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.

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Artworks, 2024

Time to catch up on what artwork I've done this year!

We start with this one from an old postcard of a steep street corner in Bristol. I use a lot of old Edwardian postcards as inspiration for drawing - they are all black and white (or sepia toned) which allows me to decide my own colour palette and in this case a daytime view painted as though it were a night time scene. Done in oil pastels on A2 sized paper this took from 26 March to 3 April 2024.

Monday 20 May 2024. We were in Devon for the week on a coach holiday using Torquay as a touring base. This is Powderham Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire. In fact we did briefly meet the current duke as we gathered in the castle grounds by the main entrance to meet the castle's tour guide. A very hot day, I found a spot to sit as we left the castle that gave us this view of the gatehouse. Pencil in the A4 sketchbook.

11 June 2024. Done a few weeks later but a view from the same holiday. This was a free day in Torquay and the day had promised rain and grey skies. We managed to dodge the rain which arrived a lot later than expected, but it was cold enough to make us reluctant to sit long enough to do a sketch of the promenade, which in any case was covered in scaffolding and fencing as a huge project was underway to transform the seafront. I did this one at leisure sitting at my desk with a photo from the Internet open on my computer screen to use as a reference.

We managed to do a cruise in August 2024, though due to a developing leg ulcer which was very painful we stayed pretty much on the ship with just a couple of outings during the week. I spent some time on the sun deck sketching over the side of the ship, and this was the first such one, a pencil sketch of Rijeka in Croatia in the A4 sketchbook.

The day after, 22 August 2024, we were in Zadar in Croatia and I switched to the pastel pencils which I had taken in a roll up case. I started to get a small following of fellow passengers and crew members who came to take a look at intervals as the sketches progressed.

23 August 2024, Kotor in Montenegro is a lovely place to stroll around and we did get off the ship today. It was very hot though and absolutely crowded so we just ended up with a rather frustrating walk through streets so crowded I was worried about my leg being knocked and we had a drink in a street cafe and then returned to the ship to do this from our usual seat on the sun deck.

27 August 2024. We anchored offshore at Mykonos and again pain from the leg kept us onboard in one of our favourite places. That night we were in one of the ship's lifts and a lady said "Are you the gentleman that does those beautiful paintings over the side of the ship?" It took me a little by surprise and I paused and looked round before answering in case there was another artists about to take credit...

6 December 2024. Bossington, Somerset, from an Edwardian era postcard. Pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook. I had been looking for something to take my mind off the pain of the leg which by now had developed into a full ulcer looking like a gooey crater in the middle of my calf muscle. The leg was wrapped with compression bandages and fluid in the leg was adding to the daily wonder of shape and solidity of my upper leg. Not to mention my ability to resist some quite excrutiating pain... Normally I can ignore pain altogether, but when it's your own it's a bit harder.... Going through my collection of postcards, I came up with ten or so old postcards that I thought I might be able to do justice to. A project that is still ongoing...!

13 December 2024. This one depicts a narrow village street in Cheddar with a stream running down one side, bridged for each of the houses on that side, which are set higher up on the hillside.

21 December 2024. Bispham Village, Blackpool. Not often that I do one of a subject so close to home. I'm not sure why exactly. It's either a case of familiarity feeding reluctance or, in the case of Blackpool itself, the fact that it is so well known that people would spot any obvious errors. I did force myself to include a few figures in this one.

29 December 2024. The River Derwent at Matlock Bath in Derbyshire. Once again, pencil crayons in the A4 sketchbook.

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Sketches from Outside the UK, Part 4

Continuing my series of articles about my sketches done on holidays abroad, here is another collection spanning the years 2013-2017.

The first is of one of my favourite ports of call on the French Riviera: Villefranche. We were cruising with friends for the first time and, having walked all the way around the bay, sat in a café for a coffee with a view of the sweep of the bay.

Later in the year we took another trip, visiting Rhodes which I sketched from a high viewpoint on the ship itself. I ignored all the modern buildings but included the medieval ones.

Somehow I skipped a year in 2014 - the trips we did mustn't have had enough free time or I just didn't have the muse (now where did I put my muse...?) or whatever. So we jump to 2015 and this one was done on our second trip with David and Jeannie, from Zorba's café bar on the Greek island of Mykonos.

The girl who served us was looking at the sketch as it developed so I took her email address and emailed a scan of it once we got back, getting a thank you email in return. I did this the same afternoon on the ship, looking at the photo I had taken on the tiny screen on the back of my camera.

Sitting on a corner of the harbour at Chania on the island of Crete, I sketched this scene. We took one of the glass-bottomed boats out to see the sea life just off a nearby small island.

In 2016 we went with our daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter to Disney World in Florida and stayed in the Caribbean Beach Resort. I did a few sketches there in the all-too-brief moments of calm and relaxation. Mainly with an early morning mug of coffee on the table in front of me.

Fish could be seen swimming below me and large birds with long bills and some white storks were flying or hopping about, looking for scraps left by those who opted to eat breakfast outside.

This was another view of the resort's lake, done on our last morning between breakfast and the time we were due to catch a bus to the airport to come home. A cheerleader came jogging round and said "That's really pretty!" as she passed. Someone else came along and stared at it before saying doubtfully, "Is that bit the water?"

This was done as we neared the end of the two-week stay. The weather was far hotter than we were used to and with two weeks of walking all day I lost half a stone over the holiday. This day I decided to just take the chance of a half-hour's sit down and sketched one of the shops in Walt Disney World. The chap next to me kept looking but didn't say anything. He nodded though. "Does it look anything like?" I asked eventually, a bit unnerved by his silent scrutiny. He tapped his ear. "Deaf!" he whispered...

I had done one of this carousel at the time in pencil, but wasn't too happy with it. Once we got home I did this one with coloured pencils.

After the hectic nature of the Florida holiday, when we joined the Thomson Celebration cruise ship later that year I was determined to have a more relaxing holiday. We joined the ship in Corfu and I did this from the Promenade Deck on Deck 9.

It was on this cruise that we first visited Santorini. We had done four previous cruises with this fabulous island on the itinerary but never before managed to get there. It is prone to cross winds that make it dangerous for ships to enter the lagoon in the centre of this once massive island. It is in fact a volcano and blew itself almost out of existence a mere 3,600 years ago, give or take a week or two. By legend this was the famed destruction of Atlantis.

Later in the week we visited Bodrum in Turkey. Formerly known as Halicarnassus it was the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - the Mausoleum of Mausolus. He ruled here from 377 BCE and his tomb was so beautifully decorated that his name became synonymous for all above ground level tombs. It is not recorded how it was eventually destroyed, but by the time the Knights Templar of St John arrived in 1402 they were to record it as being in ruins. It had been standing apparently in the 1100s as it was mentioned by Eustathius in his commentary on The Iliad. Many of its stones were used in the building of the castle. The site of the mausoleum is known and can be visited - though at the time of our visit we didn't know that.

Another from that cruise in 2016. We revisited Chania in Crete and I chose a different part of the harbour to sketch.

In 2017 we took a cruise on Thomson Celebration once more, sailing from Newcastle for a two-week cruise visiting Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe and Shetland Isles. This is Stavanger old town in Norway, as seen from the warmth of a lounge window on the ship. We were docked quite close!

Isafjord (Isafjordur in Icelandic) is down a fjord on the north west coast of Iceland that juts out from the corner of the mainland. This was drawn from the Celebration's coffee shop on Deck 5.

Once more in Norway, later towards the end of the cruise, this is Bergen.

Later the same day, once again from the comfort of the ship as we waited to sail away with just one last port of call to make before sailing back down the North Sea to Newcastle.

Our second cruise in 2017 took us up the Adriatic Sea and I spent a couple of hours sitting at the far end of the port of Dubrovnik, ignoring most of the many boats and ships in the harbour, but including the Thomson Dream on which we were sailing and the Karaka a wooden sailing ship. By the time of our next cruise the following year the name Thomson would have gone and the fleet of ships rebranded as Marella.

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Sketching Britain 5

This post brings us up to date so after this you'll have to wait until I get drawing a bit more!

In 2009 we were invited to a work colleague's wedding reception which was held in the impressive Durham Castle. The morning after, before heading homewards, Fran wanted a look round the shops and I went down to draw this sketch of the castle from the opposite bank of the river. It was done in my A5 pad and whilst it rained a bit during the sketching, I managed to dodge the ferocious bits under a nearby bridge.

Brougham Castle, done from one of my own photographs. There's another entry about this sketch, linked from the Index Page, that shows some of the stages I went through.

For a few years, my sketching was limited to holidays and were all done abroad so we move to 2015 when we stayed for a weekend with an old friend and colleague at her guest house in Dulcote, near Wells in Somerset. The surroundings, Dulcote village and the historic house which was the guest house made it a great weekend and this was done from Mary's summer house in the garden not long after we arrived. The White House, Dulcote - I heartily recommend it!

Whilst we were there, there was just one afternoon when the weather decided to do the nasty on us. We had been to Glastonbury in the morning and in the afternoon had driven to Cheddar Gorge, but the weather drove us into a crowded café where we dried off a little and sat trying to identify old Golden Age Hollywood stars from a collection of cigarette cards from the 1940s. I drew this later from a photo and added the cyclist because there was a cyclist staying at the guest house who had cycled up the gorge the previous day.

Later that year we took a long weekend down to the haunt of teenage and early family holidays in Newquay and tried out the hills on our legs which were now 40-50 years older! This was Perranporth beach with the line of cliffs down the southern side where the sea has carved them into some interesting shapes including arches.

We called one night at Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor and had our evening meal there. The talking (swearing...) parrot we remembered was no more sadly, but the place still has tons of atmosphere. I remembered our daughter being most indignant there one year as she was reading Daphne du Maurier's book and came across a plaque that contained a huge spoiler for her!

This sketch of Polperro was a sketch done in two halves due to rain. As we dashed into a nearby café, sketch book flapping, loaded down with pencils, buckets, spades - well perhaps not, I was 61 at the time... - the café owner caught sight of it and said "Ooh! That's good!" Luckily I managed to get back to almost my original spot to finish it after lunch when the sun had once more made an appearance. No one actually came to talk to me, but I overheard some very nice comments from behind me. If this had been any other country I'd have been trying to understand conversations in a few different languages.

This one of Towan beach in Newquay - the beach with the island - was done with the only company being a hopeful seagull. Every now and then it chittered at me, but as I wasn't eating and had no food on me and mostly as I never feed seagulls because they get aggressive if taught to expect food from humans, it remained disillusioned about the human race. It was bitterly cold which may explain the lack of any other people about the place but the solitude was worth it as we went from there into a restaurant that served the most enormous steak in ale pie. I was still filling in the darker bits and the barman, wandering past, did a double take and said "Have you drawn that???" in an astonished tone. Meanwhile the seagull was tapping at the window and shouting "You bastard!" as we tucked into the pie and chips.

You win some and you lose some... A bitterly cold February morning in Bolton without either camera or sketch book prompted me to find a photo on the Internet and draw Bolton's town hall from that. Heaven only knows what happened to any attempt at perspective, that tower looks like the house that Jack built... Fail...

Saturday 11 August 2018. I was back sketching outdoors in situ again. The Windmill Theatre in Great Yarmouth on a scorching hot day. It took a couple of hours and I had to make up the interior of the ground floor as it is now an indoor Crazy Golf(!) Done with a local who kept coming for a look then going home to his house on the next street for another can of beer. This at 10:00 am. He was ok, if a little drunk and the smell of beer meant he attracted the wasps and not me... Late on in the process he disappeared then came back with a load of old postcards of the town to show me. Sadly none showed the front of the theatre, but then I imagine it would have been covered in billboards with portraits and lettering and I hate doing lettering!

Done on Boxing Day 2018 whilst we had a short lull, waiting for family to arrive. It was done in my A4 sketchbook which had been a Christmas present the previous year and was done from an old photo of Thirlmere in the Lake District.

And finally for this time, here's Hastings on the south coast, well known for sea, fun and invading Normans. (Get off, Norman!) Drawn a mere 13 weeks ago during that rather intermittent summer we had this year. We were staying in Eastbourne and had taken a bus to Hastings. They made me take it back...

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