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...
It's all thanks to the The Grey Book which forces you to lay down lights on the grey paper page first.
When
it works well it helps to short-cut the dreaded 'pencil first' tendency
that tries to sneak in from time to time. The looser the initial
white is - the better the sketch turns out - and the pencil doesn't
even get a look in.
The
old Victorian houses in Albany Road, Ponsonby are perfect for trialing the technique and it makes the decorative white fretwork stand out nicely.
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