Liardet Street

There's a pedestrian bridge that connects to a hill that overlooks the Tasman Sea. Of course I'm drawing in the other direction. I don't know. It just how I do it.

Liardet Street

I just got back from my annual holiday so I haven't been drawing much the last few weeks. Same vacation as last year; it's the one where I hurt my back and do nothing for a while. It's good to be drawing again.

Cafe on the corner

There's a cafe on the corner with a big window towards the intersection. I like the variety of different directions and I can practice my life drawing. The one above, I did this week. The one below, I did in 2015, but never uploaded it. The bottom one is a coloured rainy early morning sketch from 2016.

Rainy mornings in New Plymouth

More wet weather this week. This drawing was started last month. On a busy corner in New Plymouth, there's a cafe that looks out into the intersection. Since it's winter, it's still dark before work and the wet roads have lots of reflected light. I get a drink and sketch for about 15 minutes at a time. Now that it's August, I've noticed that I've filled up half a coffee card.

St Andrews Church , New Plymouth

St Andrews Church , a view from the southern side .  MLB

St Andrews Church - wonderfully distorted in the reflection on the New Plymouth District Council building across the road.  This sketch along with others from the Taranaki Sketchers will be on display at the Church during the  PowerCo Taranaki Garden Spectacular fringe festival , 30  October  to 8 November.     MLB

4 palms

A row of four palm trees in front of a church, alongside a busy New Plymouth intersection. I had a few people shout from the cars during the red lights that my drawing was starting to come along. If you're one of those in traffic, checking out the finished version here, this one's for you.

St Andrews Church, New Plymouth NZ

St Andrews Church, New Plymouth, NZ

St Andrew's Syndrome

In 2009, St Andrew's was the location of the first ever Taranaki Sketchers sketchcrawl. (This was back when the group was just Scott and Paul!) Due to the misleading and deceptive height of the tower, it was found to be difficult to fit the building to a page without cutting off the top or distorting and shrinking the overall drawing. Since then, if a local sketcher can't fit a subject on a page or squishes the image to contain it, it is said around here that the drawing may be suffering from St Andrew's Syndrome.
I don't believe that I've given the original location a try yet, so when we were invited by the church to draw their home, I was curious to see if I would experience the phenomenon. It turned out that the affliction started to develop! I cured it by constantly turning pages. What you see here is a completed fifth start.
(Fun Fact: That's Maurice and Scott in this sketch, sitting by the traffic lights.)

Pohutukawa Tree

When the Pohutukawa trees turn red, you know it's summer.

Nissan Micra's Big Day Out

I actually came here to sketch the intersection. There was a street bench with a nice view up the hill that I had scoped out the day before. On the day, a Nissan Micra was parked right in my perfect view. (I guess there was no car parked here the day before.) 

So I thought, if this car was, say, a Maserati I would have no trouble starting my drawing. I thought, even though this car isn't an extreme luxury auto, it could be someone's treasured little car. Maybe it even has name (like Rupert, even)! 

So in the end, I decided to show this little runabout a little love and feature it right in the middle. He's probably really enjoying his day out in downtown New Plymouth. 

Coastal Walkway - The start of summer

Original drawing before colouring

This is from November on one of the first summer-like days of this season. I didn't post this one at the time since the original seemed to be missing something without the colouring.

For those people that haven't been to New Plymouth, I'm sitting on some steps leading to a pedestrian bridge (over railway tracks) that connects the central commercial area to the coastal walkway. This walkway runs for several kilometres in both directions.

Pukekura Railway

The New Plymouth Society of Model & Experimental Engineers offered rides on miniature coal-powered steam engines for a dollar. 'Pukekura Railway' (as it is named) is a small double loop track in central New Plymouth. From a distance, these tiny trains seem like toys but they are actually pretty cool (and reasonably powerful) little engines.

Cnr Liardet and Gilbert Streets.

Today we sketched on and around Liardet Street in New Plymouth. This lovely old house is on the corner of Gilbert and Liardet Streets. I found it quite a challenge.

New Plymouth District Council

Today we met at the front of the New Plymouth District Council building, some of us did a sketch of the building as we have a financial interest in it and others sketched some of the older and interesting houses near by. The after match function took place at the Kiosk, this helped with the maintenance of my figure.






















 A photo of the New Plymouth District Council building where we sketched today.

Washers

I was sitting on the steps of St Andrew's Church in New Plymouth on the corner of Courtenay and Liardet Streets. I was watching the receding busy one-way traffic, the fire fighters in the hall across the street and paying attention to the details of the traffic lights as I sketched. The 'squeegee bandits' were out on the corner as well. These are a group of young people who are making a bit of cash by washing windows at red lights. There is a bit of controversy about this right now. It's in the newspaper occasionally and they may or may not be allowed to continue due to complaints. From what I was observing, they are generally polite with everyone and have no problem if you don't want a wash. Ironically, the only public menace on that corner was the van of teenagers driving around the block over and over again, yelling at them to 'get a life'.