Devon

Went camping in Devon for a few days. Didn't rain but there was a cold wind - which put us off sending much time on the beach. Still, we had a fun time exploring the area and had a nice view of Burgh Island from the tent. Here's a couple of quick sketches.

Burgh Island - with it's famous Art Deco Hotel...


Newton Ferrers and Totnes. Some of the architecture was very interesting - particularly in the back streets of Totnes - but there wasn't enough time to draw it all unfortunately...


and Dartington Hall - went a bit wrong with the windows...

Yorkshire

Went up to visit relatives who live on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors. I damaged my knee in a space hopper race so wasn't able to do much walking. Still, it gave me a bit of time to sketch.

Helmsley is a small town to the north of York with some very interesting buildings and a castle in cross-section. There's also a small, picturesque stream running through it...


I was really pleased with these two - perhaps I should just stick to one or two colours...


This is a longer one done at the remains of Jervaulx Abbey. They were great to explore. I could easily spend a month drawing there...

A very quick sketch of an interesting architectural feature in a doorway at the abbey...


We had a bit of time before our train left so we visited the train museum in York. This is a very quick sketch...


Our return train sat just outside Birmingham station just long enough for us to miss our connecting train. We had a bite to eat and I quickly sketched this tall building. (I've since found out it's the Nat West tower - and it's due to be demolished)...

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...

Wrington and Bristol

Couple of quick sketches done whilst out and about...

Enjoying the nice weather

Glorious warm weather - got the hammock out for the first time this year. Bliss...

I also recently spent a day in Birmingham at a workshop by David Hobby, creator of the Strobist movement. It was very inspiring and I really liked the little bit I saw of Birmingham too. It's full of amazing victorian buildings and also impresive canals and viaducts like this one. The drawing doesn't really get the scale across. It was about 5 stories high and stretched for such a long way - that's a lot of bricks...

Just around the corner was this pub, nearly 400 years old. Only had a few minutes to sketch it unfortunately. If you google streetmap Gibb Street Birmingham you'll probably find both of these places...

Mallorca

My first time to this beautiful island. Thanks to the volcano I got to stay for two weeks instead of one. There are worse places to get stranded. Sadly I didn't really get into the swing of drawing until the last few days. I'll have to go again - there's so much to see - and draw (and cakes and ices to eat).

This is the port of Valldemossa. Like a lot of Mallorcan ports it's quite far from the town itself on account of the pirates. Any pirates landing here would have a gruelling 5 mile hike up a cliff before they got to the actual town. Fortunately there are plenty of ice cream parlours and bars where they could stop for refreshments before they started their terrorising...


This is Portal Vells on tthe southern tip of the island. It's accessed by a dusty track which runs past a golf course with chickens roaming on it. The bays are secluded, the turquoise water is crystal clear - very picturesque...

Alcudia is in the North and has a long beach - which was covered with little jelllyfish (valella valella) which had been washed up in the high winter seas...
Deia was the next village to us and is where Robert Graves lived. This is the port. The beach here was covered with a half meter thick layer of stick-like things and seed pods - it was quite soft and made it very comfortable to lie on. Not sure what it was though...

Here's a view of Valldemossa - the hill top villages sometimes look quite Tuscan. In Estellencs the chef made us a vegetarian paella - it wasn't on the menu but it was delicious...
The port in Valldemosa again and also the remains of the well winding gear in the garden of our house...

Just along the road from us were some ancient olive groves. I was very impressed with the gnarled and twisted trunks. Sometimes sheep with bells on would be grazing in the shade beneath...
I think these quick sketches are the ones I'm most pleased with - most were done on the last day...
Here we ae on the way back home again...

Local Sketches for Local People

I got the chunky art pen out again, cleaned it and had a go at some much quicker drawings. This time they're all of things closer to home. I probably ought to have used a little less heavy black. First, some trees and hedges behind our house...


... the back of our house, and a stove in the cafe at Wrington Walled Garden...
... and Wrington itself.

Denmark

Just back from 2 very enjoyable weeks teaching at the Animation Workshop in Viborg. The students worked really hard and the standard of work was excellent (like the schools in France it puts most UK places to shame I'm afraid to say). Found it a bit tricky to get going with the sketching at the beginning - it was quite wet and this was coupled with a biting wind (and the houses were much harder to draw than Norwegian sheds). Still, I'm happy with some of the later ones...

Norway II

I just got back from my second visit to this beautiful country. The autumn colours were again amazing and after the first week the weather was pretty much perfect. I got to climb the Rotsethornet which looms over the town and also visited the seaside one day. I sketched in pen - I work faster using ink and with temperatures near freezing this is a good thing.

Right, here's the first one - done at the airport in Oslo - where I'd just discovered my bag hadn't made it past Amsterdam - I wasn't surprised - it's the third time this has happened to me when getting connecting flights there. Whenever it happens I always think of how Holland has a famously relaxed attitude to drug taking.

Oslo airport is stunning - it's a bit like being in a Bang + Olufsen music centre - lots of solid wood, stainless steel and glass...

I had a great flat with a fantastic view over the fjord the mountains beyond - the weather meant that the view changed almost completely every 10 minutes...
Here's a couple of sketches from my day trip to the sea. I particularly liked the boat huts. I was to get a better look at these valleys on my flight home when the little propeller plane I was in flew through them for what seemed a good 10 minutes after leaving Orsta. It was very impressive to see the walls of snow and rock towering above us.
Here's the Folkestad ferry which goes back and forth across the fjord day and night...
... and Volda town centre - it's not a big place...
.. and I managed to sketch quite a few of the typical Norwegian wooden houses. They fit into the lnadscape perfectly - and are easy to draw...
I even managed to find a few cars to sketch...
This is the cairn at the summit of the Rotsethornet. I thought this would be the goal of my walk/climb. I took the steep way up which seems to go up a vertical face when you look at the mountain from the town but is actually not that bad when seen from the side. Still, there are steep bits, and a rope or chain in places and it's a scramble rather than a walk. After admiring the view I was looking forward to an easy stroll down the back of it to the lake below. The trouble was that there was a lot of fresh snow at the top - up to my knees in places - so I couldn't see the path. The only option was to follow the footsteps of a woman who passed me on the way up and who I knew lived in Volda and wasn't staying the night because she didn't have a bag.

To say she was a keen walker is a bit of an understatement. It took me five hours to finally get back home having trudged up and down every peak in the ridge behind the Rotsethornet. It was great though...
These are some buildings I found by the river - it seems to be Volda's first power station and some other industrial buildings using the water to power the machines. Here's a sawmill (the modern building is the school where I was teaching)...

Some of my favourite buildings are the farmhouses and barns. Always painted dark red with stone bases (or sometimes white painted concrete) I love their simplicity...

These are I think some of the best sketches I did and I made them a few minutes after slipping on a slimy rock, falling on my back and smashing my finger and camera onto the ground. As much as I like the drawings it's not some thing I'm prepared to try again. Perhaps that's what they mean when they say you have to suffer for your art...

Finally, the sketches from my last day. The harbour in Volda and a few planes on the way home. Hope you've enjoyed them, I'll be posting some photos on my flickr site in the next few days...