The Forum in Melbourne

Casing the joint at Fed Square this afternoon for a future workshop!?! I am not sure it needs to be said that I love sketching Flinders St Station ...so you can imagine how much I  would love to spend a whole day sketching it with others next time I am in Melbourne. Sadly there is no shelter to sketch it in the rain.

As this afternoon was wet, very wet, I thought I would explore Federation Square to see if I could find some undercover areas with sketchable views... and I did find some.

The light was fading fast so I approached this sketch in my most slap-dash fashion but still using my basic system of starting with the main forms first and adding details loosely afterwards.

A very wet and cool evening meant that my paint was remaining very wet resulting in a very loose version of this very highly decorative building- I think I need to come back and sketch it again!

Sketching Architecture Workshop at Melbourne University

A very quick collage of photos from my Sketching Architecture workshop in Melbourne today.

I had a great time and had a wonderful group of sketchers who did amazing work today....tackling building forms, structure, complicated buildings and perspective. I hope it inspired them to just go for it and not stress about getting everything exact.

Had a good Melbourne day- hot, sunny, overcast, cool, cold, wet....but it all worked out well and we had plenty of subject matter at Melbourne University. Thanks to everyone that turned up...

more later!

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

In Melbourne preparing for my Sketching Architecture workshop at Melbourne University which is on tomorrow!

I spent the day casing the joint and preparing sunny and wet weather options – I have a number of specific exercises that are best if I plan a good subject for each. That is done and I can start getting excited now! On the way back to my Melbourne ‘home’ I just had to stop and sketch my favourite building. Oh! I was having so so much fun doing this... This was just for me.


Here is a extra photo showing how I was staging my paint. I normally work more or less from light to dark but this time as the building is mainly yellow I wanted to do all the non yellow bits so that I could splash away with the yellow. Also I found today that my paint wasn’t drying (freezing here today!) so I painted the dark green mullions and window frames early giving them more time to dry.

Hoping that the isolated showers forecast doesn’t make it to the uni tomorrow ...but regardless I have a plan and we will have fun!

Demo of corner cafe at Balmoral

Here is a step by step of a quick demo that I did at my weekly sketching class at Balmoral today. I didn't use any perspective setup but did start drawing the main shapes first as I saw them.
 
 Looking forward to my first Sketching Architecture workshop in Melbourne this Saturday - I cant wait!
Also will be running more sketching classes based at Balmoral on Friday mornings in October if you are interested.

Barcelona Sketches

Here is my entire sketchbook (well actually it is 2.5 A4 moleskine watercolour sketches putt together as one book) from my recent 2 weeks in Barcelona including the 4th international Urban Sketchers Symposium.

If that link doesn't work for you click on the front cover and it will take you to the document in Issuu directly

There is a lot of architecture sketches contained in this book and a lot of future material for this blog.... so stay tuned!