Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
A happy customer! Bill spotted my sketch below of his block on Khyber Pass recently and asked me to do a sketch for him. I did a larger version of his music shop Bungalow Bills on some nice thick watercolour paper with a deckled edge.
Bill is a real character, and great for a chat. I learned that he in fact engineered (at sister business, The Lab) most of the kiwi albums I (still) have on vinyl. A bunch of fantastic Flying Nun stuff like Straight Jacket Fits, Tall Dwarfs, the Chills etc right through to the Deep Grooves compilation from the early 90's and later.
A classic Straight Jacket Fits video to get you n the mood...
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