Traditional Pen & Ink. Perspective.

I baulk at drawing from my imagination. It feels wrong. I’m so used to drawing from reality – whatever that might mean. Ontologically and existentially more correct, more comfortable, truer. I found the advice of last week’s drawing teacher to daydream more particular threatening (!).

Nevertheless, we were given a schematic of perspective at Pen & Ink class today based on a drawing of a pergola with flowering roses, the finished image of which we weren’t shown (in case it would influence us too much).

 Our job was to get something on paper which was perspectivally correct (see my glaring error at right) and later we will add in watercolour washes and penwork. For my contextual landscape of grass, trees, shrubs, I reached for the sketchbook for past landscapes. Thanks goodness for sketchbooks.

Given all the Built Environment sketches I’ve been doing lately, my doing some proper perspective is well overdue. And I need to go back and look at the discussion on Borromini Bear’s weblog as well.

Homework: photocopy your previous Pen & Ink sketches on to watercolour paper and experiment with watercolour washes. Mmmm…….

Sydney sketching : sketching Sydney. Mooring, Elizabeth Bay Marina

A very very tough week. But when things get tough, the sketchers get sketching (to cope)!

Around the middle of the day, last day of August. Elizabeth Bay marina, looking north over Sydney Harbour from Beare Park.  Quiet in the sunshine, except for Council workers using leaf blowers.

Just after the cold lull which hits Sydney every early Spring – this year, a spot of heavy fog; in the past, fierce winds which blow a lot of flowers off fruit trees affecting the season’s production.

Staedtler Fineliner pen and Winsor & Newtown watercolours.

Traditional Pen & Ink – sketching Banksia, Day 7

Having opened the handbound sketchbook with dried specimens, I thought I’d move the focus to the dried seedpods. Here’s my first go: difficult to render in pen and ink because the seedpods are entirely in charcoal greys and browns which are nearly black. But this is, after all, a sketchbook – warts and all!

This first seedpod is a small one; other longer ones show the natural geometry to better effect. More of that anon!

The stylized geometric pattern to the left comes from a Gustav Klimt painting, currently on show in Melbourne. It’s chair upholstery fabric, accompanying the full-length figure.

Sydney sketching : sketching Sydney. The Rocks NSW 2000

Staedtler Fineliner pen 01. Drawn from a photograph taken in the early 1990s.

Changes since the 1990s

Replica historical lamp posts have been replaced by standard modern ones, as seen elsewhere in Sydney. The upstairs windows of the former hotel, 28 Harrington Street, now known as the Fine Food & Wine Bar,  have been replaced and remodelled. The jade green tiles below the ground floor windows remain intact; the paint colour scheme also remains the same: salmon pink and mud brown, with ochre, some pale blue and white has been introduced into the mix.

I know that currently the far left (Playfair Street) is occupied by a busy street market most of the time. This is of course Harrington Street, looking south from Argyle Street. It’s almost impossible to overlook the fact when sketching Sydney’s old 19th-century buildings that 20th-century skyscrapers loom large in the background – in this case, Goldfields House and Australia Square. While the hotel on the corner is in the limelight, the NSW Royal Society of Arts & Crafts used to occupy the building further up the road with the four large roof pediments – now the Harbour Rocks Hotel (34 Harrington Street).

1901 photographs

For a 1901 photograph of this view, coincidentally from this vantage point (but excluding the hotel on the corner), see http://www.flickr.com/photos/state-records-nsw/4886823514/ - the photo is held by the NSW State Records Office, Digital ID 4481_a026_000192. The buildings are virtually unchanged; there were no trees in the distance in 1901 and the contemporary replica lightposts are modelled on gas lights, the originals of which can be seen in the 1901 photo. Another photo in the same series, Digital ID 4481_a026_000195 which shows the western side of Harrington Street (not in my drawing at all), shows that the hotel building was in existence in 1901.

 

 

Traditional Pen & Ink: sketching Banksia, Day 6

Staedtler Fineliner pen 01mm on 180 gsm cartridge-type paper.  Wanted to back away from the ‘close-up’ approach, hence this ensemble of the many parts in a white glass vase.

This wraps up work on the dried specimens.

Traditional Pen & Ink – sketching Banksia Day 5

Staedtler Fineliner pen 01mm on 180gsm cartridge-type paper. Still sticking to the dried specimens in contour, hatching, cross-hatching and stippling.

Traditional Pen & Ink: sketching Banksia Days 3-4

Staedtler Fineliner pen 01mm on 180gsm cartridge-type paper.

Traditional Pen & Ink: sketching Banksia (days 1-3)

Banksias and grevilleas herald the arrival of early Spring. First spread of a 16-page handbound (A5, landscape) book devoted to daily drawing of different aspects of banksia: seedpods, leaves, twigs. I can’t say, at this stage, whether it will be exclusively pen and ink and/or without any use of colour. I’ve started using hatching to denote the outer green face of leaves (the inner face is cream with an orange-brown vein line) and so far I’m using just contour, hatching, cross-hatching and stippling, a Staedtler Fineliner 0.1 pen. So far the specimens are in a semi-dried state, lacking the soft bright green of the freshly-alive flowering seedpod. Tackling the small seeds is a long-term task.

 I’ll be undertaking my own investigations before referring to how others have tackled the subject. Just about every Australian artist has tackled them!

Traditional Pen & Ink (10) – Newtown Post Office, NSW 2042

Done from a photo I took twenty years ago. Couldn’t possibly take in all the magnificent detail this affords via an on-location sketch.

Traditional Pen & Ink (9) – St Vincent de Paul church rectory, 117 Redfern St Redfern NSW 2012

Still sticking to the theme of streetscapes on A4 110gsm cartridge paper in Staedtler Fineliner pen 0.5mm. I’m still sticking to contour and hatching/cross-hatching – all freehand, no rulers!

This is the rectory building beside St Vincent de Paul Church (left) and the former Redfern Telegraph Exchange (its modern extension is in the 1980s brutalist architectural style to the rear. Beside the Telegraph Exchange is the Redfern Post Office (1882) and just down from the church in the same block is the Redfern Court House (1898).

This was copied from a series of photos taken twenty years ago, two of which are below:

   

 

Currently (August 2011) the building is probably undergoing restoration.