colours and Pitt pens. As usual it was a fun morning getting together with sketching buddies. If you are interested in Urban sketching, the Canberra Urban Sketchers group meet on the second Sunday of the month and everyone is welcome. We often have other informal …

Werner’s nomenclature of colours

Design / Resources online2 Comments

German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner developed a detailed nomenclature – or naming system – colour guide published in 1821 under the flowery title of Werner’s nomenclature of colours : with additions, arranged so as to render it highly useful to the arts and sciences, particularly zoology, botany, chemistry, mineralogy, and morbid anatomy : annexed to which are examples selected from well-known objects in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Between the pages of this mouthful of a title is a type of colour dictionary which long predates Pantone colour swatches. It is an attempt to describe the colours of the …

Journal Prompts for this week

Creativity / Journaling / Journaling Prompts

Make a cuppa and take a break for a few moments. I have a few articles of interest to share. Each holds an interesting tit bit and all make good jumping off points for a written journal entry. I often use this sort of reading matter as a journal prompt. One of the topics that is an ongoing reading project which is driven by the question “What makes a person creative?” Following this interest I came across Leonardo da Vinci: How to See the World Like Nobody Else by Zat Rana who is summarising Walter Isaacson’s ideas explored in his …

Free drawing lessons from the great master Hokusai

Art history and Theory / Sketching / Techniques and tutorials   / 7 Comments

Katsushika Hokusai is well known for his iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa. He was a master in the true sense of the word. Hokusai also produced a three-volume series of books of drawing lessons. These are now online free. The title has been translated as Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing. These books neatly demonstrate how drawing is taught today too! For instance, if you have ever done any basic drawing classes, you have probably been asked to draw a sphere, a cube, and a cone. It is a drawing exercise that many courses start out with. The idea is that many things …

A Egon Schiele sketch that rocked me to the core

Art history and Theory   14 Comments

When Austrian painter Egon Schiele died at 28, he left behind 3,000 drawings and more than 300 paintings. Schiele has been described as major figurative painter of the early 20th century but that is not what I shall talk about today. After my attempts at doing the the #OneWeek100People2018 challenge I have been thinking a lot about sketching people and about sketches of people I have seen that really moved me. I thought today I would share a sketch that rocked me to the core. I saw this image at the National Gallery, London in 2013 at an exhibition titled …

More Urban sketching

Urban sketching9 Comments

I am just quickly sharing two more Urban Sketches. Yesterday was the regular meeting of the Urban Sketchers Canberra Group. We all gathered together at the Australian National Botanic Gardens to sketch for the morning. The gardens are lovely I always enjoy them. Below is my effort for the morning. As I was sketching a couple came up to me and told me how they got married there. Last weekend Government House was open to the public. So we like thousands others went to look at the house and of course do some sketching. Both images are linked to larger versions, …

My response to the #OneWeek100People2018 challenge

Sketching / Urban sketching9 Comments

This week, my goal with the #OneWeek100People2018 challenge was one of practice, not perfection. This challenge was proposed by Liz Steele and Marc Taro Holmes. The idea is to sketch 100 people in a week. As I said last week that I was going to do the challenge, here are my efforts and thoughts about the challenge. In the past, I have always left people out of my sketches – often because I am more interested in the location rather than the people. Both Jerry and I have been known to get up at dawn in order to photograph/see a place without …

Morning Urban Sketching at the Arboretum

Journaling / Travel Journal / Urban sketching6 Comments

We have started our training for our next travel adventure. Yes we are planning another long walk across Spain but that is not the sort of training I meant. I have increased my urban sketching as I hope to keep more of a travel sketch journal this next trip. I usually manage a few sketches in my travel journal but this time around I am wanting to record the trip with even more sketches. Today we walked from our home to the National Arboretum, a trip of about 11km. The arboretum is set in a hilly part of Canberra and …