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 have experimented with coloured sketchbooks A LOT over the last 7 or so years and went through a big Hahnemuhle 'Greybook' phase.
I really enjoyed how opaque media, especially acrylic markers, from Posca and Molotow floated over the smooth page surface and how the intense colours popped off the page! These graffiti sketches from 2023 seem to be a good illustration of that...
I enjoyed capturing this wall on Poynton Terrace, a lane behind Karangahape Road, and a long-time destination for graffiti artists. Some of these have changed now but it's still a top spot to see some of the best examples of graffiti art in Auckland.
I also captured Charles and Janine Williams at work in Poynton Terrace way back in 2014 as part of the All Fresco Street Art Festival – see the post here. My sketch style was pretty different then!
Equally Cross Street on the other side of Karangahape Road is a great destination to see graffiti. Sunset Tattoo, here framed on each side by graffiti works by Haser, really popped off those grey pages.
Sadly the Haser work has been painted over as part of the decorations for the opening of the City Rail Link station at the end of the street, but he tattoo studio looks as luminious as ever.
Want to see some more Greybook sketches? Here's my first post describing the process from 2019.
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