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...
I happened across the grim sight of the Kestrel at the Titan Slipway today. I'd long thought it would make a great sketch subject – when it was afloat – but of course procrastinated and missed out.
Sadly it sank a few weeks back and now I've finally got to sketch it – but as a reclaimed hulk with almost all of it's passenger decks and wheel houses missing! Word is that no one has the money to restore it, and it will be cut up for wood. Very sad indeed.
Here are some illustrations of the Kestrel in happier times. From the book Reflections on Auckland Harbour by Gainor Jackson, published in 1975...
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