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...
There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times.
The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restaurant, Dice & Fork a board gaming cafe and even Four Shells Kava Lounge.
Sketched on Sunday with Urban Sketchers Auckland on a freezing winters day. I quickly realised it wasn't going to fit on one page, so pulled a page out of the Stillman & Birn sketchbook. Next time I'll line it up a little better because this took an hour in Photoshop to put together.
I have previously drawn the Victoria park area a bunch of times, including this one from 2013. Wow, time flies just as styles and materials change with time! Here is a more recent version of the Greenkeeper Cafe sketched in warmer times last summer.
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