Buildings
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Le Grand Café
This magnificent building stands in the middle of Brussels beside the old Bourse, and I guess once kept the financiers of the city fed and watered as they traded their way to success or ruin in the industrial expansion of nineteenth century Belgium. Fortunately the hostelry didn’t seem to be suffering any lack of customers…
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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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Arches – Bukhara
We saw many views through arches whilst in Uzbekistan – this one in the Kalan Mosque in Bukhara was probably the most dramatic. I was quite pleased in general with how the perspective works in this painting – to me it really gives the impression of a view through a tunnel. However, this effect is…
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Christmas Tree
The corner of this earth that I call home is awash with these things at this time of year. Often they are very pretty, occasionally they are rather garish, only rarely are they disappointing. The tree on which this painting is based was (and almost certainly still is at time of writing) in Place Kléber,…
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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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Torii Gaze
Originally this was intended to show a modern (so manga style) Japanese eye within which the mind behind the eye was reflecting on something ancient, a pagoda for example. By various twists and turns it is now a modern eye literally reflecting the light from a nearby Torii gate. However, if I ignore the frustration…
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Begijnhof
This peaceful courtyard is to be found in Bruges, a place I have visited, painted and drawn many times. This tranquil place originally housed a community of lay women called beguines, and still today it is home to a community of Benedictine nuns and other likeminded women. I’m not sure that my painting really captures…
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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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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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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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Galata Tower
The Galata Tower in Istanbul is now almost 700 years old. Today it dominates a hillside otherwise covered in a jumble of more modern and more modest buildings, the tower still offering the views it was designed to give over the city and the surrounding crossroads of land and sea routes. In my head (weird…
Doodling ... 