 In Puke Ariki museum again; this time drawing a Kākāpō. It's a New Zealand flightless parrot and as of today, there's only 142 left. Click here to find out more or to donate to their recovery!
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 The very rare sunny winter day off. What a beauty! I have to give credit to Maurice for the idea to come down to Te Henui stream to draw and paint. I could have happily sat there all day and sketched.  A couple of weeks ago, we went to see some B-ball action here in Taranaki. It turns out that the local boys didn't have enough left in the tank to finish the season up with a win.  Some more winter sketching in the Taranaki Aviation Technology & Transport Museum. There's so much stuff in here. Most things are grouped into sections but there's always the odd specimen randomly inserted. A toy-sized 1950's car is snuggled under the wing of a Harvard (T-6 Texan) fighter plane. I drew the plane a few years ago and I think it was damaged on a landing. That's why it lives in here with the cute cars and why its current propeller is too small. (It looks tons better than with no propeller though!)   This was done over multiple lunches at about 15 minutes per day. The first day, there was a car with a roof rack. Being finicky, I didn't want to draw that so left the bottom for tomorrow. The next day, there was van with a roof rack. The third day, 6 out of the 8 vehicles had a roof rack. I was able to wrap up the cars and the people on the fourth day but it seemed like there was a conspiracy.
 A few months ago I was sitting on the steps of the band rotunda in Pukekura Park sketching. I started to watercolour it there but ran out of time about half-way through. I took it home and put it aside. Now that we're having a rainy week I took this pad back out to finish it and here we are.
 It's been a while since I'd been to the Taranaki Aviation Technology and Transport Museum. While I was there, they fired up an engine from a ship used to dredge sand from the seaport. The sign said that it ran at about 100rpm on the ship but when I was there, in the museum, it was much slower than that. (Maybe 10-20%?) At that speed, it was making this sound that was like it was breathing. It was so hypnotic that I ended up sitting down and sketching it. I made a 60-second video, if you want to hear the breathing sound:  It's starting to feel like the beginning of winter sketching in New Zealand.
 I was sketching the people checking out some down-under cars that were driven here from all over New Zealand on the weekend.  Two cars down was a blue Holden that had a sign that featured a sketch by Murray Dewhurst.   A bit of a return to form. Although it used to be common, I haven't used a red pen on a sketch for at least five years. I drew this convenience store seven years ago and included picture of the CookieTime cookie monster on the top. This time I tried to show a glow that emanates from the actual chocolate-chunked beauties themselves.  |