The art gallery in Whanganui has been closed for years while they strengthened in from earthquakes and added a new modern wing. It's now around 100 years old but feels like a brand new gallery with a really great art collection. I was using my stealth mini-sketchbook to capture the opening and some of the performers on the weekend.

It's hard to describe this place. Volunteers fix old bikes for donation. They take old bikes, get them ride-worthy and then sell them cheap. They collect tons of bike parts. The have a few sweet vintage bikes as trophies for good measure.
It's really about getting (and keeping) people onto bikes in Taranaki. They are only open for a couple hours on Saturdays, and then Wednesdays after 5. With so much detail, and the panorama book, it took a couple of weekends to sketch it all. After another week, I thought it needed colour so I went back for another Saturday to watercolour. I found it hard to sketch it all in quickly since I ended up chatting about bikes with the people checking out my drawing.

There's a weird mixed-use building that has a radio station on the top and a Senior Citizens Association on the bottom. It's architecturally weird. It sort of has a barn shape but it's not symmetrical. The bottom front wall is covered in ceramic tiles like it's a bathroom or a space shuttle. And the colour scheme is so bad that there's no way I couldn't colour it. It was sketched in April, and uploaded now.  Just after I finished the watercolour I noticed that they repainted the building. It's even a bit uglier NOW. Perfect for sketching!

Just a watercolour sketch of a cool old building by the tracks in the town of Stratford, New Zealand.

We had a group sketch at the Colliers Building on the weekend. I sat on the same bench several years ago.
​Activity time: Spot 8 differences!

This is another set of sketches that I put aside from the Taranaki Top Shop Awards. (These are regional retail shop awards.) I hammered these out on the awards night and then put them away. I tried to be a bit stealthy as it was. I didn't think that I could pull out a set of watercolours... but I knew that this needed to be in colour. So, NOW, here it is. I also pulled out my mini-book for a second sketch of the band and dancing that happened after the award were presented.

This was drawn, on location, a couple of months ago when the leaves were starting to fall off the trees. Lately, I've been dusting off some old sketches that I've been putting aside. Ones that I thought would look good in colour but didn't have the time on the day I was there. I have a few backed up here, freshly coloured, just waiting for the scanner.

We went back to the artisans at the Rangimarie Maori Arts & Crafts Centre. We've been there before and they are a very welcoming bunch. Several artists were working on their projects. Scott and I decided to sit in the middle and get the full wide-view.

There's an old-timey building on Brougham Street in New Plymouth that stands out because it is painted bright red with gold highlights. I was trying to find that perfect angle that sketchers look for. I found it in the alley, looking out into the sunny street.

So I'm still using this red pen. The ink is supposed to be waterproof but I haven't tried it yet. I did this drawing on the weekend and yesterday tried going overtop with a red watercolour paint. The ink seems to have stayed where I put it so I might keep using this from time to time.