The Planter's Hut

My friend had a 60th and I was scratching my head for a subject to make into a card for him. I settled on his very big shed and came up with this. People love to receive a personal sketch card and it means a lot more than the tacky shop bought cards I think. My local print shop puts any of my work that I make into cards on to a disc, so that if I want them to make more, it saves me taking them the original.

Storm Clouds

Still trying to fit in some acrylic painting but ultimately the sketching wins out.

At the edge of urban - Part 2

This is a sketch of some people at the Taranaki Poultry and Pigeon Club Annual Show. In some ways this feels like the edge of urban sketching since it's a bit farm-related. Still, there are two things make me think that it still qualifies.

Firstly, it is held in a town hall and this is a reminder that all centres in the province of Taranaki are still dependent on farming (in different percentages) to keep the economies running smoothly. And secondly, I've heard that New Zealand has a rule where no birds or eggs are allowed into the country to prevent an exposure to bird flu - so the varieties and breeds that are here need to be well managed. It's also (maybe as a result) starting to be more and more common for someone to keep some chickens on suburban properties. I'm mentioning this since in quite a few places in the urban world, keeping animals like this is probably illegal.

Jackie even purchased a couple that were for sale to add to her existing coop. As a buyer, she had quite a selection to choose from. There were all types of chickens and pigeons with a few ducks as well.

It makes sense to integrate the rural into the cities since they maybe aren't that separate anyway.

Last year (March 2012), on our old website (that is lost in cyberspace), I wrote a Part 1:
"We decided to meet at the edge of the city where suburbia blends into rural. It was a great day and a quiet and pleasant place to sketch.
My parents have a old picture of a very tiny me in their backyard and on the other side of the fence is a cow. I've never remembered the farm behind us. I've always known it to be a sea of suburban houses that has always been there. As I was sketching this scene, I wondered how many more years that it would be until this area is subdivided and paved."

Ducks

White ducks at Lake Mangamahoe, May 2013

Rangitoto from TeAtau, Auckland

Rangitoto from TeAtau, Auckland

Eileen's first sketch/painting!

Small fountain in Pukekura Park's fernery. (Eileen)

Taranaki Poultry and Pigeon Annual Show, Waitara.

Today was the chook show in Waitara. It is always on the first weekend in May. I like to go because I love to see all the different poultry breeds, and I love chooks. It's a great place to go sketching, people, lots of activity and plenty of poultry to draw. I managed to convince Trevor and Brian to come too. I decided to travel light and only took pencils and sketchbook. This meant I got way more sketching done!

Here are my sketches:

Blue Swedish Old Drake. Second place.

ModScietti Magnani C.Y.R Ck. Second Place.

The only problem I have with the chook show is I sometimes buy chooks! This year I bought two.
Here's one of them:

White Leghorn Pullet. Hopefully she'll lay for the winter.

House & 6-Car Garage

I'm mildly fascinated with the fact that this is a small BP gas station and also a house. A newly built set-up would have no accommodation and way more pumps. (Isn't this kind of thing dangerous too?) I wonder how much longer a place like this can exist as it is in our sometimes over-regulated and high-profit world.

Sketchcrawl day

This little old typewriter appealed to me. I love the detail of the keys and check out the paper spike, an absolute office necessity before we had post-its.I can't imagine wanting to draw an old computer keyboard to the same extent sometime in the future.

Wednesday Art Group

We are back on track with our Wednesday Art Classes. A very good session today in deconstructing an object into shapes and different tonal values. We are all making extremely good progress even though today was only our 5th class!

Our model was this beautiful 1920's mannequin.

We are also learning about different techniques and landscape.

Trevor, Eileen and Norah deconstructing!