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...
More sketches from Florence, including an obligatory Lambretta, we have plenty of these in Auckland but hey.
Note the spelling mistake due to a brain more focussed on the Chianti and bruschetta I was enjoying at a street side cafe. Quite liked the simplicity of some of the street places like this one, here they did Bruschetta or Bruschetta (which is really just a fancy name for some tomato oil and basil on toast), and a couple of wine or beer varieties, nothing more. perfect.
Note the spelling mistake due to a brain more focussed on the Chianti and bruschetta I was enjoying at a street side cafe. Quite liked the simplicity of some of the street places like this one, here they did Bruschetta or Bruschetta (which is really just a fancy name for some tomato oil and basil on toast), and a couple of wine or beer varieties, nothing more. perfect.
Another go at the Duomo below, this time I really got into it and got thoroughly lost in all the marble detail. I had to totally zone out and didn't notice anything or anyone else around me for an hour and a half.
At the bottom a fast one on Piazza di Santa Croce. With Santa Croce basilica behind me I tried to focus on the topography of the square, the feeling of scale and mass of the buildings and the alleys between. It reminds me a bit of the sketches of Eduardo Salavisa, he's an expert at capturing quickly the feeling and scale of a place.
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