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...
No really, how do you treat the treaty grounds? As a sketcher you kind of want to capture the essence and atmosphere of one our most important places, the place where our founding document was first signed by Maori chiefs and the English crown on the 6th of February 1840. It's also a place of drama every Waitangi Day as media whip up some nationwide alarm when sparks fly between protesters and politicians.
But I'm here today with the sketchbook, there's no drama at all, only sunshine, people playing cricket on manicured lawns, restored treaty houses and stunning views to a parasailer being towed slowly past a cruise ship moored in the glistening bay.
I decided I would have to cheat with this one - I wanted to fit it ALL in. So this is my attempt to try and squeeze Busby's house in on the left, the Meeting House square in the middle, the grounds with cricketers, the cruise liner and parasailer and even Russell township across the water, sadly the scene has lost some bush in the middle!
Comments