ANZAC Dawn Ceremony in New Plymouth

The ANZAC Day Dawn Ceremony commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) World War One dawn landing in Gallipoli. This was the start of a large joint campaign (in what is now Turkey) that lasted the good part of a year. In the end, it was a bit of a stalemate but there are probably tons of stories from the Great War that involved sacrifice without much progress made. Today, ANZAC Day is a day honouring people that played a part in all the wars like a North American Remembrance Day. 2015 was the 100 year anniversary of the ANZAC troops in Gallipoli so it became a big deal in the media. As a result, lots of people assembled at memorials all over Australia and New Zealand. This morning, just before dawn, New Plymouth also had a large turnout and I came away with a night sketch.

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.

Fernery in Pukekura Park

A good place to practice drawing plants of all type is in Pukekura Park's Fernery. Didn't know about the weather last weekend so felt safe inside the glass roof.

Chaos in town on WOMAD Weekend

New Plymouth was pretty busy on WOMAD weekend. Lots of world music fans from all over came to town to see the festival. In all fairness though, the people of Taranaki love their cooked breakfasts and coffees and this cafe is chaos EVERY weekend.