From Grand vistas to a single leaf

Happy New Year to everyone!
I haven't posted for a long time here... no excuse except trying to do too many things at the one time. I have been on my summer holidays here and last week (or was it the week before) I escaped the city and had a few days up in the mountains - the blue mountains(plateaus is more accurate)...it is only 1.5 hours drive from the center of Sydney. Wonderful vistas looking down into valleys.


A consistent sandstone escarpment separates the tourist from the valleys - so any hikes involve a steep climb down and then back up again. As I was on my own I stayed on the top. Still plenty to see and sketch.

The mountains are supposedly bluer than normal due to the haze of the eucalyptus oil from all the gum trees - sometimes the blueness is very strong.

The most famous rock formation is the three sisters

...but my favourite place is pulpit rock which few people know about - you can walk down to an exposed rocky outcrop and sit on a bench and feel like you own the valley.

There is the scary 'pulpit' itself... I wasn't quite up to sketching way down there this time.

From sketching the grand vista I picked the most ordinary leaf and tried to describing it using the coolest 6 page laminated card that I got at a nearby shop. I can see that I am going to use this card to appear very knowledgeable! I never realised that there were so many different types of leaf bases and that they all have names. I am rather discovered by this discovery...

More details here

More Australian Native Flowers

Following on from Alissa's great sketches... here are my ultra quick sketches form Saturdays Spring Sketchabout.(I am afraid that I spend too much time socialising at these events to do a serious sketch!)
I choose two flowers contrasting in size... the gymea lily(as drawn by Alissa) which is approx 30cm/1 foot wide (not 70cm as incorrectly noted in my sketchbook from a field guide that I have) and the other tiny tiny yellow button (only a few millimetres in size)
I also, like Alissa, drew a grass tree...but mine was a 'dead' stump.
I look at my wildflower guide book all the time and what often strikes me when I find them in real life, is how small many of the native flowers in Australia are.

Wierd Tropical Plants - Liz Steel

I am sorry that I have been so slack in posting to this blog in recent times. Although it is a while ago, we had a wonderful 6 weeks of Garden Sketchabouts in the Botanic Gardens Sydney... as per these previous posts.

The last week was a terribly wet day so we ended up in the tropical centre. In all my years of visiting the garden I had never been inside...and was I amazed by what I discovered in there. So many weird and wonderful plants!!! Even the leaf shapes and colours were unusual.

It was a bit of a challenge to sketch inside in the tropical centre glasshouses because the air was so moist that my paints were very gooey and occasional random drips landed on my page from time to time - everything got wet and I managed to get paint everywhere!

This one, a tongue Orchid, native to Papua New Guinea caught my eye! Thankfully it didn't seem to be ommitting a putrid stench of rotting meats while I was sketching it!

Here are two links to more information... looks amazing when it is actually in flower
http://www.orchidsonline.com.au/node/651
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbophyllum_fletcherianum

If you are interested in seeing all my sketches from the 6 weeks of Sketchabouts check the full sketchbook here. The architect in me was drawn to many of the buildings in the gardens, or the vistas and I didn't actually sketch that many individual plants! It was the most wonderful event and culminated in a 3 day exhibition of the best 30 sketches, and we are very thankful for the Gardens to have the vision to organise this event.

Moreton Bay Fig

Along with Alissa, I am very excited to be a part of the upcoming Garden Sketchabout. Here are some sketches of my favourite tree- it is a Moreton Bay Fig with huge buttressed trunk and many aerial roots. Every view is completely different!

A few sketches from my big trip - Part 1

Hi Everyone – sorry that I have been absent for SO long... My big trip around the world this year has taken up a lot of my spare time both before and afterwards (I have a lot of scanning to do) Most of my trip was in urban environments and so I got very little nature sketching done – in fact I didn’t even manage a hike when in Scotland (‘a hill walk” as they call it).. so my nature sketching for the trip consist in a few quick sketches of a few spectacular natural features and landscapes that I came across.

My first stop was visiting friends in Seattle – they wanted to show me something different so on my first full day in the States they took me west to the Grand Coulee – the largest waterfall in the world without water. It was very impressive!!!!




It was a 200 mile drive and since we had spent a leisurely morning having breakfast in a tearoom (I wonder whose idea that was?) we didn’t arrive there till 5.30 in the afternoon. I therefore didn’t have time to sketch except for what I could do from the back seat of the car! As it was we didn’t get home till 11.30pm that night.


Two days later they took me down to Mt St Helens – wow! The devastation caused by the volcanic eruption back in the 80s is mind blowing. We did a hike for a few miles and this time I was able to position myself on a nice steep-ish slope and do a quick sketch before heading back.

Next post I will share some of my Scottish sketches (just have to finishing scanning them all first!)

More museum sketching

Following on from Alissa's post - here are my sketches from a great morning!



We spend our time in the Search and Discover room - where you can touch everything. We sit at a bench and go and choose an animal we like, bring it back to the table and sketch from what ever angle we want - perfect!

A week at the beach

Here are two quick sketches I did at Avoca Beach earlier in the month. There is nothing like sitting out in the fresh sea air to sketch....

Spring in Sydney

Life has been hectic lately and I have been wanting to sketch some of the wonderful spring changes that are happening around me at the moment but just don’t seem to get the time. So here are two very quick sketches that I did in the last few weeks.

November is my favourite time of the year – summer is coming, Xmas holidays not too far away, the jacandras are out and look spectacular against the strong blue Sydney sky AND my favourite tree, Angophora costata (Smooth-barked Apple or Sydney Red Gum) is shedding its bark. More on the bark some time soon....but here is a sketch I did earlier in the year
www.flickr.com/photos/borrominibear/3493618954/in/set-721...

I haven’t been able to find out why, but this tree does not flower every year but this year it is. I have never seen the flowers close up as the flowering branches are normally quite high. But on Saturday morning when I drove down my road (which contains numerous magnificent specimens of this type of tree) I noticed a low branch with some flowers. So on my way back home from shopping, I stopped the car, reached up and got one.
This page is my technical analysis of the flower – I find this so much fun and it makes the task of sketching the flower (which I did hope to do...) a lot easier because I understand it.


Ultra quick sketch of the reason I wake up to a particular sound this time of year

Back Home in my Garden

After travelling around Europe for 5 weeks and struggling to sketch as the weather got colder... nothing is more special than coming home and enjoying a Saturday morning soaking up the warm spring Australian sun and looking around at what is happening in my garden. I am no gardener so my looking around is more from an aesthetic point of view than from any knowledge of species.

So here is the page that I did on Saturday - I overworked the first azalea sketch so I did another one and stuck it over the top - I try to never rip a page out of my sketchbook but I have no problem covering a mess up... it is all part of the experience.

My favourite trees are starting to lose their bark and I am just itching for an opportunity to go down the road again and sketch them as they transform from grey- pinky grey-yellow -to bright orangey red! So stay tuned....

Pulling apart some flowers

Hi Everyone – been quite a while since I have blogged here – life has been crazy, plus here in Australia we are in winter – so the opportunities of getting out to do some nature sketching has been pretty rare.

However this week, I have had a heap of fun pulling apart two flowers in my garden and trying to understand their parts and structure. I am an architect with no idea of the parts of flowers (I do vaguely remember learning something at school) so these pages have been done more as architectural explorations rather than a true botanical analysis.





There was not that much to choose from in our garden... but the two that I have are indeed complex structures! My usual techniques for analyzing objects (plan, elevation, section etc) don't always work on complex curvy organic structures and I ended up actually pulling one of my specimens to pieces before I could understand it all.

Also, please note that as I am left handed I often work from the right to the left across the spread and add the heading last - this is the way to read my explorations in the above pages.

My favourite tree

This afternoon, I went and sat on my stool down the road sketching my favourite tree.

We don't have many (any?) native deciduous trees in Australia but we do have trees with deciduous bark. Mostly the gum trees lose their bark in spring/summer time. I absolutely love watching the colour of the Angophora change during the year. The swatches along the bottom are the colours throughout the year (the brand new yellow bark starts turning orange very quickly) The rich intense red colour of the twisted branches in the late afternoon early summer sun never ceases to excite me! So I promise in December to get out there and sketch one! I did do a quick sketch in November last year when the bark was starting to come off - here
There is a real art to sketching Australian gum trees as their crowns are so open... I am only beginning to draw them but intend to draw many many more of them in the months and years to come!

Blue Mountains

Something a little different from all the beautiful precise and detailed posts recently....

Here are my ultra quick sketches from my Easter break up at the Blue Mountains. As I have a tendency to over do my landscapes sketches, I am currently working very fast with a large brush.

Growing up we were told that they are blue because of the haze caused by evaporating eucalyptus oil from the gum trees. I didn’t realise as a kid, that all mountains look blue from a distance! I have been trying to track down a scientific confirmation of this local ‘myth’ online but haven’t found anything so far. There is certainly no doubt that the mountains often have an intensity of blue that you don’t normally see and that the effect occurs on hills that are quite close.

The Blue Mountains are not mountains at all but a series of plateaus with magnificent sandstone cliffs – often in dramatic rock formations. This is the most famous – The Three Sisters.

Lesser known is my favourite spot - Pulpit Rock overlooking a valley on the other side of the main plateau. Here you can sit right out on a cliff edge in the middle of the valley and feel like you have the place all to yourself (even on the Easter weekend!)

The sandstone cliffs are spectacular!

Turpentine tree

Well here is a sketch of the turpentine tree that the nut from my previous post comes from. Normally, I don’t take much notice of the tree as all I see looking out from the back veranda, where I like to sit and sketch, is the trunk. Actually the first time I realised how big and important the tree is, was when I looked at a google map of my house. The canopy of the tree, which is normally out of my vision, totally fills the backyard from the aerial photo!

The first branch is 6m in the air – I have never seen a green leaf from it...till this week, when we got some down to look at. It was so nice to see how those little nuts are arranged on the tree. I will have to do this again in spring when the flowers are out – naturally I have never seen what the flowers look like – or even been aware that the tree was in flower! My field guide describes them as a mass of creamy ovate petals fused to the globular heads (what a great description of what I am simply referring to as a ‘nut’)

While I was in the garden sketching I tracked down the final frangipani and sketched it on a new page (remember that being in Australia, I am in the opposite season to most of the rest of you) This afternoon, I went to my favourite tearoom and this lone flower (both in my garden and on a new blank page) got incorporated into a wild colourful eclectic journal page inspired by my café surroundings! You can see it here

Meet the Correspondents--Liz Steel

I am an architect, and have been drawing in some way all my life, but when I discovered watercolours just over 2 years ago, I started sketching regularly... and haven’t stopped since.

Whilst I love sketching buildings and urban life, it is impossible for me not to be inspired to sketch some of the natural wonders to be found in Australia, my native land. The bush, the beach, the outback, the land are significant parts of the way that Australians have tried to define themselves over the years and although it is a cliché to say that all Australians are in love with their country - it is certainly true of me!

Sydney, where I have lived all my life, is the largest city in Australia and yet has the most amazing amount of natural bush (forest) within the borders of what is defined as the metropolitan area. So while most of my landscape sketches are done on holidays, I really have no excuse for not doing more sketching in nature, since there is so much around me.

I am no gardener but gardening is a big thing for some special people in my life – my best friend, my dad, my aunt and grandma – so it is nice to appreciate the work of others. Although I am amazed at the variety and beauty of the flowers and plants and their composition in cultured gardens, for me nothing beats Australian trees in their natural setting. My sister, when she lived in Australia, used to work in the bush (regenerating it) and therefore going for a walk with her was a wonderful and educational experience as she would share all her knowledge of plants with me.

I am really excited about being part of this blog, giving me the inspiration to sketch and share more of the nature of my beautiful country.

My flickr


I love the analytical nature of botanical drawings (it’s the architect in me - plan, elevation, perspective) but I don’t have the patience to produce the precise style that is typical of this genre. So here is my own loose version of the curiously shaped nuts that are scattered all over our lawn – fallen from the huge turpentine tree in the centre. I will tell you more about the tree later...


Didn’t have any photos of me sketching in the bush… this is the best I could find... in the South American section of a Garden of Many Nations.