WHEN Trevor Dickinson decided on New Year's Day 2009 to pack his sketch book and get to know his adopted hometown of Newcastle better, he could never have envisaged what lay ahead.
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Fast forward 10 years and English-born Dickinson's unique "outsider" perspective on the city's quirky and quintessential corners has spawned exhibitions, zines, commissions and merchandise aimed at locals rather than tourists.
His interactive murals dot the city from Newcastle Museum to Mayfield Pool, Sharpe's on Darby Street and New Lambton Public School.
He is showcasing around 500 drawings from the past decade in his first retrospective exhibition, at the Lovett Gallery.
"It felt like the perfect time for it," he said.
"Sometimes it does feel like 10 years, but a lot of the time it doesn't. It's gone very quickly."
The bulk of Dickinson's Newcastle images were drawn in a five year period between 2009 and 2014, before he started regularly working on murals and looking further afield to Canberra and projects on Sydney, Maitland and Taree, the last of which will open as an exhibition at Manning Regional Art Gallery in October.
"When I first did it I got really obsessed with just going out and drawing - it wasn't my intention to do it as a job, it was just going and getting out of the house really - and then it just morphed into this," he said.
"[My subjects are] very Newcastle institutions that everyone knows about, but once they see a drawing of it they say 'Yeah, that's right, we go there, we like that place'.
"They're not normally represented because they're such a local thing that only locals will really know about it. I kind of put it out there for them.
"I want people to connect with my work, to recognise things they haven't really noticed before."
The exhibition is broken into sections, including his sketchbooks and one called Gone Things, which includes recent drawings of Tower Cinemas and Queen's Wharf Tower.
"I went to a heritage talk and one of the speakers was saying that buildings are most in danger when they're in middle age, that's when they're most likely to be knocked down," he said.
"If they get to 70 they could last and if they get to 100 they're loved.
"That's what I always thought about Queen's Wharf Tower.
"I was always convinced in the future it would be loved, but maybe 50 years in the future."
Dickinson said reflecting on the past decade hasn't given him reason to slow down.
Even after a planned triple bypass last April and 17 years in Newcastle, he is always thinking of how to celebrate the city.
"I've got enough images now to do a colour book - I do like doing a body of work and holding something tangible.
"I've also got ideas for projects - I think urban trees would be a good subject. When I come back here [after visiting other cities] I start seeing new things."
While he isn't interested in drawing "new developments that haven't been lived in, that have no history or connection with people yet", he is intrigued to see how the city evolves.
Ten Years of Newcastle Productions shows to July 20.