​Quick watercolour sketch of Ngamotu Beach at low tide

​Here’s some poor quality video and sound of the 2019 Taranaki Multi Ethnic Parade. A few amusing things happened though, so I pieced this together. Sketch from two years ago for good measure.

I wasn't going to draw this. I planned on taking a few minutes of my day to get out of email debt or maybe network socially. I checked my messages but then put it away. I reached for my sketchbook instead and drew what was in front of me. I guess that is the nature of the process. I don't have a drawing ability that I was born with. Any skill that I have, has been practiced for years. I suppose that I draw as much as some other people use their phones, and that, really could be the secret.

Yeah, I know we need to finish building that fence! When we were buying some more nails though, we decided to hide for a while in the garden section of the hardware store. It had coffee and cake!

​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.