Napier sketch weekend 3-5 April

Join us for a weekend of sketching in Napier this April. Keep an eye on Facebook for coming information on the weekends schedule. 

Don't forget to drop Sharon a line on aunty.seahorse@gmail.com to let her know you're coming – just to give us an idea of how many to expect on the weekend.

Classic yachts at Ahuriri

Some classic yachts spotted on the hard at Ahuriri in Napier. They're great fun to draw in the Grey Book. 

The distinctive shape of the 2 H28s (left and right) caught my eye having sailed a lot on one as a kid in Tauranga.

In the courtyard at 'Mr D' in Napier

My partner and I were in Napier over the Christmas period and visited Mister D, a restaurant/café/bar in town.  They serve the most delicious fresh doughnuts amoung other things.  We could see one of the staff kneading dough and making a new batch on the counter (which you can see in my drawing).  The filling comes in a syringe so you can inject it in yourself.  Raspberry, chocolate or custard from memory.  We had custard.

Art Deco Napier

Murray's Napier outing reminded me of our trip there:

A 1938 Packard parked next to girls in 1920s garb

Art Deco tour with various patterns depicting themes, all part of the post earthquake reconstruction.

Marine Parade, the same roundy building Murray, did so well

 

An intriguing night spent at the Ormandville Railway Station - we slept in the parcel room.  We stoked up a good fire during the evening.  Passing trains with 5 minutes worth of rolling stock including logs - woke us in the night.  The whole station shook.  Worth staying.

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The Preservation Society were keen to use the sketch for fundraising mugs.

 



Napier Trip

Just back from a few crisp days in Napier, in fact the first few days were more than crisp I discovered while trying to sketch the old Hotel Central on Emerson Street (right and window detail below). The southerly was screaming through and my soft Aucklander fingers weren't coping so well.

Recovery from the cold came thanks to the excellent Mister D's further along Tennyson Street for coffee and doughnuts. These doughnuts, which incidentally, don't quite look like a kumara as in my sketch above, and come with a choice of hyperdermics - very strange - but once my quince jelly was injected into the doughnut it was great.

One of Napier's most underrated attractions would have to be the Faraday Centre (above and right), a science and technology museum that is totally hands-on. The kids had a ball working the old phone exchange, typing out morse code, playing the Pianola, sitting in the 1903 Rover, trying the railway jigger, learning about hot type printing, spooked out by the iron lung, etc. They also got totally terrified by the Tesla Coil in action (me too - it's bloody loud).

It was the Winter Art Deco weekend too, so I got into the spirit capturing some of the architectural details including the kowhaiwhai influenced friezes on the ASB building above. A couple and some store mannequins with in 30's costume, two '32 fords in front of the T&G Building on Marine Parade.

Vessels on the dry at Ahuriri, sketched just on sunset and Westshore sketches at bottom...