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...
Breaking news this evening was of an historic hotel about to fall into the street in the central Auckland!
There I was on site within minutes trying to capture the building before it became fully obscured by emergency vehicles, police cars and cranes or even just fell over.
The 124 year old 'Palace Hotel' (formerly the Aurora Hotel) is currently undergoing renovations when large cracks started to appear in the facade today and pieces started falling off. From what I could see from outside the cordon is it's definitely looking rough.
The renovated hotel was planned to reopen in time for the Rugby World Cup in 2011 as a brothel (that's right - sex addled rugby fans running wild in our city!), but will unfortunately most likely be demolished overnight. Even as a brothel it's sad to see yet another historic Auckland landmark disappear.
Definitely the closest thing this sketcher has got to reportage sketching!
There I was on site within minutes trying to capture the building before it became fully obscured by emergency vehicles, police cars and cranes or even just fell over.
The 124 year old 'Palace Hotel' (formerly the Aurora Hotel) is currently undergoing renovations when large cracks started to appear in the facade today and pieces started falling off. From what I could see from outside the cordon is it's definitely looking rough.
The renovated hotel was planned to reopen in time for the Rugby World Cup in 2011 as a brothel (that's right - sex addled rugby fans running wild in our city!), but will unfortunately most likely be demolished overnight. Even as a brothel it's sad to see yet another historic Auckland landmark disappear.
Definitely the closest thing this sketcher has got to reportage sketching!
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