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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...

A sketchy day out in Auckland — Part 2

A sketchy day out in Auckland — Part 1

1937 Bentley Park Ward

A blooming good day for painting

Veedubs and villas in Northcote Point

Heavenly crumbling masonry and rusty ironwork at Waikumete Cemetery

Melbourne. It's all about colour.

Whanganui weekend

Nothing beats a swim and sketch on the same day

Bluff Hill, an alternative view

Kerala Sketchbook now available

Drawn over an art deco parapet

Auckland's sketchable alleyways

Featured in Classic Driver Magazine

Hardy sketchers weather Twin Oak Drive

Copies of my Kerala Sketchbook now available