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...
The Kerala Sketchbook is now available. To purchase, just drop me a message or head over to my ETSY store.
Drawn over two weeks of travel sketching historic Fort Kochi on the Arabian Sea to
caparisoned (love that term!) elephants and the Thrissur Sketchgala festival in Thrissur at the largest festival in Asia, to sub-alpine tea plantations and colonial bungalows in Munnar, and to canal life in Kumarakom.
All sketched on location in 45°C heat while surrounded by a crowd of onlookers – coming from sparsely populated New Zealand I needed to quickly reset my idea of personal space!
This 56 page book contains 45 sketches painted in my signature gouache and kraft paper style.
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