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...
My way of celebrating part of Matariki this year was to coast around the neighbourhood on my bike until I found something interesting to sketch. The perfect way to spend a public holiday I reckon.
For some reason this pretty typical Grey Lynn street caught the eye but I soon realised it felt restricted on the page – so I tore another page out of the sketchbook (I never do that!) and tacked it on the side. Maybe I'll do more of these.
The result gives a much better idea of what the streets around here look like...


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