Welcome to Auckland Sketchbook

Welcome to the blog. On the this site you will find recent sketches right through to truely terrible sketches made on location over 20 years ago. Looking back at those sketches I sometimes wonder why I even continued with the practice! So why do I sketch? 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. Alon...

The library that turned to drink

Is it just me or does Auckland have a lot of used to be's. 

We have the old Central Post Office, now the Britomart Train Station, there's the old Auckland Train Station, now student accommodation and even an old post office turned pub – De Post in Mt Eden. And since 1995, the old Grafton Library has been brewing and serving beers as Galbraith's Alehouse.

I guess visitors to Galbraith's Alehouse have an alternative thirst for knowledge and enlightenment! Thirsty I was too after creating this sketch, nothing a brewed on-site Bob Hudson Bitter can't fix.

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