Buildings
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Rundāles pils
On our recent visit to Rundale Palace in Latvia the sky was overcast but the flowers in the gardens still had plenty of blooms. This view is from the “French” (ie formal) garden. Taking a photo in which the foreground flowers properly frame the topiary required a certain amount of ungainly stooping, but I think…
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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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Theatre Craft
During the recent hot weather we took our grandchildren to a craft activity at our local library. Partly this was for the distraction of the activity itself, but also I must admit partly because the library is air-conditioned! The craft consisted of colouring in, then cutting out, a toy theatre and some characters, which were…
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Work In Progress
We recently went to a wedding celebration in this handsome building on Wandsworth Common. As with many weddings that I have attended over the years, a very good time was had by all. However, I am always aware that any wedding day is only really the beginning of a (hopefully) life-long journey, building a life…
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Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I was trying to go with this picture. However, I drew it anyway because: a – I very much like the window design, b – I thought the statute goes well below the window, c – I thought it might be fun to try out a halo…
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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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Lantern
These platform lanterns are to be found at many temples in Japan, particularly Buddhist temples. I understand that they are full of symbolism, but that aside they are also visually very interesting, plenty of detail, sturdy yet graceful. Of course the temptation is always to feature the temple itself in any picture, but here I…
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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…
