Welcome to the blog. On the this site you will find recent sketches right through to truely terrible sketches made on location over 20 years ago. Looking back at those sketches I sometimes wonder why I even continued with the practice! So why do I sketch? Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Alon...
I was asked a good question about how I drew the skater - in one go or from a photograph? My answer; definitely drawn on site and the skateboarder is actually an amalgamation of 2 or 3 skaters.
I knew I wouldn't be able to capture the stunt in one go, so I looked for a repetitive action that I could sketch from over a number of passes. These guys were practising the same stunt (grinding?) on that edge again and again, and I thought the backdrop of the Sky Tower and motorway viaduct behind would make an interesting composition. Each time one of them went past I focussed on just one element of their form or posture, it took quite a few goes over about 10 minutes lightly in pencil first, then inked over once I was reasonably happy.
The clothes are a mix and match too, one guy had the orange hat, another the green cargo shorts, and another the 'support your homies' t-shirt, which was actually on his front, for some reason it appealed so I put it on the t-shirt back so it could be included in the sketch (I have no idea why we need to support our homies, but you can buy one from SOUF Skateboards here)
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