Location
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Blooming Tiles
Or perhaps “Blue Ming Tiles” – except of course these are not Ming tiles! This ceramic floral pattern is to be found on a courtyard wall in the Toshhovli Palace (or Tach Khaouli Palace) in Khiva, Uzbekistan. The palace was built in the 1830s, so I can only suppose that these tiles are also about 190 years…
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Madrasa
I had previously understood a madrasa to be a place that provided Islamic instruction, but in amongst the potted history of Uzbekistan that I picked up on a recent tour, I have come to realise that throughout much of their history madrasas taught quite a range of subjects, just like the old colleges here in…
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Bends
The initial idea for this picture came from a rather weak pun on the name of the car manufacturer and the curves of a zig zagging road! That notwithstanding, I had a lot of fun and wasted a good deal of time on the details of the car. It is I think a Mercedes-Benz 220…
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Espresso
I tend to think of espresso as simply being proper coffee – with nothing added to disguise, mute or dilute the taste of the beans. This brand in particular I also associate with being abroad, mainly because I have often been served it on the continent. In fact this make of coffee is also available…
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Hohenschwangau
There is a very pretty castle at Hohenschwangau (and of course another fairytale castle nearby called Neuschwanstein) – but this is the view from the castle, looking out over a swan (schwan to the locals) fountain – one of many swan motifs in the castle grounds. I had intended this to be just a pen…
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Alpine Meadow
The countryside around Füssen, near the southern edge of Germany, has much to recommend it. There are green rolling hills dotted with many picturesque lakes (mainly in Germany), there is the ever present backdrop of the mountains (mainly across the border in Austria), and of course there are the fairy tale castles of Neuschwanstein and…
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Art Deco IV
Slightly different from my previous Art Deco designs, this is a painting of the interior of a former house – now the van Buuren Museum – in Brussels. The house is full of some wonderful period art, but what particularly caught my eye during our recent visit was the light in the stairwell. Now, I…
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Croquet
This sport occupies quite a bit of what might otherwise be my spare time, so I suppose it is inevitable that I would eventually draw or paint a game. This particular painting is based very loosely on a photo taken during a recent match at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon,…
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Bunting
This is a view along Church Street in Hereford, looking towards the cathedral, which is where I spotted this bunting whilst visiting the city in early June. I’m not really sure why the bunting was up – there had been celebrations for the 80th anniversary of VE Day a few weeks earlier, so maybe the…
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Iron Gates
My art group made another visit to Ichi-Coo Park today – this time in glorious sunshine! Here is one of the sketches that I made there this afternoon – this one done on the iPad using the “charcoal” drawing tool. I hadn’t realised at the time that I had left the colour set to a…
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Tiles
I have always been rather taken with these symmetrical patterned tiles. I first became aware of them in Morocco, so initially thought of them as “Moroccan” tiles, but then I saw them in Spain as well, so switched to the adjective “Moorish”. More recently I have seen similar tiles in many other countries bordering the…
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Classical Ambience
I recently attended a lunch at Hylands House near Chelmsford in Essex. Apart from the enjoying the event itself, I was rather curious to see the interior of a house that I first new as a near ruin when I was a child, but which is now returned to something close to what I presume…
Doodling ... 