Exhibition of my Australia Sketchbooks

Although I finished my Australian residency back in May this year, we didn't have a proper exhibition of the work at the time, just in informal event with wine and nibbles, in the research centre itself:

Six months later, the sketchbooks have at last all been exhibited in Perth in what looks to be a far posher venue! This delay was because something rather dramatic happened during my residency... 

When I was commissioned to do the work, the Centre for Transformative Work Design was part of the University of Western Australia but, by the time I arrived in Perth to begin my work, Professor Parker had already decided that she wanted to move her research centre from UWA to Curtin University, the rival Perth university. The whole time I was working there, secret negotiations were going on behind the scenes. It was all a bit cloak and dagger!

The deal came to fruition around the time I came back to England. UWA were not best pleased to lose the centre and so we put things on ice until the researchers had settled in at Curtin. 

I got an email last week, showing me some fabulous photos from what seemed to be a very successful event. Prof Parker did a talk about the residency, using my very first batch of sketches, from the tip attendant in Peaceful Bay's rubbish dump, as an illustration of how useful the visual record is to her research.

They had all the project's research-sketching competition entries on-screen too, as well as photos from 'behind the scenes' - me in action in various places, I assume, like these photos of me sketching at a massive opencast mine site, in Wyalla:

For the exhibition, they had some of my work printed onto canvas and they displayed those pieces on easels, which was an interesting way to create visual contrast in the space:

It's such a shame that I couldn't be there in person, but so lovely to see the photos and hear about how the event. You can see more photos here.

The Competition Results are In!

It's official - we have a prize winner! Well, two winners actually, and they are both FANTASTIC sketchers, as you can see!

We had entries for the Sketching Work Design competition from Australia, Canada, UK, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Portugal and the USA, which was so exciting, both for me and the rest of the research team, who got quite giddy when new ones kept coming in  from far and wide for them to open. 

The first prize goes to Deb Mostert from Australia, for her excellent portrayal of the job of the Collections Manager at Queensland Museum. She created her entry on two sketchbooks, both of which are gently but wonderfully detailed and communicate so much, so clearly. We were all bowled over by them.

The second prize goes to Rita Sabler from the USA, for her story of a freight train operator for The Union Pacific Railroad. Through her beautifully captured details and observations, Rita conveys a real sense of the man's personal relationship with the work.

You can see the full concertina sketchbooks of both winners and read more detailed feedback from both myself and Professor Parker on the project's website. All the entries are now being scanned. I will do another blog post as soon as they are done, to show some of the other entries that came close. They were so gorgeous, it was both a terrible and a wonderful task, having to choose.

The sketchbooks will be returned to the artists as soon as possible after scanning. Please bear with us - it takes a while. If there are any concerns about anything, please contact the research centre. Don't contact me, as I am now home in the UK and so won't know anything about what's going on.

A huge congratulations to both Deb Mostert and Rita Sabler, whose prize money should be on its way pretty soon, as well as to all the artists who entered - great job. Well done everyone!

Sketching the Workplace Competition: Shortlisting

Well, I can't quite believe that it's nearly time for me to fly home to England. It's been quite an adventure. Luckily, it's not quite over yet ...

Since I finished the sketching part of my residency at the CTWD. John and I have been away travelling for a nearly a month through Western Australia (which is why there's been no blogging), but we arrived back in Perth on Sunday. 

This week, I have a last few days of things to do. One big thing that's left, is to judge the competition. On Monday morning, I had the excitement of arriving at the research centre to find a huge pile of entries waiting!

I spent the whole day trying to whittle them down. Not easy! I created a long list, then a shortlist, all of which was incredibly hard, as the standard was really high and the entries were often quite different to one another. These are just a few details I photographed to show you (they are all longer concertina sketchbooks), from just a random handful of them.

There were over 40 entries, from all over the world: Australia and England (obviously), but also Canada, Japan, India, Italy, Portugal, Hong Kong and America. Which is really interesting, since you get to see jobs and workplaces from a cultural perspective, as well as a personal one. 

We were lucky enough to have one or two jobs represented by more than one country, like these butcher sketches, from India...

...and also from England:

The range of jobs was really wide too: a Museum Collections Manager, dealing with stuffed animals, a cello teacher, a bookbinder, a mechanic. There was a big garment manufacturing business, an artisan jeweller, a florist... Plus loads more. The researchers are so excited by the material. They've been eagerly watching the pile of envelopes grow while I've been travelling.

We devised a numbering system for the judging, to keep things anonymous, just in case I happen to know anyone who has entered. I am presenting my shortlist to Professor Parker on Wednesday. 

She will look long and hard at the written element of the project, to make a judgement on how incisive and communicative each entry is. That, as well as a 2nd pair of eyes on the sketches, will help us choose the two winners.

Just two! Oh dear...

I have a couple more days of sketching to do myself before I fly home - jobs which fell off the end earlier in the residency. I'll tell you about them when I get home.

And don't forget to watch this space for more news about the competition prizewinners!

'So, how are you with blood?' they asked...

I am bundled up in navy scrubs and an attractive hair cap. An operating team of 9 or 10 people move around the theatre, getting things ready. I have not been allowed to bring in my art kit bag, so the patch pockets of my scrubs are full of pencils. I have a mask over my nose and mouth which keeps fogging up my glasses and I am standing in a corner, trying to be less in the way, wrestling with my concertina and clips. One clip pings across the floor. I apologise, then scurry and bend to pick It up from under something which is beeping. My patch pockets empty pencils onto the floor with a clatter. It is all a bit more tricky than I had realised.

We are here to observe an afternoon of hand operations at Fremantle Hospital. I am sketching and the researcher from UWA is making notes and asking questions of the team when she can. As usual, we are interested in how people feel about their jobs, what they enjoy most, what gets them stressed.

I am surprised at the number of people in the team (I once had foot surgery, which I sketched by the way, but I could swear there were only 3 people in theatre). The surgeon has a relaxed manner which helps me feels less intrusive being there, but things suddenly get super-tricky when I am asked to put an x-ray tabard over my scrubs. It weighs a ton (lead??) but, most importantly, there are no pockets. I transfer my favourite three pencils into my mouth and try not to dribble.

The experience is fascinating, just watching the process. There are 3 short operations, one after the other. I scribble like crazy and catch what I can. Luckily, being hand surgery, I can't see the nitty-gritty, just the cluster of experts around the outstretched arm. I have no idea how I will react to the incision and the blood, so I wait until near the end of the afternoon before I inch close enough to get a decent view. I don't faint, thank goodness. How horribly embarrassing that would be.

When we are done, we get a few minutes to chat to the chief surgeon. He gives thoughtful answers. It's hard, he says, when you are operating and are unsure of what to do for the best. You're in charge and the team look to you to be the one who knows what your doing, but it takes courage to admit when you need to stop and take time out to think, or ask advice from a colleague.

When asked to rate his job, on a scale of 1 – 10, he says it depends: 'Some days it’s definitely a 10, others a 3. Some days you really help people, but on others it doesn't work out. When I'm stressed,' he says, 'I head for the biscuit bin'. He taps his belly. 'Can you tell?'

Sketching Competition - Big Cash prizes!

Announcing a brand new SKETCHING COMPETITION!! It is absolutely free to enter and open to sketchers in all countries. But the extra brilliant bit is that we have a 1st prize of $1500AUS to give away (yahoooo!) and $500 for the runner-up.

The competition is linked to my sketching-residency at the University of Western Australia. I have been sketching different people's jobs for a few weeks now, so the theme of the competition is also 'capturing work'. We would like you to choose a particular job to sketch. It could be your own job or a friend's. We want you to draw things which show what the work is like, using images and text to tell us what the person feels about the work they do.

I really hope everyone will have a go. It is relevant to all levels, as we are just as interested in how interesting and communicative the 'story' of your sketches is, as we are in the quality of the drawings themselves.

The deadline is April 23rd, so you have a bit of time, but take a look at the details now, so you can be thinking about what you want to draw.

If you need inspiration, take a look at the website for my Work Design residency at UWA, where you can see some of the workplace sketches I have been doing for the project.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you sketch. Please do spread the word. We are really excited to see as many different interpretations from as many sketchers as possible.

Good luck!

Australian Residency: Sheep Shearing Champion!

About a week ago, I had the best day of my residency so far. We were picked up early, by Professor Parker herself, and driven out of the city. At 9am, we pulled up on scrubland, outside a hanger-sized, corrugated metal shed. As I hefted my heavy kit-bag out of the car, a friendly farm dog trotted up and began licking the sun-cream off my knees. 

The shed was open-ended. We climbed upstairs onto a wooden deck which stretched right across the inside of the huge building. The pungent, slightly sweet stink of sheep hit me. Despite the high roof, it was hot and muggy too. 'This is cool!' laughed one of the shearers. 'It gets up to 45 degrees in here sometimes.'

The men had been working since 7am. They stopped for their break just as we arrived. Half a dozen well-built, deeply tanned men in vests and, unexpectedly, two women, were sitting around a table, eating what looked more like a dinner than a breakfast. I grabbed a chair, got out my concertina and began. To my dismay, almost all the men immediately went back to work - they are paid per sheep and time is obviously money!

I followed the men through a door in a wooden fence, which sectioned the deck off from the shearing area. I found myself in a wide corridor running the width of the shed. Pop music blared out above the noise of the electric shearers. Each man had his own station, with a number. He would pull a startled sheep through a saloon-door behind him, grip it between his legs and begin. Zip, zip, zip - the sheep was twisted, re-positioned, held this way and that as he worked. The wool piled up. It was clear that the skill was as much about manipulating and holding the constantly struggling sheep, as about the shearing. 

Within 30 - 40 seconds, the sheep was released into another little hatch, which sent him sliding away into the space under the deck. All the while, one of the women would be walking up and down, using a broom-like tool to drag the wool into piles, then gather it up and feed it into a big compressor, to flatten it down. The whole thing felt wonderfully efficient.

I sat on a plastic chair, painting at a similarly crazy pace to the shearers, occasionally bopping around to the music as I worked, occasionally batting away flies. I finished off the concertina by sneaking through one of the saloon doors, to where hundreds of sheep were penned in the bulk of the shed, ready to be grabbed.

While I was sketching, Professor Parker was finding spare moments to interview various people, to find out what they thought about their work. One of these turned out to be the reigning sheep-shearing champion, from New Zealand, sharpening his clippers at a grindstone on the deck. Where the average is 200 sheep a day (doesn't sound that average to me...), he and his brother once shore a staggering 924 merinos in an 8 hour shift. And merinos, I'm told, are much, much bigger.

We got a longer interview with Bill: at 67, the oldest shearer there. I did a sketch-portrait of him on a larger sheet, while he was being interviewed. he told us that they tried a new invention in this very shed a few years back - a fully mechanised shearing machine. 'What happened to it?' asked Professor Parker. 'It couldn't keep up with the blokes,' said Bill. 'They had to throw it away.'  

Speed-Sketching Workshop in Perth

The good news is, we are now ready to go with the 2nd full-day sketching workshop I'm running here in Perth, WA. This one will happen on Saturday March 24th and you can sign up for this, or my Sunday 18th workshop, any time from now on. Both are capped at 16 participants, so don't leave it too late if you don't want to be disappointed -  I'm guessing I probably won't be back in WA for quite a while!

This workshop is called Quick on the Draw and is aimed at helping people learn techniques which will make their sketching speedier.

That's always one of the trickiest challenges, isn't it? And really important, especially when you haven't got all day to fiddle.

I always try to work as fast as I can anyway, as I find that the more fluid, instinctive sketches are almost always my favourites and definitely the most fun to do.

You can find out more details and sign up for your place here on Eventbrite. 

Urban Sketching Workshop in Perth: 'Getting the Best from your Concertina'

If you are reading this from Australia, especially Western Australia, and you are a fellow sketcher, or someone who would like to learn more about how to be a sketcher, this is the post for you! 

As part of my residency at UWA, I am doing two full-day workshops in Perth, on different aspects of urban sketching. They will be on Sunday March 18th and Saturday March 24th. I will cover different things each time, so you can book one or both - they work independently of each other.

Both workshops will be suitable for anyone, from beginners through to more experienced sketchers. They will start and finish on the UWA's beautiful Perth campus and will include a picnic lunch. The first workshop is now ready for booking. You can find out more details and get your place secured here.  

I will be sharing lots and lots of tips to help you feel more confident with sketching in a concertina, as well as loads of ideas for different ways to use them. I have also hand made a watercolour concertina sketchbook for each person who takes part in the March 18th workshop.

Details of workshop no 2 (which will look at different techniques for sketching quickly) will follow very soon. Watch this space!

Australian Residency: Pizza Delivery Guys

My residency provided me with another glamorous sketching opportunity at the end of last week. It involved me spending an evening squatting on the pavement...

The Centre for Transformative Work Design researchers wanted to talk to people who work in the ‘gig economy’. It wasn’t a term I was familiar with, but it means people who do jobs like delivering your pizza: one ‘gig’ at a time.

Since Friday night is a peak time for fast-food deliveries (yep, we’ve all been there…), that was when we set off, in search of the places where the delivery guys hang out (and for some reason they are mostly guys). They congregate around certain restaurants, waiting for a job to come in for them, via an app on their phone. 

We wandered about the city centre, until we found a couple of Uber Eats bikers, sitting on the pavement in a doorway. Would they speak to us? Would they mind being sketched?

They were a bit non-plussed, which was fair enough – it is all rather odd. Once they got into it though, they were great and told us lots of unexpected and interesting things. 

I’m guessing that, like me, most people would think theirs was a pretty rubbish job. They get paid extremely badly; there is a lot of waiting around and ‘wasted’ time; they always work when the rest of us are relaxing. Yet one man scored his job as 9 out of 10, while two others scored it at 7.

So why? What’s the up-side? Well, one key thing seemed to be that they can fit the work around their needs: many are foreign students, who need funds to live, but still need time to study and attend lectures. They liked the fact that they can decide moment-by-moment whether they want to work or not: total flexibility.

Another man said that the best things were that the job had really improved his confidence, taught him how to be punctual and how to handle pressure: quite a positive spin on a high-stress situation! 

It felt like an individual’s personality was definitely a factor, as one man said the waiting around was really boring, while another said he liked the down-time, waiting for jobs, because it gave him the chance to make friends with other drivers and to practise his English.

There were definitely negatives though, not least that it can be pretty dangerous, rushing around in traffic. They do sometimes have accidents. It was also REALLY noisy where the workers needed to wait - I wrote a list of noises along the bottom of the motorbike sketch. It was all so loud that I couldn’t hear the interview well enough to add the quotes at the time: the researchers recorded everything, then I added the worker’s comments earlier this week.

It is certainly proving interesting and I'm getting to be such a wide range of people.