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...
This was my first stop on a blisteringly sunny day in Auckland on Sunday.
This first stop was in Devonport with the Auckland Plein Air group. Most of the artists were sensible and chose to paint around the cricket domain but I chose to capture the glistening sunlight reflecting off the waters surface at Torpedo Bay across the road. This required a lot of sunblock!
That bright light was challenging because it kept moving and then soon disappeared off the water altogether. The trick was trying to capture the naval museum and historic houses on the side of North Head without getting too lost in the details.
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