I went into the city today to do some sketches specifically for the sketching architecture book which I am writing at the moment and as I found myself in The Rocks area I couldn’t resist a visit to my favourite tearoom The Tea Cosy. And when I saw that they were making Hot Cross Scones today I had to try them – yum, very nice!  I was certainly in an chill out-mood, winding down from a very busy week….and putting a lot of water on my page as you can see from the photo below!

I know that I have have a reputation for eating a lot of cake but honestly it is normally a ‘once a week treat’. Okay, occasionally I have two treats in a week but I’m pretty lean with the other things I eat when I’m at home, in terms of cakes anyway!

As an aside I was very amused that one of the questions after my presentation for the Victorian Watercolour Society was “do you have problems with putting on weight because of all the cakes you eat?” Ha! I suppose I asked for that! I made numerous references to tea and cake, high tea , devonshire teas etc throughout my talk and in an effort to cut the content down a little, had removed the slide about my sketching diet! I think that slide better go back  so there’s a little bit of the balance!

I know I haven’t been sharing very much about my book but things have been a little crazy and right at the moment, my focus is just meeting deadlines! It’s going well and I’m loving putting my ideas about sketching architecture down on paper. Despite having an image bank of over 1000 architecture sketches I’m still finding the need to go out and create new sketches specifically for the book.

Three reasons why:

1. I am finding not quite enough sketches that fit the specific the focus of the book (and I’m gonna be really annoying and not tell you what that is!)
2. I am discovering that there are a few gaps in the types of building that I sketch
3. I am trying to find the best images for each of the tips  so that sometimes means a new sketch with a slightly stronger emphasis

In addition, the publisher wants to see a variety of styles and I have found that sometimes the best examples for a particular aspect are all done in ink and wash, so I’ve been mixing up a little bit and doing more sketches (ah! reason number 4!) And… fifthly (I’m hopeless at sticking to the number of points, aren’t I?) I want to do some new stuff just for the book so it’s a bit of a surprise!
And BTW, I am excited to be including the work of about 20 other amazing sketchers.

I did five sketches today none of which I will share with you at the moment …sorry! But I will be sharing my Melbourne sketches with you next week – I promise!

Have a great weekend everyone!