I just have got back from two (part) days away up at The Entrance – the reason was a one day workshop for the Central Coast Watercolour Society today.

It was heaps of fun sharing my love of sketching and my core concepts for working spontaneously. It was also a treat to be teaching people who use watercolour regularly and I was able to share ways in which my sketching process differs from traditional watercolour techniques and approaches. We spent the morning inside doing some exercises from photos (including my favourite- architecture sketching without perspective) before heading out in the afternoon to sketch the local boatshed..ah it is always SO much better to get outside!!! It was wonderful to see them all try new working methods and media (ink and/or watercolour pencils)and in a LOT shorter time frame (most are used to doing a painting in 2 hours or more) Once again I was blown away by the variety and quality of the work done.  Thanks CCWS for the invitation to spend the day with you all! I had a great time!

I am now putting all local sketching classes and workshops on hold for a little while…so the upcoming Sketch The Cake for Rockdale Council on Tuesday is the last one on my schedule in Sydney (there are still places available if you are interested). I am off to Tasmania in May for some workshops but will be taking a break from teaching here in Sydney for a bit – need to focus on some other things!?!? I know I am going to miss my regular and irregular sketching classes/workshops – I love doing them so much – but a break is often a good thing! Of course, when they start again it will be announced here first!

What was really great about this weekend’s workshop was that I got to do some sketching for myself!

Because I needed to check the chosen on-location spot yesterday and it would have been too big a day for me to drive up and back in one day…I headed up yesterday around lunchtime. I haven’t had time to catch my breath since the big USK week so it is not surprising that I left something behind… my all-important prop… my yellow teacup! perhaps it would have been better to check what I needed to take rather than sketch my bags….

Anyway, I realised the omission halfway up the coast, so I stopped at Tuggerah to buy a new one. Managed to run into a USKer in the carpark… USKers are everywhere! This is the cup that I bought – naturally I needed to sketch it beforehand- this was the first one that I did just exploring my new purchase and working out some of the issues with the pattern and colours.

My second was a lot more playful…. (I am finding it harder to sketch in my old style of ink first, colour second these days…I am just happier mixing it up!)

Ok… back to my workshop prep… here is my sketch of the boat shed that I started when the rain started coming down. I lost control totally of what I was doing… but in the end it all worked itself out. Pigment note: it is not paynes grey that I am using…but Daniel Smith Sodalite that is in my palette at the moment as I haven’t had time to mix up more of my ‘steels grey’. It is fun to be testing but not sure it will remain.

Later that evening I went back to the shed and did just a line drawing to show the class how much line I would do before stopping to consider how much more detail I would do in line or in colour. Then I had my dinner. Choosing the pesto penne solely because I wanted to play with the black fleck you can get from Daniel Smith Green Apatite. This is a colour I have had in my palette over the last 8 months…but as it was one of the colours Paul and I gave to our Expressive Urban Sketching Workshoppers I have been using it more of late. I didn’t quite get the water ratio right… but still, it was a fun evening and loved getting to know the staff in the restaurant.

This morning I had a lovely breakfast at a local cafe- White Fire … it was so good to do a sketch before running a workshop. I am often so busy with the last minute prep/ organisation that I don’t make the time to sketch myself. This is something that I need to make sure I schedule in the future!