Pen
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Suur Toll & Piret
This statue of a mythical couple, who once upon a time helped the Saaremaa islanders of old, is just opposite the Kuressaare hotel we were staying in during our tour of Estonia. The legends of these two seem to major on saving the island from invaders and the husbandry of cabbages, although this sculpture clearly…
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Street Music
There were a lot of open air street performances in Riga whilst we were visiting. This group were part of the Antonijas Street Festival – I think the lead singer is Chris Noah, and I have to say they were very good – in fact very much better than I have drawn them! Although the…
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Garden Café
Toome Hill Park is surrounded by buildings that belong to Tartu University. I’m not sure whether this cafe is also part of the university too – although my guess is probably not. We visited slightly out of season, so this place was closed when we saw it, but as a haven of peace in the…
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Windmill
Saaremaa Island in Estonia is pretty flat and surrounded by the Baltic Sea – as a result it had at one point many windmills! There aren’t so many left now, but this one is still there for tourists like me to gawp at. I had imagined that the pen would easily give me a wood…
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Tallinn’s Towers
Tallinn has many old towers, some of them round and some of them square. For the avoidance of doubt, the one I have drawn here is round, and goes by the name of Kiek In De Kök. Two things in particular caught my eye in this view. The first is that, having just arrived in…
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Robot Mower
Another notable feature of Ichi-Coo Park is their fleet (or flock?) of robot mowers that crawl around the grounds keeping the grass cut short. I saw one of these machines pause in the shade of a tree, giving every impression that it was seeking relief from the hot sunshine that was beating down on us…
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Foxglove
For many years I have taken a walking holiday at this time of year, and every year without fail we have passed large numbers of these impressive flowers. This example is growing in the ruins of one of the earliest successful infrastructure projects in our country – Hadrian’s Wall. I was slightly concerned that with…
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Ye Olde Shoppe
To be honest I’m not really sure quite how old this shop is. It is certainly built in an older style than the two concrete blocks that hem it in, and it probably helps that I’ve drawn it slightly wonky, giving it that twisted look that most really old buildings have! As a final coup…
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Pub Sign
These lanterns hang outside many Japanese restaurants and izakaya (居酒屋) – a term often translated as “Japanese pub”. It took a little while for me to realise that these lanterns promised some kind of refreshment close by, but once the penny had dropped they were very useful when looking for something to eat or drink.…
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City Lights
The City contains a lot of wrought iron, some of it genuinely Victorian and some just trying to look as if it might be that old! This light is situated in a very new part of London, which I have just discovered is called Bazalgette Embankment. Now Joseph Bazalgette was a Victorian engineer who built…
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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…
