I am very excited by becoming involved in the coming months as guest tutor with Erin Hill‘s wonderful “Out and About” sketching classes in Manly.She runs classes Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings… with opportunites for other times as well.

In the first place I am going along to observe, meet the sketchers and get a feel for the classes. Erin has a great model of starting with a warmup still life in the Studio before going out on location. Last week I went to the Friday morning class and had a ball!

‘This weeks still life’ was a vase of flowers upon a pile of books… and we  had to draw both. Drawing a pile of books with angles going everywhere is a great warmup exercise for drawing buildings in perspective. You have to really look at the angles of each edge and yet at the same time keep a hold on the overall rectangular-ness of the individual books.
I did my own thing and sketched in watercolour pencil lines (rather than ink pen) and then watercolour over the top.

We then went up the street and sketched the fire station. As I was wandering around to check out the work of others didn’t have much time for my sketch and had to add the paint over lunch (like many of the others). Oh! I am enjoying the fuzziness of a water soluble pencil for lines. My favourite at the moment is  Inktense Indian Ink pencil. It is so soluble and a lovely brownish black! LOVE it!

Looking forward to join the Thursday and Saturday groups soon!

More about this weeks class with all the sketches
http://erinhillmyblog.com/2013/02/09/books-fire-stations/