The USK Symposium 2018 held in Porto this year

It’s time to share a my sketches and impressions of the USK Symposium 2018 in Porto. Jerry and I attended in July this year. (When you click on the images you can see a larger version) We purchased a sketch pass for the USK Symposium. We could have had a workshop pass but I am pleased we kept it simple. When we went to Kuching I discovered with workshops and sketch walks I can quickly hit overload so I decided this time to keep the activities to a manageable level. Other factors were involved too. We visited Porto towards the …

Urban Sketching at the Carillion Canberra

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 …

More Urban sketching

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

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

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 …

Canberra Urban Sketchers visit to the Royal Australian Mint

Our local Urban Sketchers group got together this morning to do some sketching at the Royal Australian Mint. This was an informal sketch meet. As usual we all had a great day. I am pleased I remembered the bulldog clips as the wind was really blustery making sketching a bit of challenge. I have been experimenting with black and white ink drawings. This is because we will be traveling again in 6 weeks or so and I wanted to explore some pen and ink techniques. This is done with a Lamy pen loaded with De Atramentis Document Ink which is …

How I got over the biggest creative block of my life by Sketching in Kuching and Cambodia

It’s been a while since I have written here and there is a reason for that. You see, I was stalled. In the past I have had phases of being stalled but not like this one. This was a full scale creative block I had, of course, heard of things like creative block or writers block but I had not realised these periods of time could last so long. Bear with me while I give you some background – make a cuppa, I will tell you the story and while also sharing some sketching eye candy with you. (Click on …