Festival of Lights

Every year, the city of New Plymouth lights up Pukekura Park with coloured lights and displays. It's called the Festival of Lights and happens every year. Each night for 6 weeks there are different entertainment acts such as musicians and outdoor movies projected onto a large screen. Admission is free to all shows so this central park is quite popular every night that it isn't raining. 

To the left is my original ballpoint pen sketch and last one for 2012.

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.

Gill Street, New Plymouth

Sitting under a palm tree in Puke Ariki landing. Behind that partial wall is a stream that runs through the CBD. The trees on the other side barely hide a shopping mall parking building. Other buildings in the back include the BNZ/Quest building and the Liardet St Apartments that, for whatever reason, seem to show up often in my sketchbook lately. Other than that, there were lots of Christmas shoppers about. I must admit that I started this one last year! I ran out of time and was going to come back the next day (in December) and finish it. I got too busy at work and then it became way too hot. The heatwave was followed by some tropical rain. Before I knew it, it was next year!

(Apologies to the Canadian tourist who I had a chat with who may have wanted to see the finished drawing. Finally finished!)

Fitzroy Shops

This week the sketching was in the Fitzroy area of New Plymouth. I have to admit that I don't go here very often and when I do it's to go to the beach, which is really great. Although the beach is nice, I always felt that Fitzroy might not always be everyone's destination. It doesn't seem like a place that people go to but a place that people move through.
On one of the last Christmas shopping weekends... at lunch time... and near an intersection, I watched time-poor and desperate drivers become careless and precarious. Are these Christmas shoppers or is it always like this?

Bruce's Dairy

Bruce's Dairy - A corner store that is on a corner and beside a roundabout. This seems like a pretty good location to me. It had a steady flow of traffic but I didn't draw any cars today since there weren't any that stayed long enough.
While I drew this building, I witnessed the death of a car. It looked like it had overheated. I could hear the mobile serviceman informing the owners that it would take more to fix the car than they had originally paid for it. I watched them all leave soon after. The owners came back with a rental car and loaded all of their belongings into it. After they drove away, a tilt-bed truck later came for the body. It reminded me of the time that my car died. It was in the middle of nowhere and that was reasonably difficult to sort out. Now this car, coming to a stop here (or just to the left of my sketch actually) is in town and right across the street from a place that sells pretty much everything.

Devon Street in New Plymouth

Here is some more downtown sketching in New Plymouth done about two weeks apart. Devon Street would be the main retail shopping street and this intersection at Currie Street is, in a way, the centre of town. This divides Devon Street East and Devon Street West and the address numbering increases in both directions, starting from this corner. The centre of town!

This next one took about a week of lunches to finish. A nice shady spot on Devon Street West about three or four buildings down the street from the other drawing's point of view. You might be able to figure out which building this is in the other drawing too. (Hint: The tallest one.)

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.

Devon Street - October 2012

Just an older building on the main shopping street here in New Plymouth. I have a feeling that I may end up colouring this one since I took my time on this one and that the building in the centre is a bright red colour.

New Zealand Villas

New Zealand has quite a few wooden houses that are nearly 100 years old. The 'villa', as they are called, is a single-floor bungalow, made of local timber, and have dashes of ornamental details. The house that I live in is about 90 years old and has decorative plaster ceilings (another common villa characteristic) in nearly every room. Every now and then one of them disappears and is replaced by the new and modern.

24-hour Booksale

The annual 24-hour charity booksale. Everyone here is browsing though a stadium full of donated books. This is a sketch of the final hour where either the procrastinators or the penny-pinchers are here to get a deal. In the final minutes, the speaker kept announcing better and better deals as I was drawing in an attempt to move the large hoard of books.

(I've always been curious to know what type of person comes out at, say, 3.00am to look at books, but I'll never know - I'm not that type of person.)

Morley and St Aubyn Streets

This is a pretty cool older building on the corner of Morley and St Aubyn Streets is now home to a florist. I liked the surplus of signs in the one area (including four 'Stop's).

At the Govett-Brewster

Whenever I sketch inside the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, my drawings look a bit strange. Images of a surreal dream. Looking over a half-wall to a lower floor was a rotating mobile sculpture made of steel, lit brightly from one side and casting a shadow on a grey wall. In front of that was a video projected onto a hanging panel. I could imagine that if I didn't describe the scene a bit more you would be wondering what you are looking at.

The next two were from a different show at the same gallery, about one year earlier. One was an overhead view of some visitors watching a group of musicians interpret the different pieces. The other is another strange drawing of the result.