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ESSENTIAL INFO
If you purchase a ticket for this course, all the information on this page will be emailed to you with your ticket.
👥 Ages: Adults only 18+
📍 Venue: CWA Hall
📈 Level: IMTERMEDIATE skill level
⏰ Schedule: Mon–Fri, 9am – 4pm (5 Full-Days)
🏷️ Extra costs: This course has a cost of $30 for materials
⚠️ Extra info: This course requires reasonable mobility as there is walking involved, sometimes on uneven ground. January can be very hot, so please be prepared with a hat, drinking water, and sunscreen.
Required skills & experience
Some drawing experience is preferable
Experience with watercolour is desirable
Supplies that will be provided by your tutor
Cost of $30 includes:
Materials to create an A5 fold-out concertina sketch book, in quality watercolour paper.
Magazines to create cover art
NOTE: Supply costs will be collected by the tutor before Camp Creative.
Supplies that you need to bring to class
Watercolour palette
A set of half pans is enough. It is good to work with a limited palette so 12 colours should be plenty. The colours I use most are Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine which mix well to form warm and cool greys. In addition Raw Sienna or Yellow Ochre are good for buildings and as a base for mixing greens. Other colours students could include are Burnt Umber, Van Dyke Brown, Paynes Grey, Scarlet Lake, Sap Green.) Good brands are Winsor and Newton, Daniel Smith, Schmincke and Maimeri available from most art suppliers incl https://kadmium.com.au in Coffs Harbour. A good starter kit for the uninitiated is the Winsor & Newton Cotman Half Pan Watercolour Pocket Set (about $98).
Lead pencils
Sharpener
Sable or quality synthetic brushes size 4, 6 and 10
Water jar
White hand towel or washer that will get paint on it
Fineline markers – 0.2, 0.4, 0.8
UHU stick
Small snap blade cutter
Steel rule
A folding stool or camp chair
Optional - A5 sketch book for study sketches (min. 180 gsm paper such as Moleskine)
Optional - Fountain pen
Optional - Colour pencils (Faber Castell Aquarelles -water soluble)
Learning outcomes
Discover new ways of seeing objects and shapes, new techniques for expressing them and confidence in your personal sketching style.
Create a two-metre-long sketch of Bellingen and a wonderful record of your Mid North Coast summer break.
WEEK PLAN
DAY ONE
Design and production of a concertina sketch book plus fundamentals of sketching with watercolour.
Materials will be supplied and instruction given for the making of an A5 fold out concertina sketch book in quality watercolour paper.
The cover art may be supplied by the camper or chosen from a collection of magazines made available by me. The sketch book will then be filled in the course of the following days.
Preliminary exercises of mixing colours and playing with shapes in watercolour.
DAY TWO
Sketching the built environment.
This is the main part of the workshop and will involve morning and afternoon sessions sketching and painting buildings on the Bellingen high street, such as the Federal Hotel, Hammond and Wheatley, etc.
Each session will focus on a particular aspect of urban sketching with detailed explanations and demonstrations:
understanding what you see
simplifying the scene composition
creating shapes
perspective
tonal values – light and shade
different media
Each day ends with a “throw down” where sketchers show their work and receive constructive criticism in a good natured and non-threatening way, from the tutor and their fellow sketchers.
DAY THREE
The week will be broken on the middle day with a focus on landscapes that capture the Bellinger River, the lifeblood of the town so intrinsically tied to its history and character.
In the morning we take the challenge of the Bellingen Bridge, a 2 minute walk from our studio, while in the afternoon we travel out of town to capture the meandering river against the backdrop of the escarpment at Fernmount. This will require car pooling.
DAY FOUR
Sketching the built environment – as Day 2 but in a different part of the street to progress the streetscape image in the concertina sketch book.
DAY FIVE
Embellishments and annotations to the sketch book.
The final stage will focus on tidying up the sketches – looking at the spread as a whole so that it works as a unified piece. This will include adding titles and notes if desired and possibly adding some thumbnail sketches explaining details.
The end result of the Hyde Street sessions will be a continuous, multipage spread concertina sketchbook illustrating the historic buildings of the Bellingen high street, Hyde Street.
This session will most likely take place at our venue and, providing the organisers can accommodate it, will result in an exhibition of the work for other campers to come and see (to be confirmed).
COURSE TUTOR
Mike Botton
Mike’s introduction to drawing was through his studies in architecture in Sydney at UTS and in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, then in interior design in Cardiff, Wales.
On his return from travels he spent a brief period teaching an Architectural Drafting course at Randwick TAFE . Through the 1980s and 90s his focus in architectural practice was largely on presentation and perspective rendering using ink line and watercolour wash.
This technique became the foundation for his urban sketching which he mainly practiced when traveling, to produce a travel journal. In 2013 he left the world of corporate architecture and design to establish the sketching tour company, Palladian Odyssey, which ran sketching tours focusing on the extraordinary architecture of Renaissance Italy. Each week-long tour would comprise groups of 12 artists with daily workshops in various locations around Northern Italy. Whilst he was not the primary teacher on these tours (his main duty was that of tour operator), he contributed to the daily tutorials and helped out guests where necessary.
Since 2013 he has been an active member of Sydney Urban Sketchers and has attended three international Urban Sketchers Symposiums in Singapore, Porto and Amsterdam, each offering daily workshops from renowned artists from all over the world. He has participated in over 12 of these workshops from which he has gleaned a variety of sketching and teaching techniques whilst always honing his own skills.
“Excellent tutor who covered a lot in a short time and got the best from his students.”
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