Sydney Harbour. The sun shining, a cool breeze blowing, and a sketchbook in my hand. The perfect start to the day
As a Melbournite if often feels as if it is my duty to grumble about Sydney, to complain of the crowds, the glitziness, the lack of charm...
But I can’t do it. Sydney is stunning. I’m well aware that I’m letting down the rest of Melbourne, but what can I say? I love the city.
I had been up in Sydney visiting family, when an impromptu Sketch meetup was announced by sketcher extraordinaire and friend Liz Steel. Always up for a sketch, I packed my bag and headed to Circular Quay for a big day of art.
After a couple of quickies to get warmed up, I wandered off to the main street of The Rocks in need of a caffeine fix. It was there that I bumped into Martin, a sketcher from Canberra who I’d had the pleasure of meeting on my previous trip to Sydney. He’d risen at 5am to make it to the meetup in time, and had already been going for an hour. the determination of urban sketchers never ceases to impress me.
(By contrast I’d travelled 4 kms and was desperately in need of a second coffee.)
Reaching the rendez-vous point I was somewhat surprised by the turnout. What began the day as a small informal meetup had ballooned to a crowd of over 30 sketchers. And why not? it really was the perfect day for sketching.
We started off just behind the main street of the Rocks. Despite being just a couple of hundred metres from one of the busiest tourist spots in Sydney, we found that it was surprisingly quiet.
It offered the perfect opportunity to draw the ramshackle old colonial architecture. It was almost hard to believe where we were, I hadn’t realised architecture like this still existed in the Sydney of today, hidden just out of view.
After a good few hours of drawing it was time to reconvene for a bit of lunch. Once again local knowledge came in handy, as Liz and co. led us to the local French cafe for baguettes and cake. (And of course sketching the other patrons. As one does.)
Lunch done, it was on to more sketching. After wandering back down to the main street, one of the locals brought us down to the gardens directly under the Sydney Harbour bridge. The bridge is such an icon of Sydney, and while we’d all seen and sketched it before, this angle provided something new.
It’s always nice to see something so familiar in an unfamiliar light.
By this point energy really was beginning to run low. It was time to head back to base for coffee and cakes and chatting.
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