Pen
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All Flat & Wide
These flat-crowned trees were a common sight during my recent safari experience. Other (to my eyes more normally proportioned) trees were more abundant, but because these flat trees tended to stand on their own they were much more noticeable. In pictures of the African bush these trees often appear as silhouettes, so it seemed natural…
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Giraffe
These are curious creatures – elegant yet ungainly, innocent yet inscrutable, tall yet … well just really tall. Initially I did a sketch of the whole beast, but I only had a small sketch pad so was frustrated that I couldn’t draw the animal’s gaze in any detail because the height was dominating everything. So…
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A Door In Strasbourg
There are some very imposing front doors in Strasbourg – decorated but yet very solid – fine examples of French (or perhaps German given how often the border has moved!) workmanship. At the point where I had the shape of this image defined in pen I had high hopes for this picture. Unfortunately the watercolour…
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Quiet Street
The Christmas Market in Strasbourg was busy enough this year, but the punters tend to favour afternoons and evenings for their festive purchases, so earlier in the day it is still possible to find quiet streets even near the city centre. This street (Rue de l’Epine) was genuinely empty when my phone snapped this photograph…
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Tall & Slender
I saw this handsome plant sitting in a corner of the greenhouse in the RHS Garden at Wisley. At the time I didn’t note the name of the plant – however the self-proclaimed AI on my phone seems sure that it is an Agave plant, which would be more at home in the arid regions…
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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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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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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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Surviving a Drought?
This image is a nonsense of course, not only because waterlilies would never survive these conditions nor “float” on the dried lakebed, but also because the composition was conceived during a long period of hot and dry weather (yes – even in England we have at times too much sun!) but drawn and painted as…
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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…
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Mayflower
More properly known as hawthorn, but if you use the proper name it is just that bit more difficult to remember exactly when this plant flowers! This picture was intended to look rather like one of those very arty photos where the object in the foreground is in sharp focus and the background is just…
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Pergamon
This is a view from the Asclepion of Pergamon towards the Acropolis, which true to its name is on the top of the hill in the background. We visited Pergamon as one of the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation to St John, found at the end of the bible. However, to me one of…
Doodling ... 