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...
Auckland’s brand new Christmas tree in Te Komititanga Square, is looking pretty good this morning.
This tree caused a bit of a stir recently when it’s cost was made public. A ‘nice to have’ for sure but it is nice to have a Christmas symbol of some sort in downtown Auckland, especially since Santa was canned back in 2019 for being too creepy.
The enormous winking Santa that appeared on the Farmers department store for decades was deemed too creepy and even scary for today’s children😂. I had to go back to 2018 for my last sketch of the old guy (link here).
Nice to talk to so many people beginning their summer holidays today, some of them first time first time visitors to New Zealand - maybe downtown is getting its mojo back after a few years of post covid recession?
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