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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Artworks, October 2021 - September 2022

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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Lockdown Artworks March 2020- September 2021

It's perhaps not come as a surprise to regular readers that I haven't had much to post about during the last 18 months. A succession of lockdowns, interspersed with brief periods of a wary release have taken their toll on many. We've had close family calls with Covid, but (touching wood!) it's not hit directly, but our son-in-law had a brush with it and it was a relief when the horrendous coughing went away without our daughter or granddaughter catching it.

About the only thing I could do was get out the guitar for some practice (a lot of new songs into my own personal repertoire!) and the pencils and paints out for the occasional bit of artwork whenever I felt like it - sadly not as often as the music.

For most of these I couldn't even sit in front of the view whilst drawing it. Most came from images from the Internet which (either by design or because I'm a sometimes rubbish artist) are not quite a total rip-off of someone else's photographic talent. Equally sadly though, I have no idea where many of them are... 3 May 2020. The real bridge had just the two arches. I added another to allow for a gap between the foliage on the left and right banks.

10 August 2020. Lockdown had eased somewhat and we had ordered a replacement window for the living room as the original one opened inwards and immediately hit the venetian blind. In other words we couldn't open it at all. It's the coldest room in the house, only getting a mere sliver of sunshine if it happens to be shining before we get up, but even so... Whilst the workmen had asked us not to breathe out at all or sit somewhere else in the house I sat in the conservatory, itself waiting for workmen to start wrecking and rebuilding it, and did this pencil sketch over a couple of hours. I added a boat - look carefully! - and changed the nature of the building.

7 September 2020. We visited friends down in the village of Dulcote near Wells in Somerset, who have a guest house. This is it. The White House used to be a village pub and coaching inn and has flagged floors, a delicious atmosphere, and a resident ghost who sits supping in the corner "just where you are sitting, John!", Mary commented. Luckily the only beings sitting on my lap were Mary's dog and then later, the cat. Apparently they don't usually show so much trust. "It's like having Doctor Doolittle in the house!" I was told. "Aw, rubbish" I scoffed, "By the way, the goldfish says he wants a worm treat..."

Later that same day, we headed out to Cheddar, where we found a little cafe to have lunch in. The caves were all closed, as were many of the small shops. Fran had a wander as I started another sketch of a row of tiny cottages. It started to rain as I was doing this, gently at first but after Fran had come back to me it came down in earnest and we upped sticks and found refuge under the awning of a pub beer garden where a Guinness helped me complete the sketch!

9 September 2020. The Bishop's Gatehouse, Wells. We ate our lunch overlooking the moat around the Bishop's Palace and afterwards went into the garden through this wonderful gatehouse. There was a picnic area just inside and I sat on one of a few stray chairs at the back of it to do this. A woman at a nearby table came across to talk to me and have a look. At one time I'd have been horribly self-concious at that and worried I'd do something to cock it up. In the event the two sides should really be the same width, the right hand one is much too wide.

18 October 2020. A quick sketch on a Sunday afternoon. I find it so hard to draw human figures, and know I should keep practising. This was quite an attractive photograph - wasn't hard to stare at it for an hour or so! Typically proportions went a bit haywire, her back is a bit long and the miniskirt she was wearing looks more like a pair of shorts...

Miss Franny bought me a huge box of pencil crayons for Christmas and I sat down on the 27th December for around three hours, doing this study of Venice's Ponte Rialto in my A4 sketch book.

29 December 2020. Determined to get a drawing of a human figure right... I do one that looks all wrong! She has a longer back than the previous attempt! Friends of the male variety tried to console me by commenting on my mastery of buttocks...

4 January 2021. An afternoon's sketching of the view from Portofino's square in front of the Church of St George. This is looking in the opposite direction to the famous view of Portofino's approach and harbour and is from one of my own photographs.

25 January 2021. The castle came from an online photo and I've no idea where it is. If anyone recognises it, please leave a comment and let me know.

12 February 2021. Port Mogan on Gran Canaria from one of my own photos, during the post Christmas 2020 lockdown. Pencil in the A4 sketchbook from one of my photos taken in 2007. People! Not looking too horrendous!

24 February 2021. Human figures starting to look a bit more real, though the right eye widened a bit. In actual size this eye was only about 2mm from top to bottom so it was just a slight slip with the crayon. Two days later, the consensus on Facebook was that I should extend down and add the feet. This was a huge mistake as I was already perilously close to the bottom of the A4 sheet and I ended up giving the poor girl tiny feet on very short below-knee legs... You are not seeing that version!

I bought myself a new easel and spent a frustrating few days trying to assemble the thing. The bloke who drilled one piece didn't talk to the bloke drilling screw holes in the piece that was supposed to afix to it and screws just went through the top piece and said a firm "Whoa!" when they reached solid wood halfway through. However it finally got done and I attached an A2 piece of paper and tested out some new pastels on it with this picture of a Cotswolds scene.

30 April 2021. I had bought a set of sable brushes for watercolours and this was my test piece using the largest No.12 brush throughout. Watercolours are more difficult than pastels methinks! This was done on a piece of card slightly smaller than A4. Perhaps I needed a bit more room to work on!

29 July 2021. Going slightly stir crazy at all the time spent at home, we booked a few days down in Great Yarmouth for what should have left a few weeks gap after the release of all restrictions. In the event, the 21st June target got pushed back a month and we found ourselves acting as pioneers. We found that no cafes in the town would let you sit inside no matter what the weather (though no such problem with restaurants) and in nearby Cromer the cafe where we had lunch denied customers use of their toilets sending me and a woman at the next table in her 80s on a long walk with dodgy directions to the nearest public toilets. How inhuman and despicable can you get? If you sell food and drink for consumption on your premises, denying people the most basic human function is akin to torture and abuse. You should remain closed if you feel you cannot allow customers to use a toilet. I was so mad I considered pissing all over the floor behind their counter... This is the Harbour Master's office at Oulton Broad on our last day before coming home.

8 August 2021. One of my friends - an ex-boss in fact - who lives in France, took a few photos of the town of Poundenas on a trip out. I saw these on FaceBook and chose this one to have a go at. The town has several other viewpoints that just cry out for the same treatment. When I get the time...

Tuesday 24 August 2021. A morning walk into Poulton, since 2019 our home town a couple of miles inland from Blackpool, with Miss Franny and our granddaughter, Grace. I sat in the churchyard whilst the other two looked round the shops and brought back ice cream and coffees. It felt so good to be sitting outside and sketching a view from in front of me again. Plus a couple of people commented as they walked past which was nice too. It did cost me dinner in the nearby New Penny cafe.

Thursday 26 August 2021. We took Grace to the zoo for the afternoon and I sat sketching this building - the old airport clubhouse with observation tower from the time when Blackpool's airport was sited here in the 1930s. Amy Johnson flew from it and is remembered in the name of a road near the current airport at Squires Gate. The zoo opened here in 1972, the honours being carried out by much-loved TV presenter Johnny Morris, who rode in on the back of an elephant in pouring rain. This area was once shared by the elephants, rhinos and giraffes (though different species were kept well apart). The zoo no longer has rhinos and the giraffes got a new purpose built environment and more recently the last remaining elephant, Kate, was also moved into a very large new environment where she has been joined by more elephants. The camels have moved into residence here now and this sketch marks my very first attempt to draw an animal from real life. They don't stand still all that much...

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Early Crayon and Watercolours

Soul being laid bare again. Today I've put together a collection of my earliest forays into colour sketching and painting. Dating from 1992 to 1994 I had only picked up a pencil again since leaving school a mere 2 years before and standards had not yet reached the dizzying lows that I achieve today. So: stop that sniggering and adopt your most appreciative expressions as we take a look at scribblings from some thirty years ago. Oh blimey... thirty years! I'll carry on after a bit of a sit down...

This view of Portmeirion in Wales started life as a pencil drawing during the early days of my sketching when I used to draw on site (or pleine air as we artist types like to say) but with the main concern being to get it done and stop before anyone came to look over my shoulder and laugh. I needn't have worried too much. The only person who came anywhere near just shouted "I am not a number - I am a free man!" and carried on running, followed by a marching band and a huge bouncing ball. The crayons were added later at home in a secure and safe environment.

An experiment that to-date has never been repeated was this sketch on black paper with pencil crayons of Lytham windmill in Lancashire. It's only small, probably around 5x4 inches (12.5 x 10 cm). Even at home there was a sense of get it done and put it away quick!

First ever watercolour since finishing GCE O Levels (I just managed to fail my art exam...) at school in 1970. Actually the traction engine isn't bad, but the forest that only existed in my head is pretty dire I admit. Perhaps it says something about the state of my mind at the time? Complex is not the word!

This is a view of Coniston Water from the north west corner of the lake at Monk Coniston. Done from one of my own black and white photos it was as much an excercise (ha! experiment!) in handling distant hills and reflections in water as much as anything.

In 1993 we spent a fortnight's holiday in Florida and visited Cape Kennedy Space Centre one day. You don't get a lot of time for sketching on such a visit and I did this once back at home from a postcard we bought. We were quite narked as our flight home was within a couple of days of a Space Shuttle launch, though in the end it was called off because of the weather anyway.

This was the first sort of serious attempt at a watercolour, again from one of my own photographs of a Blackpool tram. I had bought an A4 pad of watercolour paper boards. This now hangs in the hallway of my mate who insists it was because he liked it rather than just to make me feel good. It did anyway.

I think this may have already sneaked into one the UK sketches articles but it belongs here just as much. I was getting ambitious by this time. This is on a massive A3 bit of paper and is another sketch done from one of my own black and white photos, this time of Knaresborough in Yorkshire. A bit scribbly as yet, particularly in the tree department, but it did take me a long time to get to grips with drawing trees which I still do with a sort of slightly more controlled scribble these days. This marked a start at using several colours in the same spot to achieve some form of texture or effect.

This technique was taken to extremes in the eye of this eagle portrait, this time from a detail of someone else's painting (I'm not that daft as to get so close to the real thing...). I spent ages on the eye and feel it did pay off. There are lots of different colours in there!

After moving on somewhat with pencil crayons I fancied trying something a bit more ambitious with watercolours. This was on another of the A4 boards, but suffers a little from sticking to a wholly inappropriate brush that came with a child's watercolour set and putting down large blocks of dark colour instead of building up layers. A bit of laziness is a factor here too in that decision! The dark grey of the smoke at the side of the loco is probably the worst of it, the fields could be better but the area around the station buildings and platform at least made me keep it instead of chucking it in the bin!

This watercolour was done from a sheet of paper from the A5 sketch pad and showed me how badly paper reacts to being soaked! As wet parts expanded and dry parts didn't the surface became anything but flat. Again the difficulty in producing fine work with a stiff flat-ended brush led to a 12 year gap between this and my next attempt at watercolours. By then, though, my drawing techniques were getting better.

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Colour Artworks Nov 2019 - Mar 2020

Winter in Burke Towers usually involves a degree of self-isolation even without any incentive from virus bugs. And whilst I've recently spent a lot of time trying to sort out my music collection, I have on occasion got out paints or crayons of one sort or another to have a dabble at some artwork.

I spent several days coming back to this one, which I finished on 15 November 2019. Clematis Cottage in Selworthy a few miles from Minehead, Somerset. It is a watercolour. Whenever I have paintings framed I use the same framer and he commented that he preferred my watercolours to the oil pastels as they had better detail. From my own point of view, it is much easier to mix colours in watercolour too. But because they are transparent, any mistakes usually have to be lived with as they are next to impossible to cover up!

30 November 2019, I was sitting half hypnotised by photos just flashing on and off on my screensaver one day and a photograph of Bourton-on-the-Water woke me up with the realisation that it might make a good subject for a sketch. I did this over the course of the day - around five to six hours in all. Coloured pencils in the A4 sketch book and it was done without any prior pencil sketching. A first...

This was done on Christmas Eve, again in five to six hours. This time the inspiration was a photo found on the Internet of Lake Halstatt, Austria. I used pastel pencils for this one and once more just got on with it without any pencil work beforehand.

I've had it in mind to attempt this view ever since I took a photo from this viewpoint in Portofino, Italy in September last year. Recently I found a 9x7 inch pad of watercolour paper that had remained untouched since the house move a year ago and did this at my desk, using a desktop easel that marked its own first use. A slightly different technique than my usual dabbing style and whilst it found favour with viewers on FaceBook, I might still try another version either in another medium or with my usual watercolour technique and on larger paper at some point in the future.

That brings us up to just a couple of days ago so until I splash or spread a bit more colour or pencil over a bit of paper, I hope you enjoyed looking at these and bye for now.

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