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 get a kick out of seeing the bemused expressions on peoples faces as they enter a cafe with a big group sketching each other in a cafe.
I finally made it to a 'Let's Sketch' having missed New Plymouth 2017 and Wellington in 2018. Pretty hard to miss this one when it's just down the road eh.
The weekend saw dozens of sketchers join us in Auckland for 2 days of sketching. They came from all over with a good mix of our usuals, a couple of new faces, Anne, Andrew, Dave and Gerrard from Wellington, Tina from Whangarei, a sketcher from Singapore and Hosannah from Guangzhou.
I really enjoyed hanging out with everyone and seeing them all enjoying themselves, and now I'm looking forward to next year — wherever that may be.
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