Life happens faster than my artwork! Journal pages for Sunday 8th March...

As previously mentioned, I'm winding my way through Metro Magazine's Top 50 Cafes. Man, cafes WANT to get on that list, such great exposure... I wonder how many other nutty people like me plan to visit them all??

Takapuna Beach Cafe was the supreme winner so I figured I might as well start there. Wow! Is this a cafe or a restaurant with a cafe label? Coffee was great (a given for any cafe on that list) but the food - oh my. I had granola 'bix' which hardly describes what was served... I'm talking Brazil nuts, honey, poached stone fruit and big wide coconut peels. Heaps of staff and quick service, I'm glad I went early - the place was packed!

After that, I needed a good walk. Takapuna Market is on every Sunday Morning so I wandered up. I'm not sure there are many places you can buy antique glassware, Ben10 watches and a jar of tadpoles all at once.


These kind of locations are great for image collecting for future artwork and inspiration. The range of items, colour, combinations and groupings is huge.


Use your viewfinder to crop away unnecessary backgrounds. Get close and ask yourself what is it that I wish to capture with this photograph. Make sure that element or idea is the main focus without any distracting items that dilute its emphasis.
Example: Light reflecting off a table of apples. Cropped to include only the apples, photographed low to get the light hitting the surface.

Repeated shapes, items of similar types make striking imagery. Look for colour combinations and textures that catch your eye.
Example: Buckets of waterlilies. The colours of these were clear and sharp, also the spiky shaped petals seemed almost plastic like. I haven't seen waterlilies grouped like this before - a must photo!
If you wish to photograph someones stand, or items on someones stand its just courtesy to ask first.

This journal spread:
Left page - Prewashed background, magazine cutting photograph which folds out, business card, turquoise pearl embellishments.
Right page - Sewing machine stitched photos including a fold out flap of photos stitched onto copper fabric mesh and a tassel to complete.

My favourite buy of the day was a red tipped sunflower...hmm and the piece of fresh raspberry fudge! What's your fav market buy?

Labels: Great-Places-Auckland-Region, Journal-Ideas, Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review

Hi all,
There is so much happening in Auckland at the moment. Its like the last available month of decent weather has multiple activities all over town available to the willing.

Last week I went to ZooMusic. I'm a bit of a fan of Pluto (this won't be the last you hear me mention them...lol) and they were the featured band along with Mint Chicks. So I decided to turn the experience into a bit of an excursion. Turned up at the Zoo a bit early and set about taking photos and doing some sketches.

Sketching animals is super fun! I am going to buy myself a years Friends of the Zoo pass so I can go whenever I like and practice. I would have liked to have finished sketching the elephant, except when a elephant walks away there is no convincing him otherwise ;) What to do? Sketch of his backside as he walks away!


In the examples from my book, the Rhino is essentially a large rectangle with a smaller rectangle on a 45degree angle (the head).
The flamingos are ovals - or even better, eggs. Eggs are dimensional rather than flat so seeing them that way makes it easier to show their form with shadow and highlight.
The elephant, a combination of rectangles and squares. Even his backside is a square with the corners chopped off.

Try it, it's easier than you think!


This journal spread:
Left side - Pre-washed background, animals sketches, photos and notes, piece of bark tied to the page.
Center insert - Zoo Music advertising eyeleted and attached to the spine.
Right side - Pre-washed background, notes, a sketch of the harsh late afternoon shadows from the line of people waiting to get in, photos of the band and photo of late night dinner at GPK.

Note: Bombay Pizza from GPK is the best - Indian spiced chicken, red onions, cashews (!), mango chutney, yoghurt, coriander and....banana. Fantastic surprising combo of flavours.

By the way, I stayed for a bit of the Mint Chicks but really Pluto is where its at. Music must accompany this post! ....

Labels: Great-Places-Auckland-Region, Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review, Sketching, Sketching-Tips

Hi all,
A couple more journal pages to share. I keep toying with the idea of back dating them to a date that relates to the journal page dates but since some of the pages are being finished now and visitors of my blog who stop by and don't use a Bloglines type notifier will miss those updates. This messes with my desire to organize! all good :)

These are a couple of pages from January. I had fun sketching at the Speedway. I'm quite sure I would have been the only person more interested in having her pen in hand than who was leading! I have another Speedway journal page which is full of photos and collected memorabilia. This visit I wanted to work on my sketching skills and capture the action!

Things I learnt about sketching at the Speedway (!!)

• Even though it is moving so fast you DO get repeated shapes and images. For example I got about 6-8 short opportunities to sketch the flag dude in the same position so I could re-visit that sketch each time.
• The fast pace makes you sketch fast! I think that comes across in the bottom sketch where I was trying to capture the movement of the vehicles.
• Its kinda tricky to draw cars without them looking 'toy' like. Not really sure what the solution is to that.
• It gets dark sketching at speedway! Dark = equals hard to see = equals no more sketching!
  
• Just like you get covered in dirt and dust watching, so does your journal. Worth considering. Personally I just consider it part of my journals life cycle. Micron 005 pens don't really like the dirt.
  

Next time I want to try to improve drawing the vehicles and sketch some of the crowd. ooh and check out the photo of my kids with the flag guy. He's my fav! Western Springs are really great at making it a family night. If you ask, the flag guy will let kids wave the white flag while cars are in between races.


So Speedway was Wednesday 28th, the right-hand side journal spread is about Friday 30th. Dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant in Mission Bay. We then went for a bit of a drive before dessert at our fav Onion Johnny resturant in Takapuna. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but its worth saying again - the rasberry parfeit is the best!! hehe

Labels: Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review, Sketching

After our day at the beach my kids and I headed out for dinner. We enjoyed it immensely! As always I take a card - for the journal of course!

Labels: Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review

Spent the morning at the school watching Brooklyn and Oliver's Junior Athletics. I thought it was pretty cool how they have adapted traditional athletics events for kids. Javelins made of foam, medium weighted plastic shot putts... plus a few fun things like the parachute and egg and spoon races. Everyone had a great time!

Went to Malasia Satay Restaurant that night, nice atmosphere, low key restaurant you could take your family to, good prices, good food! Located in Albany. Afterward went to a Ceroc class. Good fun!

Labels: Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review

Some Dutch Delight!

One of my favourite things to do is try new restaurants and visit new places. One night in search for somewhere to eat out Les and I found ourselves at Dutch Delight in Birkenhead (North Shore of Auckland).
Looking around it is a rather unusual shop space type restaurant crammed with Dutch memorabilia - posters, dolls, postcards, little clocks - all kinds of things! Being a collector of all sorts and always inspired by groupings of similar things, the kitchy style was quite inspiring.

We sat at the table looking at the menu having no idea what we were ordering. For fun we chose a sampler entree and had guessing games as to what it was that we were eating.

For our main we chose Dutch Pancakes. Looking at the menu the names were Farmers Pancake (with beef, bacon, mushrooms), Salmon Pancake, Indonesian Pancake... all with meats and cheese so we were expecting a pizza base type dish to come out but no! When they say pancake, they mean pancake - WITH maple syrup!

After all that, you would think we were full wouldn't you?? Well we couldn't try something completely new without sampling a dessert could we. Sticking with the unknown theme we shared poffertjes... oh my.

Very fun, very yum. Would seriously never fit my jeans again if we made it a habit.

Would love to hear in the comments if you have been to Dutch Delight!

By the way, visit their website to see photos on their website of lots of diners having fun. Might have to visit on a night with the live music.

Take care!

Labels: Great-Places-Auckland-Region, Journal-Pages, Restaurant-Review