A big day at Cockatoo Island

I took my dad to Cockatoo Island on Saturday – he is a mad photographer so was happy to go off with his camera and leave to me to sketch non stop…and that it what I did! This is the full collection completed in the 5 hours we were on the island and an hour finishing off when I go home. Way too much sketching for one day!! (aside: I think photographers make great sketching companions – although sometimes I find the sketcher has to wait for the photographer!!!!)

Cockatoo Island is probably my favourite spot in Sydney to go sketching- the largest island in the harbour was a former prison, industrial school, reformatory and gaol AND was the site of one of Australia’s biggest shipyards during the twentieth century. It is full of an incredible range of industrial buildings, convict built sandstone buildings, federation houses, cranes and all kinds of industrial equipment and fragments. Lots of different layers of history in the building materials and lots of rust.

This is my warm up sketch of my favourite building on the island – The Drawing Office.

One of big cranes on the island (apparently ‘close to 50 cranes on the island”) it would be fun to do a crane crawl one day!

The smallest building on the island – it contains a stair which accesses the building to the left.

And one of numerous photos that my dad took of me on Saturday – behind me is the largest sheds on the island…a great place to sketch on a raining day

For more check out my blog here.

Saturday was in fact my second visit to the Island in a week as I met my sketching friends Alissa, Wendy and Annie there on Easter Monday. This is one of the sketches I did on that day- which shows the scale of the island and one of the amazing metal sheeting folders that look like the guardians of the islands (like those on Easter Island)

And,finally…..

guess where the Sydney sketchcrawl will be on this coming Saturday… Yes Cockatoo Island. Please join us if you are in Sydney- more details here