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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...

Wet and wild – keeping it simple for winter sketching

India night sketching teaches values

Escape to the Bay of Islands

How to keep cool AND create a better sketch

The Municipal Destructor

The Grey Lynn streets asking for widescreen

Alvis is in the building

Swashbucklers a fun exercise in maximalism sketching

Bikepacking with the 'stealth kit'

This Studebaker more than a car?

"Muuuuum, why wouldn't you do what I wanted you to do?"

Camouflaged up Tuateawa Road

Drawn under a Dragon Tree at the Auckland Botanic Gardens

Beach Hop

Pāpāmoa dunescape

A taste of Queensland beach life

Brisbane contrasts

Sunflowers and machinery at Franklin Farm

The mighty Lada Niva

You can't beat Wellington on a good day