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...


Comments

david said…
Hi Murray,
I saw your sketches on "Urban Sketchers" and would just like to say how much I enjoy it. The victorian houses have a lot of character, and I think your version of the library was much better than the original - they should rebuild it according to your drawing!
Somehow your sketches look so simple at first glance but get more complicated the more I look at them. I wish I could draw like that.

Keep on sketching

David