Welcome to the blog. On the this site you will find recent sketches right through to truely terrible sketches made on location over 20 years ago. Looking back at those sketches I sometimes wonder why I even continued with the practice! So why do I sketch? 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. Alon...
I recently took the MG to Meguiar's Coffee & Cars at the Auckland Showgrounds.
It's fair to say this free event is a popular, with something like 1600 cars on display on the day, and another 400 parked around the neighbourhood. It’s always worth a look, and a sketch of course.
You never know what interesting vehicles will turn up and this time was no different, with various rare exotica, including a Bricklin sports car. I had never heard of a Bricklin and was taken by it’s extreme wedge profile – think Lotus Eclat, Heron MJ1 and you’ll have a rough idea of what I mean.
The highlight for me though was parking the MG next to a gleaming 1930 Studebaker (the MG looked tiny in comparison) and learning a little of the Studebaker’s history from it’s owners.
I just had to sketch it of course. As I sketched, I learned a bit more about the car, and the more I learned, the more I realised I was, in a way, sketching more than a car, I was sketching some interesting lives.
Janet and Roger bought their Studebaker as a rusty roadside wreck in 1966 – the same year they were married – for just $70. Janet admitted she was so embarrassed at the state of the car that when they towed it home she hid in the back! Well there's absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about these days – the car looks almost brand new.
Roger showed me some of the Studebaker’s quirks, including it’s ‘artillery’ style wooden wheels which he adjusts by hand, needing tightening from time to time. The steel rims are curved into shape and bolted together where the 2 ends meet – over the spokes – they’re not a pressed single rim like the MG's wire wheels. So that was something I had never considered before.
He also pointed out his very ‘pro’ looking pinstriping along the swage line. Clearly I could use some tips at brush work looking at this wobbly sketch below (my lines seemed to get wobblier as more and more people stopped by to look and comment at what I was doing).
I got a quick portrait of Janet and Roger seated on the car’s running board relaxing with a cup of tea. Now you can’t do that on many cars can you!
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