Recently, I had the privilege of participating in Liz Steel’s 2-day sketching workshop on Cockatoo Island, here in Sydney. Liz runs online sketching courses through Sketching Now, and in-person workshops around the world.
I’ve been following Liz for some time now. I came across her blog and immediately fell in the love with her lovely loose sketching style. Her tips and tricks on the blog about sketching have helped me to progress my own style. I’ve done one of her online courses, but when she announced her Cockatoo Island workshop, I jumped at the chance to spend two whole days sketching with her and others.
On the first day, we did some exercises around line. We drew contours of various scenes, and then spent an extended amount of time working on measuring lengths and angles to translate them to the page. In the afternoon, we moved locations to an old standstone barracks building, to work on a more complete sketch.
Day two started with a focus on shapes, sketching thumbnails of several of the island’s cranes in various ways, and looking at the values of a scene. After lunch, we again relocated to a spot on the island with a variety of scenes to sketch. We put together all the exercises we’d done to attempt a complete sketch. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish mine, but I was happy with where it was heading.
I’ve never spent time with other sketchers like this, and I loved roaming the island with lovely like-minded people. Everyone was very friendly, encouraging, and generously shared their ideas and advice. I loved the ritual of the “throwdown,” where we slapped our sketchbooks down in an tableau after an exercise. Liz encouraged us to “share, not compare” as we admired each other’s work. I also took advantage of the lengthy time with Liz to get direct feedback on my sketches.
I had a great time at the Cockatoo Island workshop, and I can’t wait to put it all into practice in my sketching.
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