Everybody's doing it

Sketching

On Saturday I went to a workshop at Pukeariki held in conjunction with the current exhibition. The show is called "Home Work", and contains one work each by a cross-section of Taranaki artists. You can see it at http://pukearikihomework.com/

 

One of the artists is Brian Gnyp, who is also a member of the group called Taranaki Urban Sketchers.

http://taranakisketchers.blogspot.co.nz/ There you can see a couple of the sketches done at the workshop.

 

Brian explained the gist of urban sketching. You just go out into the urban environment and draw what you see. Then you post it on the internet to share with everyone else. You can see the results from around the world at http://www.urbansketchers.org/

 

I had time to try three different views from just outside the front door of the museum. Here is the first of them:

 

 

Our U3A group joined the workshop on Saturday rather than meeting as usual on Friday morning.

 

The fortnight before we met in what is called the Wall Gallery, where there is a display of work by a Taranaki comic strip artist called Graham Kirk. We set about studying his work and trying to emulate his skill in producing recognisable sketches of faces with a few lines.

 

Graham also has a picture in the Home Work exhibition.

 

We worked for a couple of hours on this project, together, and decided that next time we will try drawing each other's faces live in the same way.

 

Anyway, here is my effort to copy one of Graham's faces, which is of an acquaintance of ours in New Plymouth, a well-known local identity, whom Graham had used as his model for the comic strip character:

 

 

So during the last week or two I have been trying the same technique on photos in the paper. Here is one effort, the day after the death of Robin Williams:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The character on the right is Alan Beck, the helicopter entrepreneur, from a different section of the paper.

 

Saturday ten days ago Margaret and I each worked a shift at the 24-hour Book Sale run by and for the Opera House Trust here. I picked up a book of old (1960s) photos of New Zealand for 50c, and have been sketching some of them since then.

 

Here is my effort at Cathedral Square as it was in those carefree days fifty years ago:

 

 

Why don't you have a try yourself!