​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.

​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.

​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."

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

I decided that I wasn't done with the Huatoki Plaza so I did a watercolour sketch of the people feeding the eels that live the Huatoki stream. Most people that cross the pedestrian bridge like to stop and have a look over the edge to see how huge and freaky these things are looking today.

Huatoki Plaza was a retail building that was removed to expose the covered stream beneath it. New Plymouth made a reasonably boring urban space for people to ignore. One day, an artist put up a paste-up image of a face to try to make it better. It probably did because these days, the Plaza has several artists' work on various buildings that face it. I've sketched one of the buildings a few times and currently has artwork by Phil 'Suspect' Jones. His studio is actually in the Plaza and his murals are all around town.

This one was a doodle of a robot from a cartoon* that I watched as a kid. I haven't seen it in some time so it's how I remembered him looking. I added some watercolours to finish it off. Someone pointed out to me once that if a movie had robot in it, I probably liked it. While not 100%, this is more true than I realised. I guess I am fascinated by robots; Maybe I should draw more!
*Starblazers/Space Battleship Yamato

​I only see this place in winter even though it's painted a bright salmon orange. The plants and moss growing on the side of it camouflage it into the fresh spring leaves. I did this one in September and the building's already starting to disappear among the trees.