Artworks, 2025 Part 2

3 January 2026. Welcome to the second and final article showing my artwork over the previous year. 2025 was a difficult year in many ways, but in this second article we have to start with a stay in hospital. I had been suffering with some very painful leg ulcers for a year, a side effect so I was given to believe of my cancer which was still with me on my liver, but stable after an intensive course of radiotherapy at Christies hospital in Manchester in 2024.

I had had a fall on the stairs in early May 2025 after which I found I couldn't stand or walk. Five weeks in Blackpool's Victoria Hospital was followed by four weeks in respite at Clifton Hospital in Lytham St Annes, learning how to walk again. Whilst there I got Miss Franny to bring my smaller A5 sketchbook and used the only drawing tool I had - a ballpoint pen.

4 June 2025. Drawing from memory I found really hard. I don't like drawn art that is photographically realistic because I just don't see the point in it. If you want something so realistic just use a camera, but I've never just made up scenes before. So this is based on memory of more than one such meeting of streets in Italy and the island of La Palma in the Canaries, but I'd bet I'd never find an exact match!

11 June 2025. In 2023 we took a holiday up in the Trossachs and Highlands of Scotland. This was our hotel - the Loch Tummel Hotel - and I used the holiday brochure we had booked the holiday from to find a photo of the hotel. We were in a room around the right hand side as you look from this viewpoint.

16 June 2025. Another one from the brochure, although our particular holiday itinerary had not included Loch Lomond.

19 June 2025. I'd moved from Victoria Hospital to Clifton in St Annes. Not the easiest of places for Fran to get to for visiting but she did well thanks to good friends.

I wondered why nurses came into my room to look through the blind every night at 4:00am. It turned out that a family of foxes had their den between the two near trees on the right and came out at that time to play on the lawn. Which was unfortunately too low down for me to be able to see from my bed and getting out of bed was still not a thing to be contemplated.

23 June 2025. The Ward had a breakfast Club which met in the Day Room with this view of the garden. Patients could go out and sit there and have their meals in the Day Room which I did every day once I'd heard of it.

A nurse would transfer me via a sack truck type of affair into a wheelchair and I would sit with one chap who was suffering from Parkinsons and another, who would get up at all hours of the night wanting to come into the room for breakfast even at 3:00am, being convinced it was breakfast time, I dubbed us the Three Musketeers...

27 June 2025. I was progressing, from wheelchair to faltering steps using a zimmer frame and from that to crutches. The nurses were saying they could tell that my determination would carry me through. There were quite a few others who just gave up or who stopped at the first twinge of pain. I'd been in constant pain for almost a year and exhaustion since the first op on the cancer in August 2022. It wasn't going to beat me... The weather had turned nice and the three musketeers were accustomed to spend the entire day in the Day Room from getting up to going back to bed. This was loosely based on my memory of Limone on the banks of Lake Garda in Italy.

2 July 2025. A Cotswolds scene, but don't ask me where it is... I was walking with just my trusty walking stick by now. Physio Therapists were having me climbing up and down a few stairs to see how I could cope and in this respect things seemed to be progressing well. It was quite an emotional time though. I was getting frustrated at being in hospital and at the same time humbled by what I was either being told or by what I overheard.

My friend with Parkinsons tended to dribble quite a bit and whenever I could I sat next to him with tissues at hand to help mop him up. He could also struggle to be understood and I often had to ask him to repeat something, whilst trying not to make a big thing about it which may have embarrassed him. One day he had a meltdown and was talking to one of the nurses who asked him about his friends. "I don't have any friends," he said, "just John..."

The nurse glanced at me and said quietly, "Yes, he's great isn't he?" So I found tears streaming down my face too...

7 July 2025. They weren't all good days by far. This one had me very emotional and one of the nurses took me in hand out to a quiet spot in the garden and insisted I sit with her and draw. It wasn't a great scene but it did calm me down and she was very kind. I think the idea was just to get me to a quiet place where she could talk to me. I was discharged to go home the following day.

27 August 2025. It took me a while to get back into doing any artwork. After so many weeks away from home lots of things needed sorting. The home insurance was due to end. The company was going out of business. Just little things like that... No idea where this is meant to be, I used a photo off the Internet and went back to my favourite combination of coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

30 August 2025. Another Internet picture was the inspiration for this. I was particularly chuffed with the tree trunk closest to the viewpoint. Little things...

1 September 2025. The Croatian village of Skradin in the Krka National Park. Pencil crayon in the A4 sketchbook. Remembering some selfish twonk who after having been told we were to go straight to the coach to get back to the cruise ship, decided to instead go for a drink in a bar. His wife came to the bus apologetically to tell the guide and driver, who immediately went to find him and drag him back, this taking 20 minutes. Can you imagine anyone being so self-centred that they are willing to have everyone else on the coach wait for them? Some people just make your blood boil...

14 September 2025. Miss Franny came home from a shopping expedition with a present... I set to and tried them out.

Very different to work with but quite good fun. The Priest House was owned by Henry VIII and passed on to Thomas Cromwell, Anne of Cleves, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I.

To date that's it. The A4 sketchbook was filled and replaced by another which has yet to be sullied by crayon or pencil. I'll be back within the next few days to continue the tale of the cancer and ulcers and general grottiness BUT... The main thing is I'm still here, still thinking of mischief if not exactly capable of getting up to it and still determined to get to a stage where I can drag Miss Franny off on some foreign jaunt, preferably on the high seas with a couple of fellow musicians I know! Hello 2026!

Sketching and Artwork Index

Artworks, 2025 Part 1

Once again at the start of a New Year, we take a look at my artwork over the past year. Unable to get out and about much this year, most of these have been done from photographs, either my own or those taken around 100 years ago for the postcard industry.

This was one of those from an old postcard. I drew this on 6 January 2025. It is Budleigh in Devon. We had visited a couple of years previously on a coach tour from our holiday base in Torquay. Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

1 February 2025. I don't think I've ever been to Lynmouth in Devon, but what a fabulous looking place it is. Modern postcard views I've seen are still recogniseable but the modern road surfaces do not add to the general peaceful ambience of this location. Once again (as many of the year's works are) coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

10 February 2025. The Edwardians were as fascinated with the taking of photographs from low-flying aircraft as we have been at the use of drones in the 21st century for the same purpose. I think this is my first attempt at a high viewpoint sketch but I think it turned out ok.

As always I did a search for the location on Google images, which is Withington in Gloucestershire with the Mill Inn. The greenery at the foot of the road bridge over the river has now grown so much that the trees and bushes totally block any view over the side of the bridge. Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook.

21 February 2025.I do sometimes make a bit of a hash at these sketches. In this case I managed to turn the square tower of the church at Godshill, Isle of Wight, into a rectangle, Stupid boy... Coloured pencils in the A4 sketchbook is getting to be a much repreated phrase...

This one was from one of my own photographs and depicts a quiet corner of Lake Garda in Northern Italy. At the northern end of the lake, the hills rise on both sides of the lake and behind the top edge of the lake rise a little more slowly but inexorably until you find yourself shivering in the Dolomite mountains. I was coming to the end of the sketchbook, with just a few pages left and was determined to finish it by the end of 2025.

28 March 2025. Back to the Edwardian postcards for this one which shows a road by a stream in Norden near Rochdale. The black blob in the road is supposed to be a cat and indeed was a cat in the photograph. I'm not really sure what the magic of my black crayon managed to turn him into...

12 April 2025. The ancient medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro is a fabulous stop on cruises up or down the Adriatic. Later in the season it is quiet, tranquil and wonderful to explore the streets, cafes and plazas with their open air cafes.

The last time we visited was in August and it was a nightmare of crowds and stifling heat that made us vow never to visit again during the peak summer months. I did this from one of my own photographs (taken during a previous visit!).

22 April 2025. Once again this was done using one of my own photographs as a reference. This is Geiranger in Norway, looking down the fjord with a ferry heading towards the town of Geiranger and a road snaking its way up the steep mountainside.

6 May 2025. Bibury in the Cotswolds is a wonderfully picturesque village and I've done a couple of drawings of it in the past. I've also stood, leaning on the sides of various bridges, watching trout rise up from the bottom of the stream to snaffle up some unsuspecting fly which had the misfortune to become waterlogged and trapped on the surface of the water. All sketches so far have been pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook. Now for a change...

31 May 2025. Yes well... Several firsts... First sketch done purely with a Bic ballpoint pen. First sketch done totally from memory / imagination. First pic done whilst lying in a hospital bed.

I'd suffered a fall and by now had been in hospital just over two weeks. The whole stay in hospital was to be two months so there's more ballpoints to come. Details of the reason for being in hospital will come as I carry on the story of my cancer and its side effects... Ballpoint pen in the A5 sketchbook, which I asked Miss Franny to bring me to relieve the monotony and (I must admit) to take my mind off some pain...

1 June 2025. The final one for now, there's more to come in Part 2 both ballpoint and a return to colours. The housekeeper on our ward was a lovely young lady and was getting married later on in the year. With a honeymoon booked for Lake Como she asked if I could do a drawing of that. I had to do this from a photo on my phone screen - not easy to see detail, but she was quite taken by it and after taking this photo of it on the phone I ripped the page out of the sketchbook and gave it to her.

Sketching and Artwork Index