In Memoriam

I went to the ANZAC dawn service this year again. It was another large turnout of people paying respects to those lost during different wars. I liked the darkness of the pre-dawn night together with the bright spotlights. It's hard to draw if your page is in a shadow so I found it more difficult than last year. (2015's is below)

Both of these were inspired by the 2014 sketch by Auckland's Murray Dewhurst. I really liked the blackness of the night, the strong shadows and the bright coloured spotlights on the monuments. This drawing of his (below) made me want to try my own:

Also, fairly recently, an urban sketcher from Germany, Florian (Flaf) Afflerbach, passed away. He freely admitted that he was starting to be known as 'the car guy', but didn't seem to mind. (I'd be okay with drawing cars like him too!) They were usually European cars in a three-quarter view with a slight 'fish-eye lens' distortion to the middle/closest area of the drawing. When our local sketch group was invited to draw a local car collection, I tried to draw a 1973 Triumph Stag in his style as a sort of tribute. (See Florian Afflerbach's sketches here.)

Paritutu

Paritutu is a 150 metre tall volcanic rock on the coast of New Plymouth at Port Taranaki. It's a pretty weird mix of nature and industry here. You can climb the thing and see Mount Taranaki, the Tasman Sea and the natural coastline of cliffs and black ironsand beaches. Then turn around and you get the start of the port and tank farms. The smokestack that's there is from an old gas power station and is taller at about 200 metres.