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've been working just over the road from the Sky City Convention Centre since before the project started a year or so ago. In that time the noise levels in the office have gone through the roof! Thousands of trucks have traveled past our windows, at first trucking out the 180,000 cubic metres of demolished buildings, soil and clay. Now the trucks are bringing in the pre-cast concrete slabs and clean fill. There are four cranes now working flat-out, and constantly beeping, with another horn blasting at random intervals throughout the day. With the NZ Tourism building next to us set to be demolished I think it's time to find a quieter place to work!
I chose a quiet Sunday morning to try to sketch the great hole in the ground from a closer view point. I didn't last long — even though I was standing outside the gates on Nelson Street and with absolutely no construction work happening. I'd just got the basics of this sketch down when this very efficient security guard appeared from nowhere and moved me on. I managed to sketch him on the spot and colour him later from memory.
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