A bit of colour in Sydney

We’re heading into the middle of winter now and although the endless days of rain seem to be a permanent fixture in Sydney of late, my favourite type of weather came out on Saturday for one of our Sydney Sketchclub Meetups –nice, crisp cool winter air with bright warm sunshine. It may be hard for people who have never visited Australia before to imagine but you can still get sunburnt in winter, especially between 10am and 1pm.

The venue for this meet up was the Australian National Maritime Museum  located in a protected harbour. It has a lot of “retired” ships anchored nearby as part of their collection. It was too nice a day to spend in a darkly lit museum drawing things in glass cabinets so I decided to sit outside and draw on the wharf.

Then afterwards I headed over to the Chinese Garden of Friendship. I needed some photo reference of the architecture and motifs for a project I’m working on, but I managed to do a few ink drawings while I was there too. The Garden was built back in the 1980s as an international gesture of friendship between China and Australia. Considering it is right next to a highway that leads in and out of the city the garden provides a lot of serenity and calmness for all its visitors. Almost at every point along the walkway the scenery is compositionally perfect and plenty of seating to sit and admire it all (although sometimes it reminds me of the set design from Monkey Magic and I expect a half man half ape creature to leap out of the bushes brandishing a black and gold pole).

Anyway, for a $6 entry fee it’s a nice refuge from the weekend craziness of Darling Harbour.

To see more of my colour ink work please click here.