On the corner

When this one was started, I was just looking for a warm and dry place to do a bit of sketching. I ended up in the Egmont Street Deli and came back there on multiple lunches to finish this one off. While the building on the opposite corner has tons of detail, that's not the reason that it took me so long. It turns out that the person who makes the desserts at the deli really knows what they are doing. So, I ended up doing way more eating at lunch, than drawing. (If you're the one responsible for that and are reading this, I think that the orange chocolate torte should be available EVERY day.)

New Plymouth Prison

Today we went to the New Plymouth Prison. It  closed March 15 2013 and is no longer used. This category 1 historic building is land-banked for Treaty of Waitangi settlements and is in the care of Land Information New Zealand.

New Plymouth Prison, dating from the 1870s, was the country's oldest operational prison before it was closed. It has special heritage significance as an artefact of the development of New Zealand's penal system.

The structure evolved from an 1850s building, a wooden military hospital built on the former Maori stronghold of Pukaka Pa, now also known as Marsland Hill, in central New Plymouth. Constructed in the late 1850s to serve the adjacent military barracks, the hospital building provided care to Imperial troops injured in the conflicts of the Taranaki Wars of the 1860s. After the last regiments had been withdrawn it was decided to reuse the building to meet a pressing need within the community, as the new district jail.


Here is my sketch:

 Today I decided to try and sketch in gray-scale using graphite pencils.

 You can just see the top of Mount Taranaki in the background.

Ref: http://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/903

The Breakfast Club

Winter sketching means coffee shop sketching. If it's rainy I'll have a drink someplace dry before work. One wet week, I went to Joe's Garage pretty much everyday. There's a bunch of very regulars who meet up there and chat before work. It's always a varied selection of the usual group of people. Each day I drew a different person. As a result, some of the very regular Joe's didn't make the cut while one guy made it into the drawing two times.

I also included a colorised version of an older sketch from the same place.

15th July 2017 The First fine Day for Ages!

Yesterday was the first fine Saturday for ages! Three weeks to be exact since we went to Churchill Heights. We went to the breakwater at Port Taranaki. We've sketched here several times before, but there's always something new to do. I decided on the breakwater and boats. I was looking into the sun. It's very interesting how this alters your perception of colour.

Here is my sketch:

Pencil and watercolour. I decided to go back to drawing my frame on the page before I start. This was completed on site in about an hour.

Boats Bananas Missions & Planes

 Beautiful crisp winters day after a wild week.  Enjoyable sketching near the port.

Pukekura Park banana palms

Brian outside the library

 San Capistrano Mission - southern California

Griffith Observatory - near Hollywood sign

Zapote mortuary urn 600 - 900 AD - at the wonderful Palm Springs Art Museum

Gull winged Corsair - my dad worked on armaments for these in the Solomons in WWII (drawn at the Palm Springs Aviation Museum - ideal spot as so dry - nothing deteriorates)

P-40 Warhawk fighter - used in Bougainville where my dad was in the air force in WWII

New Plymouth Ravens

A while ago we went to go see the New Zealand National Inline Hockey Tournament, here in Taranaki. Truth be told, I just went to do some sketching. One of the games was actually pretty exciting though. The local, New Plymouth Ravens, pulled their goalie in the last seconds to tie it up and send it into overtime. The game winner was scored by one of the smaller players too. So I came away with this sketch and brought one that I made of last year's tournament to get the colour treatment.

A Sketch in Spite of the Rain.

It absolutely poured down today, so much so that the centre of town was completely flooded and some of the shops suffered flooding too. It was wisely decided the weather was no good for sketching today, but.....................
At the end of the day the rain all stopped and then the sun came out. Lots of people were taking the chance to get out of the house. I went down to the Foreshore Walkway by East End Beach and did this quick 45 minute sketch.

Luckily it was a quick sketch, because as I finished the rain started spitting again.

4th July 2017 Midweek Sketching with Andrew from Wellington Sketchers.

We had a visit by Andrew from Wellington Sketchers on Tuesday. We met at the Egmont Street Deli and because the weather was pretty iffy, we sat and sketched out the window.


Sketch to follow soon.

We then went to The Mayfair for lunch and did some more sketching.

We sat outside and this is the view looking down Devon Street.

Rainy Day Sketching

It was a rainy Saturday yesterday so we went to Puke Ariki to see the Homework exhibition. This exhibition is open to all Taranaki Artists in any media; established or emerging artists. Three of our sketch group have work in this exhibition.

After that we all split up to sketch. I went up to the Air Bridge and sketched the view looking up Ariki Street.

Here is my sketch:

Pen, Wash and Watercolour.

Half done.

California & Texas

Caltech graduation ceremony - hot - outside - the speaker was an inspiring black woman astronaut from the back streets of Chicago.

26 miles to Catalina Island - via catamaran off Long Beach

Visit to JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) near Caltech in Pasadena - here in the clean room they are assembling the next Mars rover capsule for 2020

Curiosity Mars Rover

Texas - native - Nine Banded Armadillo

Moose at Field and Stream

$180 cowboy boots

Watched 250,000 Mexican free tailed bats take off down the Bayou at dusk for a feed

 Houston Artcar museum

Neighbour's TR3

Museum of Fine Arts

 Elissa tall ship - at Galveston

Fishermans Wharf bar

Johnson Space Center - Saturn V

Mission Control - & rover

Astronaut had just come out of the buoyancy tank - all that was left was his pants

Moon buggy

A coffee where the students hang out