Who do I think I am?

I've been trying to trace the origin of my name and it seems to have come from Norfolk. I recently spent a few days there in the records office and visiting the beautiful flint churches where my ancestors were baptized, married and buried. After my four hour drive I needed to sit outside and relax a bit so I drew this little church in Hellesdon...

I liked this jumble of different styles in this street in Norwich. It's not the best drawing, I was slightly distracted by a multitude of insects falling out of the tree I was sitting under...


This is the church at Pulham Market. It has some beautiful paintings inside and the roof is also very nicely done. Joseph (my GGGG Grandfather) was originally from Pulham and I did find quite a big family living here through the 1700's but I've yet to find out which of William and Mary's children was Joseph's father...


The next church is at Blofield. It has a very impressive tower - probably twice the height of most others in the area. Mary and Joseph Marjoram were married here in 1808 but they didn't stay in this village for long.

The second drawing is of St Mary's South Walsham. It shares a graveyard with another church - St Lawrences. It is here that John and Ann (my GGG Grandparents) were Baptized and buried - I've sketched the stone in another drawing.


The final church is Burlingham St Andrew. Mary (78) and Joseph Marjoram (82), my GGGG Grandparents were buried here, they died in 1858 and 1861. There are two Marjoram stones in the graveyard but they're not my direct ancestors.

The stone below is in South Walsham and is that of Mary and Joseph's son and his wife - John (72) and Ann (77). They died in 1891 and 1903.

They lived to a good age and both Joseph and John were gardeners. There are a few large houses nearby - South Walsham Hall and Burlingham House (and Hall) and I think they probably worked at one or other of these.

It's a very strange feeling to come across a gravestone with your name on - as they were labourers I really didn't expect to find one...

Burrington Fete Classic Cars

We had a village fete at the weekend which featured a small gathering of classic cars. The first is an impressive Jaguar XK150...
The cars lined up...
A nice little 1931 Morris. The actual car was a bit more symmetrical than my drawing...

Burrington Church

This church is in a lovely little village in North Somerset.

More Watercolour Tests

Here's a few quick watercolour thumbnail doodles done on ordinary paper and a more finished painting of the GN SPider hillclimb car. For the GN I managed to find some hot pressed paper (The Langton by Daler-Rowney). It is indeed much smoother than the cold pressed paper I'd been using up to now - much better to draw on...

Duck Racing - Plume of Feathers

There's a lovely pub near us - The Plume of Feathers. It sits in a cul-de-sac by a little stream and each year they have a duck race to raise money for local schools. There's a BBQ, refreshing drinks, live music and all afternoon plastic ducks are tipped into the top of the stream and gathered up at the bottom again. Gangs of children splash down the stream too. The water comes out of the ground in a pond called Rickford Rising and nearby are various interesting buildings presumably containg pumping gear and things to do with the sluice. This is one of them...

Auto Union - Work in Progress

I wanted to do a larger work of Hans Stuck racing his C Type Auto Union up the Grossglockner mountain on his way to becoming German Hillclimb Champion in 1938. My Grandfather was there and took this photo of him at the start...
www.pbase.com/smarjoram/image/3472160
I made a basic model in Maya and exported a wireframe - mainly to get the wheels right but it also allowed me to quickly experiment with camera angles.
This pencil sketch is A3 (pretty big for me). I tried one twice the size - transferring it to some card - only to find that the card wouldn't take any sort of paint or crayon without going wrinkly or showing the ridges in the card.
Next stage is to try again with a more suitable paper - perhaps using some charcoal. I may also try a digital paintover on this pencil sketch.

Went to the City Museum and Art Gallery today. There's a new exhibition of 'Art from the New World'. It's works by Coop, Todd Schorr, Gary Basemann and the like. It was fun and plenty of people were coming to view it which is good. I think I preferred looking at the old paintings though. Some terrific views of Bristol from the 1800's and some with all sorts of hidden messages and lectures on the dangers of drinking, gambling, joining the army... What really stunned me though were some cut paper art works. Tiny illustrations made by cutting holes into white paper. The cuts were miniscule - perhaps 1-2mm long and 0.1mm wide! The images depicted coats of arms, text, trees with every branch visible - it was astonishing. I had to sit down and have a brownie after that. Here part of the main hall with some New World art at the bottom and a dinosaur roaming about upstairs...

Boatyard

Another quick lunchtime sketch. These are the boats to the left of the one I did before under the scaffold. These are all quite small - about 5x15cm. The sketches, not the boats...