After a few quiet days, my time at Port Macquarie started to become very social. My friend V works Monday through Wednesday, so the end of the week was all about spending time with her. I also caught up with M (my sister’s best friend from childhood), who is my friend too and who sketches!

I still managed to fit in some solo beach sketching sessions into each day – despite a bit of rain!

Thursday

I started with a solo sketching session at Shellys.

I had 10 minutes before I had to leave and meet V for brunch. What could I do in that time?

I then had a lovely brunch with V at Coast (Lighthouse Beach). Another smashed avo, and I added the view of the lighthouse that we had from our table.

A quiet afternoon… I ended up doing some fun Posca sketches of items from my Airbnb and…

…I  went back to Flynns beach! It was raining so I sketched from my car again. And once again sketched the southern end of the beach. But this time I started with some loose purple shapes which I layered over.

A really fun dinner with V and her friends. It’s always great to hang out with the gang and the food was great.

Note: ‘Yum’ in all caps, with an exclamation mark and underline is a sign of a really good meal!

My sketchbook did the rounds of the kitchen.

I ended up doing a mini watercolour lesson for B and L

and then did some blind contour drawings. 

Friday

Another day, another morning visit to Shelly. I intentionally left no white space on the page for this sketch, and it felt ‘wrong’ to rely on opaque white for the waves.

Morning tea with V at Little Shack with a view of the Hastings River. 

Another quiet afternoon where I ended up at Flynns. A loose mostly watercolour sketch…

…followed by a Posca one.

I had a lovely evening with M and her friend F at some Friday night markets. While waiting for my dinner, I managed a quick sketch (standing up).

Two great days! My sketchbook was still dominated by beaches and cafes, but I was about to sketch some different types of subjects. So stay tuned for that!