Another round-up of sketches and artwork done over the past year.
It has been another weird year in more ways than one. In 2021 we were still in a lockdown year and in fact this is the only bit of artwork that I undertook during the final three months of that year. This is the village of Brent Knoll in Somerset, from an old sepia postcard from the early 20th century. It had beeen called South Brent, but was changed somewhere in the 10 years from 1875 as railways spread in order to avoid passenger confusion, there being another South Brent in Devon. Oil pastels on A2 paper done over a few days at the end of Novermber 2021.
Done in a day, the day being the 21st of January 2022, this is Polperro in Cornwall, drawn in pencil crayon in the A4 sketchbook from one of my own photographs, taken in 1971.
Also in pencil crayon in the A4 sketchbook and also from one of my own photos, this is the harbour at Torbole on the northern banks of Lake Garda in Italy. A lovely place that we have visited a few times. This was done on the third of March 2022.
Towards the end of May we had a couple of nights stay in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucester. The Cotswolds can pull me towards them any time and we had an enjoyable few days with only a few interludes of rain. It was also wonderful to be able to sit and draw with the scene actually in front of me in real life and not just on a photograph.
Also in Bourton - I think it's the town hall or something like that. I should take more notice...
This one is of Arlington Row in Bibury from the same short break. It was raining a little as I did this. I was sitting in the car on the back seat with the sliding door open. A few people came past and one or two stopped to drip and say nice things about the developing sketch.
After the Cotswolds break everything started to go a little bit pear-shaped... In June I was called back after a blood test showed anemia. After a second blood test I was referred to the gastroenterology department at the local hospital where I was told it looked likely to be cancer. I had CT scans, cameras up and down and an MRI scan after which cancer on the liver was confirmed. At the end of June I was referred to St James Hospital in Leeds, they being the liver specialists for the region. I went over during the third week in July to be told the cancer was too big to operate on. It was inoperable and incurable, however a procedure would deliver targetted chemo directly to it via the arteries from my groin - nice... The procedure took place on the 11th August and a few weeks after we had a couple of nights break in Bridlington as a bit of a "sanity break" for the mind. Whilst there we hopped a bus to Scarborough where I drew this from a small garden near the funicular cliff railway. By way of a footnote, the procedure shrank the cancer as evidenced by a further MRI scan on 17 September. I now await another MRI in December to see what has happened since September.
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