New Zealand Part V - Workshops Preparation

 

Three steps showing the process of the painterly, graphite approach of my workshop "Slow Down, You Sketch Too Fast", which I taught in the 11th Urban Sketchers Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand. (those are not the same drawing, but the sequence represents the process)

As I told in a recent post, I changed my workshop's location a little as the primary subject was a little too hard to draw. I found a pleasant location down the road, with a small open courtyard, with a decent view of the Sky Tower into the distance and a couple of interesting houses near. I started a sketch there and soon realized that was the best location. It was quiet enough, there was some shadow, a good place for the participants to sit and some shelter in case it rained.

I did the same sketch three times: when I teach a painterly approach (with graphite), I like to have prepared at least one advancing step (for each session), so I can show the students a further stage of the process, and work from that on a little more, like in a cooking tv show. I also have a third stage, an almost finished one. This works really nicely, as adds a bit of a surprise feeling to my demonstration - I hide the stages, of course :)

My workshop location - I was pretty happy with it!

Here you can see a few of the drawings I did on location, laying on my bed's hotel in Auckland

New Zealand Part IV - A bit of Máori culture

On April 19th, the Urban Sketchers Symposium instructor's team had the great opportunity to visit "Papakura Marae", a Maori complex near Auckland, in which the temple (wharenui) was inaugurated in 1990. During the short journey to the place, we learned a song from local organizer Eric Ngan (who arranged the tour) to be sang at the temple as a gift to the Maori people.

We then attended to a beautiful ceremony, with touching music performed by the Maori people. They weren't dressed traditionally as one could imagine as it wasn't a presentation for tourists, which made the moment even more remarkable.

After the ceremony was finished, we had a nice meal and had some time to do a sketch, even inside the temple, where I did mine.

I sketched a carving called Tamatea Pokaiwhenua, a leader navigator who arrived in New Zealand in 950 AD. A hill dedicated to leader is called: 

"Te taumatawhakatangihangakoauaupukepikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu", which means "Tamatea played his flute to lure his young lover to climb the hill without slipping as he waited and prepared a meal for them to share and make love".

Isn't that beautiful?

Later that day, I did a sketch of the city hall. I was a bit distracted by the skateboarders across th street. The weather was changing constantly which was a presage of the rain we got during the symposium. I wanted to make a loose watercolor as I did of the same Queen St. the day before, but I couln't, and I'm not sure why.

New Zealand - Part III: Sky Drawing

On a sunny afternoon, before the symposium started, I went to the Sky Tower, a stunning construction that takes you up to 186 meter high and has lots of attractions. 

I went there because I love being at heights, in first place. I didn't know I would have enough time plus find a good spot to sketch. But I did, even though I had to gave up of a first attempt because someone bumped into me, causing me to make a scratch on the paper - fortunately it was at the beggining! I just turned the page over and restarted...

Anyways, I did a very quick sketch for my standards, with a ballpoint pen.