New Plymouth Waterfront

Sketching and sunburns... Summer's back!

Taranaki Gardens

Taranaki just had multiple simultaneous garden festivals. After looking through the programmes and maps, I decided to visit some at random entrants' properties after I grabbed my watercolours.

Fountain Lake

In Pukekura Park, there is a lake that has a fountain in the middle of it. A button on the edge activates a cycle of alternating water patterns for a couple of minutes. Kids love pushing it to get the fountain started. When I was there, a couple of men in suits were walking around doing work. I could tell because they were pointing at many things. One of them pointed to the button and the other one pressed it. Big smiles all around. Businessmen love the fountain too.

Kings Building

It's finally spring and I'm out in the afternooon sun. A few days later, I see this headline in the local news. It looks like I'm back to indoor sketching.

Food Court Lunch

I had some extra time while shopping so I sketched the mall food court. I noticed three things:
1.  It's amazing how little time people take when eating in a food court. People aren't there to chat; it's all business so that makes for some fast sketching. I definitely feel sketching people in a proper cafe is easier.
2.  About 80% of females partaking in a food court lunch had longer hair tied back in a ponytail.
3.  The fast food franchise kiosks with huge advertising budgets get a return on their investment. There was a constant queue for burgers while some of the other places were super quiet. The Chinese food place had one guy just standing there behind a buffet, with no takers. I kept looking over at him and it never changed. (When this one was done though, I went over to Mr. Lonely and bought a plate of sweet and sour pork.)

Kākāpō

In Puke Ariki museum again; this time drawing a Kākāpō. It's a New Zealand flightless parrot and as of today, there's only 142 left. Click here to find out more or to donate to their recovery!

Te Henui

The very rare sunny winter day off. What a beauty! I have to give credit to Maurice for the idea to come down to Te Henui stream to draw and paint. I could have happily sat there all day and sketched.

Taranaki Mountainairs

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see some B-ball action here in Taranaki. It turns out that the local boys didn't have enough left in the tank to finish the season up with a win.

Standard 10 and the Harvard

Some more winter sketching in the Taranaki Aviation Technology & Transport Museum. There's so much stuff in here. Most things are grouped into sections but there's always the odd specimen randomly inserted. A toy-sized 1950's car is snuggled under the wing of a Harvard (T-6 Texan) fighter plane. I drew the plane a few years ago and I think it was damaged on a landing. That's why it lives in here with the cute cars and why its current propeller is too small. (It looks tons better than with no propeller though!)

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

This was done over multiple lunches at about 15 minutes per day. The first day, there was a car with a roof rack. Being finicky, I didn't want to draw that so left the bottom for tomorrow. The next day, there was van with a roof rack. The third day, 6 out of the 8 vehicles had a roof rack. I was able to wrap up the cars and the people on the fourth day but it seemed like there was a conspiracy.

Pukekura Park

A few months ago I was sitting on the steps of the band rotunda in Pukekura Park sketching. I started to watercolour it there but ran out of time about half-way through. I took it home and put it aside. Now that we're having a rainy week I took this pad back out to finish it and here we are.

Ngamotu Engine

It's been a while since I'd been to the Taranaki Aviation Technology and Transport Museum. While I was there, they fired up an engine from a ship used to dredge sand from the seaport. The sign said that it ran at about 100rpm on the ship but when I was there, in the museum, it was much slower than that. (Maybe 10-20%?) At that speed, it was making this sound that was like it was breathing. It was so hypnotic that I ended up sitting down and sketching it.

I made a 60-second video, if you want to hear the breathing sound:

I'm looking for a winter sketching venue so maybe I'll be back periodically.

Downtown New Plymouth

It's starting to feel like the beginning of winter sketching in New Zealand.

Holdens

I was sketching the people checking out some down-under cars that were driven here from all over New Zealand on the weekend.

Two cars down was a blue Holden that had a sign that featured a sketch by Murray Dewhurst.

Fitzroy Dairy

A bit of a return to form. Although it used to be common, I haven't used a red pen on a sketch for at least five years. I drew this convenience store seven years ago and included picture of the CookieTime cookie monster on the top. This time I tried to show a glow that emanates from the actual chocolate-chunked beauties themselves.

45 Tonne Crane (for hire!)

At the Taranaki Truck Show: Sitting in the shade drawing a crane, drinking L&P and overhearing the truck drivers talk shop on their day off.

Ngamotu Beach

Quick watercolour sketch of Ngamotu Beach at low tide.

Traffic Lights

I wasn't going to draw this. I planned on taking a few minutes of my day to get out of email debt or maybe network socially. I checked my messages but then put it away. I reached for my sketchbook instead and drew what was in front of me. I guess that is the nature of the process. I don't have a drawing ability that I was born with. Any skill that I have, has been practiced for years. I suppose that I draw as much as some other people use their phones, and that, really could be the secret.

Hibiscus

Yeah, I know we need to finish building that fence! When we were buying some more nails though, we decided to hide for a while in the garden section of the hardware store. It had coffee and cake!

Otago Chambers

Where's the Otago Chambers? 800 kilometres away in Taranaki, of course!

Baby Blood

Apparently, I have baby blood. That's what the nurse said when I was donating blood. It turns out that it wasn't an Arnold Schwarzenegger type of insult. Mine just happens to fit the uncommon criteria if a new born baby needs a blood transfusion. Afterwards, I had a cuppa and sketched the other donors.

Moturoa Shops

I'm sitting on a bench in Moturoa. Sketching in the shade, seeing the poor parking techniques and noticing how every old guy walking to the bank is still carrying a chequebook. When you're drawing, this stuff seems to pop out. Across the street is Asian Food Supplies; they specialise in asian food supplies. Beside that, just on the outskirts of the shops are a few houses that have Pizza Hut roofs, like back when Pizza Hut used to be restaurants. (Google image search "Pizza Hut Roof".) I've included a couple photos that describe the architecture better if you still can't see it.

Colourize Project: Railway Walkway

Here's another sketch from three years ago that I've added to my 'Colourize Project' where I take old sketches and give them the colour treatment. This was sketched a couple weeks before the Christmas holiday and wrote this:
"This is an old railway line with a pretty cool stone wall that runs between two busy streets in New Plymouth. Now it's just for people. On each side of this thin park is crazy traffic caused by crazy people, desperate to finish their year-end chores. Everyone is so rushed here in New Zealand at this time of year. A Christmas / Summer combo holiday makes people insane, irrational and very tired. The big solid rock walls insulated against the noise and was a nice lunch hour time-out from the frenzied late-December pace."

Unloading a ship at Port Taranaki

Tons of identical trucks queue up to unload a fertiliser ship at Port Taranaki