Posts

Welcome to Auckland Sketchbook

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...

Escape to the Bay of Islands

How to keep cool AND create a better sketch

Brisbane contrasts

Bluff Hill, an alternative view

Flowering Dragon Tree in Freemans Bay

Epic views over Western Park

Sketching backwards

More Albany Road, Ponsonby

Albany Road villas catch the sun

St Marys Bay Turret

Ashby Homestead

Tapapakanga Regional Park

Corner Haslett and Copeland Street, Eden Terrace

Crummer Road time-lapse

From Eden Terrace to Arch Hill

Peek-a-boo

Past & Present exhibition

Demolition by fire in Palmerston North

Couldrey House, Wenderholm Regional Park

The Toy Makers Cottage