[Music playing]

[Screen shows a blue sky with clouds. Text on screen reads, ‘Curriculum Secondary Learners – HSIE. Teaching geographical skills series. Field sketches. Presented by Melissa Ellis’.]

Melissa Ellis

Hello.

[Presenter is sitting on a rock wall at the beach. In the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, the text reads, ‘Melissa Ellis. HSIE Curriculum Support Officer’.]

Today, we're here at Shelly Beach in Ballina, and I'm going to give you a quick overview of how to draw field sketches. Geographers use field sketches to observe the local environment, their place, and space. So what we're looking for is an observation of our natural and our built environment.

There are several steps involved in a field sketch, and it's one of the easiest ways to conduct geographical fieldwork.

[Screen briefly changes to show the beach from the presenter’s point of view. On the left of the presenter, there is a concrete path and some grass. On the right, there is sand, some rocks and the ocean. Dividing these 2 areas is the rock wall that the presenter is sitting on. In the background, there is a tree-covered mountain. The screen then goes back to showing the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

When we're conducting a field sketch, basically, what we want to do is select an appropriate area to observe. In this case, I've chosen a location that demonstrates human features and physical features, natural features of our environment.

[Screen once again shows the presenter’s point of view. People can be seen walking along the beach. The screen then goes back to showing the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

The first step we do is identify the actual square that we're going to sketch.

[Presenter stretches her hands out in front of her. Both hands make an ‘L’ shape with the thumb and forefinger. She then uses her hands to create the outline of an invisible box shape that is roughly the size of her head.]

So you do this by having two L-shaped fingers, such as this. And whatever you've got in that frame of your fingers is what you will be sketching. So you make an observation of that to start with.

[Presenter puts down their hands. She pulls out a clipboard with a piece of paper on it.]

The second step is to draw onto your sheet of paper the rectangle or square that you're planning to observe. Okay, so I'm going to do that now.

[Screen changes to show a bird’s eye view of the presenter’s clipboard and paper. The presenter uses a ruler to draw a rectangular box that is slightly smaller than the size of the paper.]

Do not worry about being exact. It's an observation.

[Screen shows the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

Okay, so once you've got your square or rectangle that you're observing drawn on your piece of paper, then you're going to divide the scene in front of you into three zones – foreground, middle ground and background.

[Screen shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. Presenter uses the ruler to draw two horizontal lines inside the rectangle, dividing it into equal thirds. While the presenter is talking, text on screen labels the bottom third as ‘Foreground’, the middle third as ‘Middle ground’, and the top third as ‘Background’. Presenter points to each of these sections with their pencil.]

So you just do this by drawing very light lines, so it doesn't interfere with your final product. Foreground, middle ground, and background.

[Screen shows the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

This helps you break down the information you're seeing in front of you, so that you don't have too much information and you become overwhelmed with what to draw first.

[Screen shows the presenter’s point of view of the beach.]

So looking at the scene directly in front of me, what is in the foreground is the beach.

[Screen shows the rock wall that the presenter is sitting on.]

A rock wall.

[Screen shows the concrete footpath, surrounded by grass and bordered by rocks.]

A footpath and another rock wall.

[Screen shows a slope covered in greenery. A house sits behind the slope.]

And then some vegetation.

[Screen shows the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

So I'm going to start my field sketch with an illustration of that.

[Screen shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. She has begun sketching the features that were described. Screen then goes back to showing the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

Now that I've got my foreground drawn, I just want to look for finer details – more significant things to observe. Something I did not observe before was, there's actually a bench and a fence in the foreground of my illustration. So I'm going to draw that in as well.

[Screen shows the presenter’s point of view. It then shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. More details have been added to the foreground of the drawing.]

Now, I'll move on to the middle ground section of my field sketch.

[Screen shows the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

What I'm observing in my middle ground is a rock ledge, some sand, the footpath and also a building. So I'll sketch that into the middle ground.

[Screen shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. The presenter begins darkening some lines and adding more detail into the middle ground of their drawing. Screen then goes back to showing the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

I notice here as well the footpath disappears around the bend behind the building.

[Screen shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. They add in the details that were mentioned. Screen then goes back to showing the presenter sitting on the rock wall.]

Further along in the background of the sketch, I've got a headland, a sweeping bay of a beach, and the hill directly in the foreground actually hides what's in the background a little bit. So you can't see what's behind that hill, so I cannot sketch it.

[Screen briefly shows the presenter’s point of view, then goes back to showing them sitting on the rock wall.]

Okay, the final step in my field sketch is to label the features. So you're looking for things that you want to identify for future reference. The reason we do this is because sometimes, when you get back to the classroom or back home from your field work, you might forget finer details. So labelling your field sketch helps to remember what was there on the site when you went to visit.

[Screen shows the presenter’s clipboard and paper. They have added in a number of labels and arrows, including ‘Building’, ‘Vegetation’, ‘Footpath’, ‘Hill’, ‘Beach’, ‘Ocean’ and ‘Fence’. The presenter has also added a compass, as well as the title, ‘Shelly Beach, Ballina’.]

So the more detail you provide, the better.

[Text on screen reads, ‘Acknowledgements. NSW Geography K-10 syllabus © NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales 2015. See the NESA website for additional copyright information. NSW Department of Education Curriculum Secondary Learners. Southern Cross School of Distance Education.’

Screen shows an Indigenous artwork. The artwork features a landscape with native Australian animals. It is titled ‘Our Country’ by Garry Purchase. Text at the top of the screen reads, ‘Filming of these videos has taken place on Bundjalung land’. Video concludes by displaying the NSW Government logo.]

[End of transcript]