South East Asia
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Chion-in (知恩院)
I find it rather odd that the less paint I put on the paper the more effort it takes me to do so. I have long admired those who can seemingly capture the essence of a scene with just a few broad and (apparently) lazy brush strokes, rather than getting caught up as I often…
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Box
I have mentioned before about my liking of the box or kei cars in Japan. On my recent visit I was pleased to see they are as abundant as ever on the roads, and the most recent designs are even smarter than before. This one caught my eye early on in the trip – I’m…
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View From A Plane
I suppose most of us have seen this type of view, which is both constantly changing but which also seems to have stayed the same throughout the many hours of the flight. For the record the photo from which this is drawn was taken during the descent of a flight into Singapore, and from the…
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Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya Historical Park in Thailand contains a large complex of ruined temple buildings. We saw them in the early evening, at a time when the lower position of the sun gave a deep warm glow to the brickwork and created many interesting shadows. Ignoring the wonderful colours of the evening light, I used a simple…
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Monkey Warrior
The Grand Palace in Bankok contains many amazing sights and some wonderfully intricate buildings. During our visit my eye was particularly caught by several of the statues, and in particular by these monkey (or demon?) warriors that support two enormous chedi, or stupa. This drawing is a close up of one of these characters, one…
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Stupas at Wat Xieng Thong
Stupas are to be found in most countries in South East Asia. Many of these structures, like those in this painting, are near to Buddhist temples. I have heard varying explanations as to what these stupas are for, ranging from their being repositories for sacred relics through to just being simple memorial stones. In truth…
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Roadside Banana
I have had a banana plant growing indoors in a pot for well over twenty years. Although it has continued to produce new leaves, in all that time it has only managed to grow to about half a metre in height! By contrast, throughout South-East Asia we saw these plants grown to many metres in…
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Singapore – viewed from Marina Bay Sands
I’m not normally a fan of heights, but a friend had recommended seeing the view from the rooftop bar at Marina Bay Sands. The building is rather tall, and hence as promised the rooftop gives a very fine view. Somewhat surprisingly the bar is surrounded by quite mature trees, which I can only assume are…
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Marina Bay Sands – Singapore
This is quite a building! They only finished constructing it in 2010 but already it seems to be quite an icon for Signapore, which just maybe was the idea when it was built. I have heard it described as a (cricket) wicket, which accurately summarises the basic shape of the structure, but somehow misses out…
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Milky Stork
We saw this chap in the Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur, although since I have elected not to paint any background I suppose the exact location is not really important. I have always been impressed at how bold pictures can be created using very few colours. Initially I guess this was done to simplify the…
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Red Ginger
The Botanic Gardens in Singapore have many dazzling flowers on display. This particular Red Ginger (apparently also called Alpina purpurata, Ostrich Plume and Pink Cone Ginger) caught my eye, and I have only slightly exaggerated the colour of the petals in this painting. I used the Procreate app running on an iPad to “paint” this…
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Suzuki Hustler
Japan (or at least the parts of Japan that we visited) seemed to be full of these “box” or “kei” cars. To my European eyes they initially looked rather quirky, but after a few weeks they ceased to appear odd and instead many of them just struck me as having designs that were full of…
Doodling ... 