Recent Sketches

Some recent drawings

Just to start off this 2016 I thought I would post some little drawings I had finished towards the end of last year. I love to get out and just do simple pen drawings which I colour at a later date.

 Recently I have been going out at night and making drawings of different locations around Cairns. Night time  subjects didn't register to me until recently I was at a little restaurant at Trinity beach I suddenly look over there was just a brilliant sight just waiting to be drawn, it was a bar with rather purple LED lights inside, the building itself had this casual openness that suited the coconut palms that hugged the place and they were a gorgeous golden orange colour because of the street lamps across the road. Well I haven't been able to get back yet to turn that vision in to a drawing but I have been other places.    

Above: 'Cairns at night, Bernie's Jazz bar, Abbott street', 13x21cm, ink, watercolour, gouache on Arches paper.  

The first place was the exterior of Bernie's Jazz bar in town it is one of the older buildings you can still find on Abbott street and thus it has a bit of character. So one night I sat under the fig across the way and made this drawing. It was quite unforgettable primarily because a colony of fruit bats live in the tree and as charming and environmentally important creatures they undoubtedly are it can not be reasonably denied that they all so smell like a caravan full of dead hobos. 

Above: 'Cairns at night, Bolands building, Lake/ Spence Street', 13cmx21cm, ink, watercolour, gouache on Arches paper. 

The drawing above is the Bolands centre on Lake/ Spence Street corner, it is such a familiar building that it wasn't until I sat down to draw it does one realise how eccentric a building it actually is. The facade is in my opinion full of disharmonious rhythms and proportions, be that as it may it still has tremendous character and it is exactly the sort of building one might expect to find in a distant outpost of the Empire such as it was when it was built all those years ago. I enjoyed the opportunity to sit and really look at it.

Above:'Bougainvillaea on Coondoo street, Kuranda Queensland'. 13x21cm, Ink, watercolour, gouache, charcoal on Arches paper.

For me the bougainvillea is the plant that most symbolises the tropics, Belgian painter Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres who lived Bali  in the middle of the last century did impressionistic paintings of beautiful Balinese women (mostly modelled by his wife the famous local dancer Ni pollok) going about their business under gorgeous canopies bougainvillea it's all very sensual and romantic. This big old bush grows in Coondoo Street Kuranda, up on the range, when I painted this it wasn't in flower so much, right now however it is an absolute blaze of colour.