Finding the beauty in ‘nothing’

Since 2017 when I became involved with urban sketching, I have completed many sketchbooks.  When I look back over this work, certain types of views emerge, some unselfconsciously. There are scenes you might not have bothered to draw seven years ago, because you didn’t see any particular value in sketching them, but times change.

Pretty early on, I started doing drawings from inside looking out. This could have been because of necessity as it was too cold or wet outside, or I was waiting for breakfast or lunch. The first one I found was from a restaurant in Melbourne sketched over breakfast early in 2019. (It is not a great drawing) I like these views. You can record the activity of the interior, the doors, windows and frames of the street facade, and the views through to the life, landscape and buildings outside. This records an essential urban relationship of how interior spaces connect to and overlook streets, and activate streets and public spaces. I have a large collection of these drawings now and many of them I drew in a pale blue pen.

During Covid, when we were stuck in our homes, urban sketching was not possible, so I looked more closely at my house and began sketching my daily environment. As I recorded the experience of being and living in my house, I began to appreciate these familiar and everyday scenes had a really rich quality. What intrigued me about these views that were often views of virtually nothing. There were no great vistas over landscape or iconic buildings like the Sydney Opera House, or vibrant urban streets with buildings with high quality architecture. Instead, you saw benches and furniture, glasses and bowls on open shelves, flowers in vases, kettles, washing and washing machines, a favourite chair, or the barbeque, and of course views through windows and doors to outside. I liked them and the multiple colours cheered me up.  

I continue to draw from inside to outside through windows, focusing more on the ‘nothing’ of internal displays of equipment and merchandise. Through these sketches I began to look at the way that shopkeepers design, curate, maintain their shelves, food cabinets and window displays. Usually there are wide mixes of product shapes and forms with unusual combinations of things like dresses, baskets, seats, fabrics and sometimes toilets and baths.

Two recent favourites are from a café/grocer in Auckland called Scarecrow, and an equally impressive café in Paddington, in Brisbane where I live, called Sassafras. When I was in NZ at the Urban Sketchers Symposium, I was asked to meet someone at Scarecrow for breakfast. I arrived a bit early and found a strategic table with a good view out. There was a beautifully curated display of gifts next to the window, an adjustable awning over the street, reflections of lights in the window. The café was on a steep slope, with a park across the street to the right and taller buildings in the distance. I ran out of time that day, so I went back a few days later to finish the left half of the sketch and have another breakfast. It was worth it for the food and the view.

Sassafras has been a favourite of mine for many years and table two has a great view directly to the counter and the cakes, coffee machine, bottles and other items on shelves behind. To the left is the window that has a view to a great street, Latrobe Terrace, the trees outside and to Bizell’s Garage, still run by the Bizells since 1939. This is a great slice of neighbourhhood life.

I find both these drawings beautiful, but neither are drawings of anything special, just lots of ‘nothing’.  And the blue pen still works well.