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...
Sketching around Napier at Christmaswas a lot of fun, there is always so
much to draw in 'The Bay'.
A visit to the MTG (Hawkes Bay
Museum) to see the Speedlines and
Ziggurates: Deco House Style
photography exhibition inspired
us to look a bit closer at the
deco suburb of Marewa, the
source of the top two sketches
here. There are streets and
streets of these houses in Marewa.
Next is Louis Hays office in
Herschell Street. This where
he designed many of Napier's
prominent Art Deco and Mission
Revival buildings after the devastating
1931 earthquake. If you've been
to Napier you'll recognise some
of the buldings he designed listed here.
And lastly, at the bottom, and not fitting
in at all with all these deco buildings –
a Victorian villa – not everything was
destroyed in the earthquake and you'll
still find plenty of these dotted around
the Napier hills.
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